Also see:     
AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications 

Also see below:     
"Jena Six" Incident Spurs Racial Unrest    [

    Conviction in Jena Case Overturned
    The Associated Press

    Friday 14 September 2007

Judges rule teen should not have been tried as adult in racially tinged case.

    Jena, Louisiana - A state appeals court Friday tossed out the aggravated battery conviction that could have sent a black teenager to prison for 15 years in last year's beating of a white classmate in the racially tense Louisiana town of Jena.

    Mychal Bell, who was 16 at the time of the December beating, should not have been tried as an adult on the battery charge, the state Third Circuit Court of Appeal in Lake Charles ruled.

    Bell is one of six black Jena High School students charged in an attack on fellow student Justin Barker, and one of five originally charged as adults with attempted second-degree murder.

    The charges brought widespread criticism that blacks were being treated more harshly than whites after racial confrontations and fights at their school.

    Attorney Louis Scott of Monroe said he didn't know whether Bell, whose bond was set at $90,000, would get out of jail immediately.

    "It means that at the present time all charges are dismissed," Scott said. "But we don't know what approach the prosecution is going to take - whether they will re-charge him, where he would have to be subjected to bail all over again or not.

    "We're working on that right now," he said.

    Rally for "Jena Six" Planned

    Bell was to be sentenced Thursday in a case that has brought international attention to Jena. Civil rights leaders, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, have been planning a rally in support of the teens that day.

    "Although there will not be a court hearing, we still intend to have a major rally for the Jena Six and now hopefully Mychal Bell will join us," Sharpton said in an e-mailed statement.

    "Mychal Bell's parents will still join me in Chicago tomorrow and we will still continue mobilization on this miscarriage of justice."

    Jackson said, "The pressure must continue until all six boys are set free and sent to school, not to jail."

    Racial Tensions Flared After Nooses

    Jena is a mostly white town where racial animosity flared about a year ago when a black student sat under a tree that was a traditional gathering place for whites.

    A day later, three nooses were found hanging from the tree, evoking for some the image of lynchings in the old South. There followed reports of racial fights and confrontations at the school, culminating in the December attack on Barker.

    The reversal of Bell's conviction will not affect four other teenagers also charged as adults, because they were 17 years old at the time of the fight and, legally, no longer juveniles in Louisiana, said attorney George Tucker of Hammond.

    Bell was 16 at the time of the fight, making him a juvenile under Louisiana law.

    Tucker, who represented one of teens - Theo Shaw - until Friday, said the boy whose case is in juvenile court will benefit, and Bell will be tried by a judge in juvenile court.

    Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr., who heard Bell's case, noted that the district attorney also could appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

    District Attorney Reed Walters did not return a call asking his next step.

    Details of Ruling

    Mauffray had thrown out a conspiracy conviction on which Bell was convicted, saying it was not a charge on which a juvenile may be tried as an adult. But he had let the battery conviction stand, saying Bell could be tried in adult court because the charge was among lesser charges included in the original attempted murder charge against him.

    He was wrong, the Third Circuit ruled.

    While teenagers can be tried as adults in Louisiana for some violent crimes, including attempted murder, aggravated battery is not one of those crimes. Defense lawyers had argued that the aggravated battery case should not have been tried in adult court once the attempted murder charge was reduced.

    "The defendant was not tried on an offense which could have subjected him to the jurisdiction of the criminal court," the three-paragraph ruling said.

    The case "remains exclusively in juvenile court," the Third Circuit ruled.

 

---

    Go to Original

    Year of Racial Unrest in Louisiana Town
    By Miguel Bustillo
    The Los Angeles Times

    Saturday 15 September 2007

Stiff charges for the "Jena Six," black teens who beat a white youth, draw wide attention. The raw atmosphere started with nooses in a tree.

    Jena, Louisiana - In December, six black boys jumped a white boy at the high school here and beat him while he lay unconscious.

    The victim was taken to the hospital, but he was not gravely hurt. He attended a class ring ceremony later that evening.

    The black boys were charged with attempted murder, which threatened to put them in prison for most of their lives. The district attorney alleged they'd used a deadly weapon: their sneakers.

    The case of the so-called Jena Six has elicited outrage around the world - not only because of the stiff charges brought against the black teenagers, but because of the stark contrast between the way black boys and white boys in the same town were treated.

    The assault was the culmination of months of racial unrest in Jena (pronounced JEE-nuh), a former sawmill town of about 3,000 people in the backwoods of central Louisiana. It started at the beginning of the last school year, when a black freshman at Jena High School asked the vice principal during a school assembly whether he could sit under the "white tree," a gnarled oak on campus where white students gathered to escape the stifling Southern heat. He was told to sit wherever he wanted.

    The following day last September, three hangman's nooses were dangling from the oak's branches. Two months later, the school was set on fire.

    The three white boys who hung the nooses were identified but not expelled or charged with a hate crime; they were suspended for three days. No one has been charged in the arson.

    The Jena Six were kicked out of school last school year. Five were charged as adults with crimes that carry long prison sentences. (The other boy is being tried as a juvenile and was recently allowed to return to classes.)

    One of the six, Mychal Bell, 17, was convicted of aggravated battery by an all-white jury this year, a crime that carries a maximum punishment of 15 years. On Friday, a state appeals court overturned his conviction after his defense attorneys argued that he was unlawfully tried as an adult.

    Still, Bell remained behind bars late Friday, as he had been for the last nine months. It is unclear whether LaSalle Parish Dist. Atty. Reed Walters will seek to drop the charges, retry him as a juvenile or ask the Louisiana Supreme Court to overturn the appellate court's decision. Walters did not return requests for comment.

    "It's not a complete victory; we can't celebrate yet," said Louis Scott, one of a team of Louisiana lawyers defending Bell pro bono. "But when we got in this game, we were a couple of touchdowns behind. Now the game is tied."

    The "white tree" at the high school was recently cut down by local leaders, and Walters has been reducing the charges against the Jena Six to aggravated battery; attempted murder carries a maximum sentence of more than 50 years.

    But those actions have done little to quell the criticism of the way Jena authorities have handled the case.

    "If a black person does something in Jena, they do more time than a white person. It's always been that way," said Bell's mother, Melissa Bell. "The white kids here can run loose, drink beer, whatever. But if you are black, don't you dare act like that."

    African American leaders such as the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III argue that the case has raised disturbing questions about lingering racism and uneven justice in the Deep South.

    Bloggers and student activists have taken up the Jena Six cause, saying the case is not unique: Studies have shown that black youths often receive harsher penalties than white youths.

    Rallies to support the Jena Six are taking place around the country, and the Nation of Islam and other religious organizations had been planning a bus trip to Jena for Mychal Bell's sentencing, which had been scheduled for Thursday.

    It was unclear Friday whether the rally, which was expected to draw thousands including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, would still take place. Jena officials have called off classes at six schools in anticipation of possible unrest.

    "Jena is a 1960 town in a 2007 world. It's like going 47 years in the past," said the Rev. Raymond Brown, a New Orleans civil rights activist. "The message being sent here is: 'Don't you touch any white people, because if you do you will get locked up for life.' "

    But in Jena, about 230 miles northwest of New Orleans, some whites say their town is suffering the real injustice. They blame out-of-state activists and the news media for painting a sensationalized picture of Jena as a throwback to the institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow era. They would prefer that the camera crews and ministers leave for good.

    The noose incident was "nothing more than a bad joke. Whites and blacks stuck their heads in the nooses, poking fun at it," said Billy Fowler, a local school board member. "The black students - it caused some tension for them, I'm sure, but it's not as crazy as it's been made out to be."

    Fowler said that though he and many others agreed that the Jena Six were being excessively punished, many had lost sympathy for the boys because of damage to the town's reputation.

    "If they'd kept their mouths shut, they might have gotten those charges taken off," he said. "But with the way this town's been done wrong, I don't think that's going to happen now."

    Fowler and others assert that there's no direct connection between the noose incident and the later beating, a position supported by U.S. Atty. Donald Washington, who has been reviewing the case for possible federal intervention.

    But supporters of the Jena Six argue that the nooses divided the town and sparked an ugly series of racial fights that culminated in the six-on-one beating.

    After the nooses were hung, Jena High Principal Glen Joiner recommended expulsion for the white students responsible. But he was overruled by LaSalle Parish Schools Supt. Roy Breithaupt - a decision that angered Jena's 350 or so black residents. Breithaupt did not respond to requests for comment.

    After the decision, black students at Jena High gathered under the tree in protest.

    Fights between blacks and whites broke out for days, and the principal ultimately called an assembly in which Dist. Atty. Walters, flanked by armed police, addressed the school.

    "With a stroke of my pen, I can make your lives disappear," Walters said. In a court hearing where an attorney tried to have Walters removed from the beating case on grounds that he was biased, Walters, who is white, admitted making the statement. But he denied that he had been looking at black students when he said it, as some have said he had been.

    Just before the incident that resulted in stiff charges for the Jena Six, white youngsters had attacked one of the six black boys, Robert Bailey, 17, striking him with beer bottles as he tried to enter a party. Only one of the attackers was charged - with simple battery.

    The next day, a white man who had been at the party brandished a shotgun during an altercation with Bailey and several other black boys.

    He was not charged, but the boys, who wrestled the gun away from him, were charged with stealing it.

    At a hearing last month in which Mychal Bell's new attorneys tried to get him released on bail, prosecutors revealed that Bell had been on juvenile probation and had been involved in other violence. Supporters of the stiff charges called the disclosure proof that the charges were just.

    On Friday, Bell's attorneys said they would now seek school reinstatement for Bell - an honor student and star running back who was being courted by top football colleges including Louisiana State University - while he fought his legal battles.

    "I just hope this doesn't mess up his mind, being locked up with grown men," Melissa Bell said tearfully as she stared at a picture of her son in black-and-white prison stripes. "He had such a bright future in front of him. I really hope he can get his life back."