This is a state wide problem, which must be dealt with as such. Equal Justice under-the-law, in this instance would include prosecution for weapon(s) on a school campus. A thorough, federal investigation for hate crime on a school campus and a Justice Department purview from its Public Integrity Section.
The proported statement by the prosecutor in a school assembly urging the students not to "resist" under the threat of ruined life at the stroke of a pen. Wrongful convictions are prevalent state wide. The U.S. Justice Department's Special Litigation Section is needed in the numerous cases entangled in state courts. At some point it must be realized that these are not mistakes, but blatant attacks on individual freedom. When a person as part of a group is made example of by a governmental entity, this is akin to "legal lynching" or the application of the "whipping boy" scenario. When in days of slavery and thereafter in America, a man was chosen for such certain crimes and brought out public and beat or burned or hanged as an example, it was to establish the fact to all others what the outcome of certain actions would involve. In this case, a black student accepting an invitation to a "teen age" party by a fellow female white student. His, proported advances were heartily rejected by the white males there. And so now, we [Louisiana] have evolved into a public spectacle for all to see. How reminscent of 20th century lynchings in America.
It is no doubt, that the law has been broken in Louisiana. The mistake the world is making is ascribing it only to Jena. This scenario is about injustice rooted in the state of Louisiana since the legalities established in Plessy versus Ferguson. It was only in 1954 that the Brown versus Board of Education was decreed. Since then, we have experienced the arisal of all-white acadamies across the south to perpetuate the "seperate and unequal" mentality. Our poorly understanding youth of today, believing to some extent that all is well, venture to "integrate" in deep south Louisiana. If a black male is found with the "right" white female, the encounter will become rape. But, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Memo to the World:Jena's A Great Place by-Craig Franklin Jena Times
addendum:9 June 2007
And yes kind Sir, in far off D.C., this day with Sojourners, we sweat in the poverty of the black belt, so effectively accomplished upon us. The ploys of political plunderers steadily stealing our state of reality in this vast morass of injustice. We livin' it everyday. forty years. .. forty years . ..forty years
12 June 2007
What happened that day in Jena?
By Abbey Brown
abrown@thetowntalk.com
(318) 487-6387
JENA -- "Free the Jena Six" has become a battle cry heard not only in the small community of Jena but also across the country.
But what about the "Jena One?" -- the 17-year-old boy who was knocked unconscious, hit, kicked and stomped on by a group of students, according to court documents?
That's a question Justin Barker's parents ask every day.
"All you hear is, 'Justice for the Jena Six,'" David Barker said of his son's case. "I wouldn't mind justice for the one. It doesn't matter the race -- what matters is what happened to our son."
Three of the six Jena High School students charged in Justin Barker's beating -- coined the Jena Six -- are scheduled to be tried on June 25 on charges of attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder in connection with the fight, which happened Dec. 4 just outside the school's gym.
It was the first day students had returned to classes after a fire gutted the school's main academic building.
The parents of the Jena Six said they are hoping justice comes soon for their sons -- with all charges against them being dropped.
But the Barker family doesn't know in what form justice will come for them.
"There's no good answer to the question of what we want to happen," said Kelli Barker, Justin's mother. "I just wish this whole thing would have never happened."
David Barker said if the boys are acquitted, they may think, "I got away with this once, why couldn't I get away with it again?"
Theodore McCoy, the father of one of those accused, Theodore Shaw, said that even if his son and the other boys had done what they are accused of doing, the charges are still unfair.
"I would like for (District Attorney Reed Walters) to drop those silly charges," he said. "If anything, this was simple battery. If six people really had beat someone up and jumped on him, he would have been hurt worse -- broken bones, teeth knocked out. This isn't justice."
Repeated attempts over the past several weeks to contact Walters seeking comment, including messages left at his office, have been unsuccessful.
Mychal Bell, Shaw and Robert Bailey Jr. are scheduled to go before 28th Judicial District Court Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr. later this month. Carwin Jones and Bryant Purvis haven't yet been arraigned. Shaw and Bell remain in the LaSalle Parish Jail in lieu of $90,000 bond each.
Court documents on the sixth student aren't available because his case is being handled in the juvenile system.
What happened?
Investigators from the LaSalle Parish Sheriff's Office have gathered statements from more than 40 people -- a number of them students -- who told investigators they saw everything that happened. Many of these statements were included in court documents.
"When I heard a black boy say something to Justin, I turned my head and I saw somebody hit Justin," one student wrote in a statement. "He fell in between the gym door and the concrete barricade. I saw Robert Bailey kneel down and punch Justin in the head. ... Then Carwin Jones kicked him in the head. ... Theo Shaw tried to kick him so I pushed Theo Shaw down. I also saw Mychal Bell standing over him."
Phrases like "stomped him badly," "stepped on his face," "knocked out cold on the ground," and "slammed his head on the concrete beam" were used by the students in their statements.
Robert Bailey said this past week that he and the other boys weren't around when the fight happened and that the teachers and principal were making students say what they wrote in statements.
Repeated calls to Jena High School Principal Glen Joiner went unreturned.
"It was a rowdy day at school because of what had happened over the weekend," Bailey said of earlier fights at the Fair Barn and Gotta Go convenience store. "The fight (with Justin) happened so quick. But those of us arrested weren't even around. Once the fight broke out, we all ran to see what happened, but I wasn't around when the fight happened."
The SpotOn Dec. 1, Bailey said he was jumped by six to seven white men at the Fair Barn and that only one was arrested and charged with simple battery.
Two days later, he and friends ran into one of the men involved in the fight at the Gotta Go and the man pulled out a shotgun, Bailey said. Bailey said he wrestled the gun away, but was charged with aggravated battery and theft.
That is injustice and racism, Bailey said.
Last week Jones said that when he went to school on Dec. 4, he could tell something was going to happen, it just felt that way, he said.
He was sitting in the boys gym after lunch, he said, and when everyone left to go back to class, he was in front of Justin and didn't know what had happened until he "heard the first lick."
"I wasn't involved," he said. "He got hit once, fell to the ground, and that was the end. Everyone just ran up when someone yelled fight, and it seemed like he was getting kicked."
Both Jones and Bailey said they did not see who hit Justin Barker.
Justin Barker was taken by ambulance to LaSalle General Hospital's emergency room, arriving at 12:25 p.m., according to court documents. A report from the ambulance company stated Barker "denies any pain other than his eye."
Once in the emergency room, Barker told medical personnel that he had been "jumped by 15 guys" and was unsure of what he had been hit with, according to the emergency physician's record in the court file. The record noted an injury to Barker's right eye requiring follow-up medical attention and injuries to his face, ears and hand.
A Computed Tomography scan of Barker's brain showed no abnormalities, but there were reports of him losing consciousness during the attack, according to hospital records.
Barker was discharged about 2½ hours after being admitted to the ER. Later that night, he attended a ring ceremony at the school, where he was presented his class ring by his parents, something Kelli Barker said her son really wanted to be a part of, even though he was still in pain.
"All that keeps being said is that he was just in the hospital for a little bit and not really hurt," Kelli Barker said of Justin. "I thank God he wasn't hurt more than he was. But we have medical bills to show that he really was hurt."
According to court documents, the initial trip to the emergency room cost $5,467.
'Issue of race'
Marcus Jones, Bell's father, said the boys are being treated unfairly because of the color of their skin.
All of those accused in the fight are black, and the victim is white.
"The role my son played in this wasn't attempted murder or conspiracy to commit murder," he said. "The charges the DA put on these kids are ridiculous. They are not guilty of no second-degree attempted murder or conspiracy to commit second-degree murder.
"If someone planned to kill someone, they would have done it in the dark, not in front of hundreds of kids at lunchtime," Marcus Jones said. "I just don't know what to expect ..."
Marcus Jones said his son is having a hard time dealing with life in jail. Each day, more and more letters from college football recruiters are piling up.
"Those letters are really killing him," he said of Bell. "He realizes now that jail isn't a place for nobody, especially if you have a promising future."
Kelli Barker said she and her family are not making this an issue of race. The most important thing for the Barkers, she said, is that their son is doing OK.
"One more kick," she said, "and this could have all turned out differently. He could have been killed.
"It has been tough for Justin, but he's a strong kid. All he wants to know is why? He wasn't involved in the fights over that weekend or the stuff at the school. Why him?"
JFAL
Editorial
A Ruling for Justice - New York Times
Published: June 12, 2007
For years, President Bush has made the grandiose claim that the Congressional authorization to attack Afghanistan after 9/11 was a declaration of a “war on terror” that gave him the power to decide who the combatants are and throw them into military prisons forever.
Yesterday, in a powerful 2-to-1 decision, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit utterly rejected the president’s claims. The majority made clear how threatening the administration’s policies are to the Constitution and the rule of law — and how far the administration has already gone down that treacherous road.
Mr. Bush, the majority said, does not claim these powers for dire emergencies but “maintains that the authority to order the military to seize and detain certain civilians is an inherent power of the presidency, which he and his successors may exercise as they please.”
The prisoner in this case, a citizen of Qatar named Ali al-Marri, was living in the United States legally when he was arrested and charged with being an Al Qaeda terrorist. In 2003, Mr. Bush declared Mr. Marri an enemy combatant, took him from civilian authorities and threw him into a military brig where he remains today without charges being filed.
The court did not say Mr. Marri was innocent, nor that he must be set free. It said that the law does not give Mr. Bush the power to seize a civilian living in the United States and declare him to be an enemy combatant based on whatever definition he chooses to apply. If Mr. Marri is to be kept in prison, it said, he must be tried and convicted in a civilian court.
The ruling said the Constitution and numerous precedents made it clear that foreigners living legally in this country have the same right to due process as any American citizen. It found no merit in the president’s claim that the Congressional approval of the use of military force in Afghanistan gave him authority to change that or that he has “the inherent authority” to do it on his own. Sanctioning that kind of authority “would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and for the country,” the judges said.
The judges said their ruling applied only to people living legally in the United States and not to the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. But the court’s powerful arguments may be relevant to a large number of those men. Steven Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the ruling would not help those prisoners who were captured on a battlefield and properly imprisoned as combatants. But there are hundreds of prisoners who were not taken on a battlefield but instead were picked up by the military or intelligence agents around the world and classified as combatants because of their association with Al Qaeda. The ruling said that was not an adequate definition of combatant.
This ruling is another strong argument for bringing Mr. Bush’s detention camps under the rule of law. Congress can do that by repealing the odious Military Commissions Act of 2006, which endorsed Mr. Bush’s twisted system of indefinite detentions, by closing Guantánamo Bay and by allowing the courts to sort out the prisoners — not according to the whims of one president with an obvious disdain for the balance of powers but by the rules of justice that have guided this nation for more than 200 years.
JFAL
Case gets attention from all over world
By Abbey Brown
abrown@thetowntalk.com
(318) 487-6387
A Google search with the terms "Jena Six" nets nearly 1,000 entries.
The phrase was coined by the parents of the six boys arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder in a Dec. 4 fight at Jena High School that sent fellow student Justin Barker to LaSalle General Hospital's emergency room by ambulance
The story of the case of Robert Bailey Jr., Mychal Bell, Carwin Jones, Bryant Purvis, Theodore Shaw and an unnamed juvenile has garnered attention from media across the globe.
And professional journalists aren't the only ones writing about the case. The majority of the entries in the Internet search engine are linked to bloggers putting in their two cents with entries such as "Looking for justice in Jena, La." and "Racial tension in a small Louisiana town."
Reporters from the United Kingdom-based BBC traveled to Jena for their story. A Chicago Tribune reporter interviewed a number of Jena residents for his story. And the case is scheduled to be featured tonight on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" after her staff spent days in the city.
Articles about the case have run in the "Baltimore Sun," London's "The Guardian" and the "New Zealand Herald." The story has even been featured in Egypt's "Middle East Times" and China's "People's Daily."
Bailey, one of the Jena Six, said he has certainly noticed the national and international attention the case has garnered.
"I just hope the attention helps the case out a lot," he said. "I know that what's being done to us is wrong -- I hope others see that it's wrong."
Theodore McCoy, the father of Shaw, who is still in jail, said he thinks the attention has already helped.
Theo McCoy-->"If it wasn't for all the attention, I think they'd already be convicted," he said. "The attention is bringing to light all of the things that are going on and that nothing has been done about it. There are way more problems than just this."
Purvis' mother, Tina Jones, is hopeful that the light shed on the case will not only help her son but the community as well.
"It is opening up a lot of people's eyes to what's going on in Jena," she said. "Maybe after they shed some light on it, they will make some changes in this town. All of the media has been shaking people up a lot, putting them on the spot."
Other published reports
Here are some excerpts:
Mother Jones magazine: "Adolescents Play Pranks...":
"If this sounds like scenes from a 1950s newsreel, that's because Jena is stuck in time when it comes to the issue of racial equality."
Chicago Tribune: "Racial demons rear heads":
"The trouble in Jena started with the nooses. Then it rumbled along the town's jagged racial fault lines. Finally, it exploded into months of violence between blacks and whites.
"Now the 3,000 residents of this small lumber and oil town deep in the heart of central Louisiana are confronting Old South racial demons many thought had long ago been put to rest."
BBC: "'Stealth racism' stalks deep South"
"Three rope nooses hanging from a tree in the courtyard of a school in a small Southern town in Louisiana have sparked fears of a new kind of 'stealth' racism spreading through America's deep south."
The Guardian: "Racism goes on trial again in America's Deep South":
"Jena, about 220 miles north of New Orleans, is a small town of 3,000 people, 85 per cent of whom are white. Tomorrow it will be the focus for a race trial which could put it on the map alongside the bad old names of the Mississippi Burning Sixties such as Selma or Montgomery, Alabama. ...
"Bail for the impoverished students was set absurdly high, and most have been held in custody. The town's mind seems to be made up."
JFAL
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