Justice in Jena-- NYT op-ed piece

in today's new york times; just wondering what folks think of the DA's logic and legal reasoning.

Op-Ed Contributor

By REED WALTERS
Published: September 26, 2007
Jena, La.

(illustration by Justin Gabbard)

THE case of the so-called Jena Six has fired the imaginations of thousands, notably young African-Americans who, according to many of their comments, believe they will be in the vanguard of a new civil rights movement. Whether America needs a new civil rights movement I leave to social activists, politicians and the people who must give life to such a cause.

I am a small-town lawyer and prosecutor. For 16 years, it has been my job as the district attorney to review each criminal case brought to me by the police department or the sheriff, match the facts to any applicable laws and seek justice for those who have been harmed. The work is often rewarding, but not always.

I do not question the sincerity or motivation of the 10,000 or more protesters who descended on Jena last week, after riding hundreds of miles on buses. But long before reaching our town of 3,000 people, they had decided that a miscarriage of justice was taking place here. Their anger at me was summed up by a woman who said, “If you can figure out how to make a schoolyard fight into an attempted murder charge, I’m sure you can figure out how to make stringing nooses into a hate crime.”

That could be a compelling statement to someone trying to motivate listeners on a radio show, but as I am a lawyer obligated to enforce the laws of my state, it does not work for me.

I cannot overemphasize how abhorrent and stupid I find the placing of the nooses on the schoolyard tree in late August 2006. If those who committed that act considered it a prank, their sense of humor is seriously distorted. It was mean-spirited and deserves the condemnation of all decent people.

But it broke no law. I searched the Louisiana criminal code for a crime that I could prosecute. There is none.

Similarly, the United States attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, who is African-American, found no federal law against what was done.

A district attorney cannot take people to trial for acts not covered in the statutes. Imagine the trampling of individual rights that would occur if prosecutors were allowed to pursue every person whose behavior they disapproved of.

The “hate crime” the protesters wish me to prosecute does not exist as a stand-alone offense in Louisiana law. It’s not that our Legislature has turned a blind eye to crimes motivated by race or other personal characteristics, but it has addressed the problem in a way that does not cover what happened in Jena. The hate crime statute is used to enhance the sentences of defendants found guilty of specific crimes, like murder or rape, who chose their victims based on race, religion, sexual orientation or other factors.

Last week, a reporter asked me whether, if I had it to do over, I would do anything differently. I didn’t think of it at the time, but the answer is yes. I would have done a better job of explaining that the offenses of Dec. 4, 2006, did not stem from a “schoolyard fight” as it has been commonly described in the news media and by critics.

Conjure the image of schoolboys fighting: they exchange words, clench fists, throw punches, wrestle in the dirt until classmates or teachers pull them apart. Of course that would not be aggravated second-degree battery, which is what the attackers are now charged with. (Five of the defendants were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder.) But that’s not what happened at Jena High School.

The victim in this crime, who has been all but forgotten amid the focus on the defendants, was a young man named Justin Barker, who was not involved in the nooses incident three months earlier. According to all the credible evidence I am aware of, after lunch, he walked to his next class. As he passed through the gymnasium door to the outside, he was blindsided and knocked unconscious by a vicious blow to the head thrown by Mychal Bell. While lying on the ground unaware of what was happening to him, he was brutally kicked by at least six people.

Imagine you were walking down a city street, and someone leapt from behind a tree and hit you so hard that you fell to the sidewalk unconscious. Would you later describe that as a fight?

Only the intervention of an uninvolved student protected Mr. Barker from severe injury or death. There was serious bodily harm inflicted with a dangerous weapon — the definition of aggravated second-degree battery. Mr. Bell’s conviction on that charge as an adult has been overturned, but I considered adult status appropriate because of his role as the instigator of the attack, the seriousness of the charge and his prior criminal record.

I can understand the emotions generated by the juxtaposition of the noose incident with the attack on Mr. Barker and the outcomes for the perpetrators of each. In the final analysis, though, I am bound to enforce the laws of Louisiana as they exist today, not as they might in someone’s vision of a perfect world.

That is what I have done. And that is what I must continue to do.

Reed Walters is the district attorney of LaSalle Parish.

the paterson ymca supports the jena 6 on 9/20/07

here's an article from today's herald news about my co-workers' support for the jena 6. i'm so proud that we are all standing up against this injustice. keep fighting and make your voices heard...


Friday, September 21, 2007
By HEATHER HADDON, HERALD NEWS

Across North Jersey, people dressed in all black Thursday to show support for six black Louisiana teenagers facing attempted murder charges after a schoolyard fight with strong racial overtones.

Joann Hill, of Paterson, picked black workwear to express her outrage. For Hill and many others, the incident stirred personal and painful experiences of racism, and a deep sense of grief that blacks still have to deal with the possibility of injustice.

"It is scary," said Hill, 47, dressed in a flowing black blouse at her job at the Paterson YMCA. "I have a 17-year-old son. How's he going to feel when he hears about this?"

In Jena, La., a pair of altercations between black and white high school students last year led to dramatically different punishments for each. Last September, a black student sat underneath a tree that white teenagers congregate by, prompting three white students to suspend nooses in the tree.

RELATED LINKS

Video: Thousands Rally to Support 6 Jena Teens
Video: Jackson: 'There's a Jena in Every State'

Then, in December, six black students badly beat a white student on school grounds. The victim was well enough to attend a school function later in the evening.

The three white students received a temporary suspension. But the black teenagers were charged with attempted murder. News about the incident gained widespread media attention in recent weeks as some of the cases came to trial.

On Thursday, thousands of people from across the country converged on the small town to demand justice for the "Jena Six." The chanting crowd, drawn by heavy promotion from black radio stations and including the Rev. Al Sharpton, flooded the streets of the predominantly white town of 3,000.

In the last few weeks, North Jersey residents have responded publicly and privately with shock and sadness. For some, the case smacks of a pre-Civil Rights era injustice. Yvonne Smith's son attended Thursday's rally, driving 1,200 miles from his college, Howard University in Washington, D.C.

"He couldn't believe we were still in that stage of our history," said Smith, 53, a Paterson transplant from Jamaica.

Chante Bobbitt, 27, sent off an angry letter to the governor of Louisiana. The incident strikes her as modern-day slavery.

"Those boys' lives have already been destroyed," said Bobbitt, an East Orange resident who works in Paterson.

Even as throngs descended on Louisiana, several other protests occurred across the country, including in North Jersey. On Thursday afternoon, more than 100 protesters rallied in front of Newark City Hall. Those attending ranged from Mayor Cory Booker to local schoolchildren.
Shelia Green-Barnhill, a Newark resident who attended the rally, felt that all people should be treated humanely.

"If you see someone injured in the street, you help them," Green-Barnhill said in a phone interview. "That person should be someone you talk to and eat next to, because they are a person, not just a color."

In solidarity, North Jersey residents agreed to wear all black to work on Thursday.

Dark attire appeared across the hallways of the Passaic County Board of Social Services, within the Paterson YMCA and in classrooms at the Passaic County Technical Institute. Black shirts popped up on employees in Paramus, throughout the East Orange school system, and at the Millburn Municipal Golf Course.

"This issue is everybody's child," said Thelma Stevens, 56.

For some, the issue presented an opportunity to talk to their children about ongoing racism -- even in subtle ways like preferences for white dolls. Others prayed in their churches. And for older folks, it brought back the past.

Joann Hill recalled her mother's experiences as one of only four black students in Passaic High School's graduating class of 1944. From her, Hill heard stories of finding burning cardboard on her yard, or having students rip up her books.

Since the Jena incident, Hill's 81-year-old mother has fallen quiet. "This has been hard on her," said Hill, of Paterson.

-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Hanging around our necks

Sept. 20, Jena, LA: The NAACP has organized a march in Jena, LA, to raise awareness and support for the Jena 6. Anybody who reads this blog now knows, and probably for a long while has known, about the trial of six young people for the aggravated assault of a white teen. Mychal Bell, who was charged as an adult, just had his charges changed to those for a minor, but all six remain in custody. This post is not to rehash all the detail, but to bring up another point: how long does it take for the big names in the media to decide that Jena is a story, and why did it take them so long...until Al Sharpton decided to head on down.

I just went onto yahoo answers, and saw the question: "why are the Jena 6 not being tried for hate crimes?" I had to answer, and if you want to see my complete response, check it out on the site. Pretty much, I wrote that Larry, the questioner, should really investigate the story, and understand that when a situation starts because off nooses hung on a tree that only white students can sit under, there is a hate crime, all right. It is the allusion to a practice continued until all-too-recently in places like Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and the rest of the "New South."

Some of the answerers seemed annoyed that the news was bringing up that dirty word again: racism. As if not saying it makes it go away, and that a campaign to get unlawfully and unjustly imprisoned people out of jail is just an unnecessary headache. I wrote a postcard to Mychal Bell a couple weeks ago, from my city in Brazil, encouraging him to keep up hope, and realize that there are thousands upon thousands in the US who still believe in justice and change.

New Orleans was a hate crime. Public education in cities like New York is a hate crime. The US prison system is a hate crime. Drug laws are hate crimes. When someone calls you nigger and you are black, and you hit back, that is not a hate crime.