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Jena Six

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For other uses, see Jena (disambiguation).

Jena Six is the name given to a group of six black teenagers who were charged with the beating of Justin Barker, a white teenager at Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana, United States, on December 4, 2006. The Jena Six case sparked protests by those viewing the arrests and subsequent charges, such as attempted murder, as excessive and racially discriminatory. The protesters believed that white Jena youths involved in other incidents were treated leniently. On September 20, 2007, between 10,000 and 20,000 protesters marched on Jena in what was described as the "largest civil rights demonstration in years."[1][2] Related protests were held in other U.S. cities on the same day.[3]

Events in Jena: August 2006–December 2007

Noose hangings at Jena High School

File:Jena High School.jpg
Jena High School

At Jena High School, about 10% of students are black and more than 80% are white. Early reporting indicated that students of different races seldom sat together, although this has been disputed.[4] According to early reports, black students typically sat on bleachers near the auditorium, while white students sat under a large tree, referred to as the "white tree" or "prep tree," in the center of the school courtyard.[5] According to some of the school's teachers and administrators, the tree in question was not a "white tree," and students of all races had sat under it at one time or another.[4]

A school assembly was held on August 31, 2006. According to media reports, a black male freshman asked the principal whether he could sit under the tree.[6] According to Donald Washington, United States Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana,[7] the principal stated that the question was posed in a "jocular fashion."[8] The principal told the students they could "sit wherever they wanted."[6] According to some reports, the freshman and his friends then sat under the tree.[9]

The following morning, nooses were discovered hanging from the tree. Reports differ as to whether there were three[5] or two.[4] According to Craig Franklin, assistant editor of The Jena Times, the nooses were actually a prank by three students aimed at white members of the school rodeo team in school proceedings, and that the school's investigating committee had concluded that "the three young teens had no knowledge that nooses symbolize the terrible legacy of the lynchings of countless blacks in American history."[10] As of December 5, 2007, those who hung the nooses have never publicly stated the reasons behind their actions. A black teacher described seeing both white and black students "playing with [the nooses], pulling on them, jump-swinging from them, and putting their heads through them" that same day.[4] The Jena Times reported that the nooses were removed by 7:55 a.m. after school officials were informed.[11]

Repercussions

The school disciplinary process which followed is unclear. It has been reported that Jena's principal learned that three white students were responsible and recommended expulsion, that the board of education overruled his recommendation, and that school superintendent Roy Breithaupt agreed with the overruling. It was initially reported that the punishment was reduced to three days of in-school suspension.[5][12] However, the three students were isolated at an alternative school "for about a month",[4] spent two weeks on in-school suspension, served Saturday detentions, had to attend Discipline Court, were referred to Families in Need of Services, and had to have an evaluation before they were able to return to school as part of the district's Crisis Management Policy Procedures.[13]

The school superintendent was quoted as saying, "Adolescents play pranks. I don't think it was a threat against anybody."[14] According to Professor Anita L. Allen of the University of Pennsylvania Law School,[15] "the 'full horror and terror' of the noose's significance may remain unclear to a 16-year-old who would see it as merely an 'intimidating or cheeky' act."[16] Black residents of Jena have stated that this decision stoked racial tensions leading to subsequent events.[12]

On July 31, 2007, the school had the tree cut down.[12] "School's about to start," Billy Fowler, a school board member said. "We don't want the blacks coming back up there looking at the tree knowing what happened, or the whites. We just want to start fresh." According to Fowler, the tree would have had to have been cut down to make way for the rebuilding of the school after an act of arson on November 30, 2006. Others felt that cutting down the tree was not an effective way to address any problems of racism in Jena. "Cutting down that beautiful tree won't solve the problem at hand," said Caseptla Bailey, mother of Robert Bailey Jr., one of the six black teens. "It still happened."

U.S. Attorney Donald Washington stated that the FBI investigators and federal examiners of the crime found that the hanging of the nooses "had all the markings of a hate crime." However, it could not be prosecuted as such because it failed to meet federal standards requiring the teens to be certified as adults,[17] which Washington stated in hearings before the House Judiciary Committee on October 16, 2007.[18] District Attorney Walters stated that Washington had found no federal statute under which the teens could be prosecuted, just as he had found no applicable state statute."[19] Walters stated of those who hung the nooses: "The people that did it should be ashamed of what they unleashed on this town."[20] In late July 2007, Washington noted that of the more than 40 statements taken regarding the assault, none mentioned the noose incident.[8] La Salle Parish District Attorney J. Reed Walters indicated there was no linkage between the noose incident and the beating. "When this case was brought to me and during our investigation and during the trial, there was no such linkage ever suggested. This compact story line has only been suggested after the fact."[17]

District attorney addresses the school assembly

Police were called to the school several times in the days after the noose incident. The principal took action by calling an assembly on September 6, 2006. The Jena Police Department asked La Salle Parish District Attorney J. Reed Walters to attend and speak at the assembly. Allegedly, Walters was unhappy with the request because he was busy preparing for a case and, upon arrival, felt that the students were not paying proper attention to him. Walters stated that he warned the students "I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. With the stroke of a pen I can make life miserable on you or ruin your life. So I want you to call me before you do something stupid."[21] Though black students state Walters was looking at them when he made the comments, Walters and school board member Billy Fowler, also present, deny it.[5] Walters said that he was irritated at "two or three girls, white girls, [who] were chit-chatting on their cellphones or playing with their cellphones."[22]

Jena High School arson

On November 30, 2006, the main building of the high school was set on fire. The fire would be widely cited as a racially-charged event leading up to the assault on Barker. The building was gutted and had to be later demolished.[5] On October 20, 2007, LaSalle Parish voters narrowly turned down a sales tax increase intended to fund several school projects, including the reconstruction of the main building of Jena High School.[23] Another sales tax increase, for similar purposes, is on the March 8, 2008 ballot. Bleithaupt has indicated that the building will be replaced with a one-story structure with more classrooms, but that it will not happen immediately.[24] On December 28, 2007, LaSalle Parish Sheriff-elect Scott Franklin announced that an investigation had shown that the fire was set in an effort to destroy grade records in the building and to close the school for a time, by students who were not doing well in school and others. Six suspects (all male, three juveniles and three adults) had been arrested, and two more adult males were being sought. The suspects are "racially diverse", and mug shots of the three arrested adults show this to be so. Franklin indicated that the fire was not racially motivated, and had no connection to the Jena Six.[24]

Fair Barn party fight

 
The "Gotta Go" convenience store outside Jena, Louisiana.

On Friday, December 1, 2006, there was a private party, attended mostly by whites but with some blacks, at the Jena Fair Barn.[11] Six black youths, including 16-year-old Robert Bailey, Jr., attempted to enter the party at about 11 p.m. According to U.S. Attorney Washington, they were told by a woman that no one was allowed inside without an invitation. The six youths persisted, stating that some friends were already in attendance at the party. A white male, who was not a student, then jumped in front of the woman and a fight ensued. After the fight broke up, the woman told both the white male and six black students to leave the party. Once outside, the black students were involved in another fight with a group of white males, who were not students.[8] Police were called to investigate. Justin Sloan, a white male, was charged with simple battery for his role in the fight and was put on probation. Bailey later stated that one of the white males broke a beer bottle over his head,[12] but there are no records of Bailey receiving medical treatment.[8]

Convenience store incident

On Saturday, December 2 2006, another incident occurred at the "Gotta Go" convenience store, outside Jena in unincorporated LaSalle Parish, between Matt Windham and a group consisting of Robert Bailey, Ryan Simmons, and Theodore Shaw.[11] Local police reported that the accounts contradicted each other. Windham alleged that Bailey and his friends chased him, that he ran to get his gun, and that the students wrestled it away from him. According to the black students, as they left the convenience store, they were confronted by Windham, with a shotgun. They stated they wrestled the gun away from him and fled the scene. After taking statements from two uninvolved eyewitnesses, the police formed a report based on their testimony and charged Bailey, Simmons, and Shaw with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery, and conspiracy to commit second-degree robbery.[11]

Attack on Barker

On December 4, 2006 17-year-old Justin Barker, a white Jena High School student, was assaulted at school by a group of black students. According to court documents based on eyewitness testimony and the school and police investigations, someone hit Barker from behind, knocking him out, and then others began to kick and stomp him.[25]

Superintendent Breithaupt stated that the attack was no ordinary schoolyard fight. "It was a premeditated ambush and attack by six students against one," Breithaupt said. "The victim attacked was beaten and kicked into a state of bloody unconsciousness."[26] According to relatives of the accused, the six defendants have all been expelled from school.[27]

Jesse Rae Beard, the youngest of the six, later returned to school and participated in athletics. Bryant Purvis moved to attend a private school in the Dallas, Texas area.[28]

Barker's injuries

A doctor treated Barker at the local hospital emergency room. He was released after three hours of treatment and observation for a concussion and an eye that had swollen shut.[12] The emergency physician's record shows that he also had injuries to his face, ears and hand.[29] He attended his school's Ring ceremony that evening. He later testified, "I waited 11 years to go to it. I wasn't going to let that get in my way," though he ended up leaving early due to pain.[30] During the trial, Barker also testified that his face was badly swollen after the attack and that he suffered a loss of vision in one eye for three weeks. He also stated that he suffered recurring headaches and forgetfulness[31] since the attack. A nurse testified that Barker had a previous history of migraines.[31]

The police arrested the six students, eventually dubbed the "Jena Six," accused of the attack.[32] Five of them (Robert Bailey, Jr., then 17; Mychal Bell, then 16; Carwin Jones, then 18; Bryant Purvis, then 17; and Theo Shaw, then 17) were charged with attempted second-degree murder.[11] The sixth student, Jesse Rae Beard, was charged as a juvenile because he was 14 at the time.[33] Mychal Bell, aged sixteen at the time of the incident, was charged as an adult.[34] The district attorney has stated that he did so due to Bell's criminal record and because he believed Bell initiated the attack.[35]

Mychal Bell proceedings

On June 26, 2007, the first day of trial (District Judge J.P. Mauffray, Jr., presiding) for defendant Mychal Bell, Walters reduced the charges for Bell to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery.[36] A charge of aggravated battery requires the use of a "dangerous weapon."[37][38] Walters therefore argued that the tennis shoes that Bell was wearing and used to kick Barker with were dangerous weapons, an argument with which the jury ultimately agreed.[39] A number of witnesses testified that they saw Bell strike Barker, while other witnesses were unsure Bell was involved.[39] Public defender Blane Williams, himself a black man, had urged Bell to accept a plea bargain, but did not challenge the composition of the jury pool, and rested the defense case without calling any witnesses or offering any evidence.[39] All six members of Bell's jury were white. The 150-person jury call included black citizens, who make up 10 percent of the parish's population,[4] but none of the 50 potential jurors who showed up were black.[33][4]

Coach Benjy Lewis, the only adult witness to the incident, had stated that another student, Malcolm Shaw, was the initial attacker,[40] and was only able to positively identify one other student, not Bell.[25] Lewis was not called to testify in Bell's trial.[40] Shaw would later be among those sued by Justin Barker and his parents in the civil lawsuit filed November 29, 2007.

The jury found Bell guilty, and he faced the possibility of up to 22 years in prison. The judge scheduled sentencing for September 20, 2007. Following the trial, Bell's new defense attorneys, Louis Scott and Carol Powell-Lexing, requested a new trial on the grounds that Bell should not have been tried as an adult and that the trial should have been held in another parish.[41] A request to lower Mychal Bell's $90,000> bond was denied on August 24, 2007, due to his juvenile record. Bell had been put on probation for a battery that occurred December 25, 2005, and he was subsequently convicted of another battery charge and two charges of criminal damage to property while still on probation.[42] Sources told ESPN that one of the battery charges was for punching a 17-year-old girl in the face,[43] although details of the conviction might be protected under the Louisiana Children's Code.[44] Perhaps due to the protection given juvenile convictions, the media had initially reported that Bell had no prior criminal record.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). Judge Mauffray vacated the conspiracy conviction on the grounds that Bell should have been tried as a juvenile, but let the battery conviction stand.[45] However, on September 14, 2007, Louisiana's Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Bell's battery conviction, also ruling that the remaining charge was not among those for which a juvenile may be tried as an adult.[34]

Following the appellate ruling,[46] a hearing was held on September 21, 2007, to determine whether to set bond for Bell.[47] Judge Mauffray denied the request for Bell to be eligible for bail while his appeal was pending.[48] A motion by Bell's attorneys to have Judge Mauffray recused was also denied, by another judge.[49] On September 26, 2007, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco announced that the prosecution would not appeal the appellate ruling, but would try Bell as a juvenile.[50] Walters confirmed this on the 27th,[26] and Bell was then released on $45,000 bond[35] with the bail paid by Dr. Stephen Ayers of Lake Charles, Louisiana.[51] Bell was subject to electronic monitoring and was under the supervision of a probation officer.

On October 11, 2007, Mauffray found that Bell had violated the terms of his probation for previous convictions. The judge then sentenced Bell to 18 months in a juvenile facility on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, and Bell was taken into custody. According to Walters, the matter was unrelated to the assault on Barker, and it was not even mentioned during the proceedings.[52] The defense had filed a motion to dismiss the charges on the ground that retrying Bell would amount to double jeopardy. On November 8, 2007, Mauffray denied the motion.[53]

Bell's retrial in the Barker assault was scheduled for December 6, 2007. However, on December 3, 2007, Bell pled guilty to a reduced charge of battery, and was sentenced to 18 months in a juvenile facility, with credit for time served. He agreed to testify against any of the others who go to trial. All appeals were dropped as part of the plea agreement.[54]

The other five

On September 4, 2007, charges against Carwin Jones and Theo Shaw were reduced to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy,[55] as were those of Robert Bailey, Jr., on September 10.[56] Despite the overturning of Mychal Bell's conviction, the charges against the other four teenagers remained unaffected because they were over seventeen at the time of the incident, thus making them adults under Louisiana law.[34] Bryant Purvis was arraigned on reduced charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery on November 7, 2007, pleading not guilty. Motions hearings for two other defendants originally scheduled for the same day have been continued. Purvis's trial is set for March 24, with motions hearings set for December 4 and January 8.[28]

Public response

The case has elicited response from those alleging that the charges against the Jena Six were disproportionate and racially motivated. Supporters of the Jena Six circulated online petitions, raised money for legal defense, and held a demonstration in Jena on September 20, 2007.[57]

Rallies

 
Talk show host Michael Baisden and the Rev. Al Sharpton at the front of the September 20 2007 march on Jena, Louisiana.
 
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Rallies in support of the Jena Six and all blacks in the United States who have been unfairly treated by the justice system were held in Jena and elsewhere in the United States on September 20 2007,[58] the date when Bell was scheduled for sentencing.[59] Because of the rallies' large expected size (estimates were up to 40,000 to 60,000)[60] Jena High and schools on the south side of La Salle Parish were closed.[61] An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 demonstrators eventually attended the rally that day, severely overtaxing the facilities of the small town of 3,000 residents. Because of the congestion on the roads leading to Jena, many protesters left their vehicles and walked into town on foot.[46] Among those in attendance were civil rights activists Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Martin Luther King III,[62] rappers Mos Def[63] and Salt-n-Pepa, and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.[64] Rapper-actor Ice Cube, who also attended,[65] funded buses to bring protesters from California.[66] Darryl Hunt, an African-American who was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a young white newspaper reporter in 1984, was scheduled to be a keynote speaker.[67] Several self-described white supremacists also attended the rally. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke has publicly given support for Jena's white residents.[68] The demonstrators were addressed by Darryl Matthews, General President of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, who stated "It is sobering to know that in 2007 Martin Luther King’s dream of equal treatment, respect, fairness and opportunity is still not realized."[69]

Another rally, which involved several hundred protesters, was held outside the Justice Department building in Washington, D.C. on November 16, 2007.[70]

Petitions

 
A worker gathers petition signatures at a Los Angeles rally, October 2007.

Multiple online petitions have circulated calling for various actions in response to the Jena Six case. A petition created by Thomas McNamara, which encouraged the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the case, gathered more than 441,514 signatures as of October 18 2007.[citation needed] Another petition created by online advocacy group ColorOfChange called for District Attorney Walters to drop all charges and for Governor Kathleen Blanco to investigate his conduct.[71] The ColorOfChange petition had received 312,880 signatures as of October 18, 2007. A third petition, sponsored by the NAACP and asking Louisiana state officials to investigate the case, has obtained more than 175,000 signatures as of the same date.[72]

A legal defense fund was established to pay attorney and other fees for the Jena Six. ColorOfChange raised more than $212,000, largely through online donations.[73][74] While the NAACP provided a link to the fund through its website,[75] initially, the donation link on the NAACP Jena Six support page steered potential donors to the generic NAACP donation page, with no way to designate funds for the Jena Six. Black bloggers objected, and several days later, the link was altered to reach the defense fund.[76]

Threats and harassment

On September 22, 2007, the FBI opened an investigation of a white supremacist website that listed the addresses of five of the Jena Six and the telephone numbers of some of their families "in case anyone wants to deliver justice." According to an FBI spokeswoman, the website "essentially called for their lynching."[77] Sharpton has stated that some of the families have continuously received threatening and harassing phone calls.[77]

Media coverage

Initial coverage

The Jena 6 were initially largely ignored by the United States national media, though covered locally and within Louisiana.[76][78] The first piece on the case ran on May 9 in Left Turn, a small alternative news magazine.[79] The story prompted a report on the BBC program This World on May 24. On July 3, Bill Quigley wrote a column for the website Truthout.org, which generated more attention from the alternative press.[80]

The first mainstream US media outlet to cover the matter was the Chicago Tribune, whose Southwest Bureau Chief, Howard Witt, wrote a piece covering the story on May 20.[14] Witt had received a summary called "Responding to the Crisis in Jena, Louisiana," from Alan Bean, a Texas minister and the creator of Friends of Justice, an advocacy group.[81] It is still available on the Friends of Justice web site.[82] That document was also provided to other reporters and bloggers. Bean indicated that there were three nooses (a tree with three nooses dangling still decorates the Friends of Justice web site), and that "a fight" occurred between a white student and several black students which concluded with the white student being knocked to the floor. He demanded that outside authorities, not those in LaSalle Parish, deal with the case, and that no incarceration occur as a result thereof.

Internationally, Britain's The Observer also featured an article on the trial on May 20.[83]

Widespread coverage

The case began to receive extensive media coverage in September 2007, both from news reporters and columnists. Michael J. Copps, a Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission noted in a letter to the Washington Post the role of black radio talk show hosts in publicizing the Jena Six case, and went on to criticize what he sees as a low rate of minority ownership of commercial broadcast television and radio stations. Commissioner Copps wrote that many people of color felt that their concerns were being overlooked by "Big Media."[84]

Many of the news reports from Jena have evoked the Civil Rights Movement,[85] made references to lynching,[85] or evoked Jim Crow.[85] Some sources have pointed out inaccurate reporting by the media. The Associated Press published an article noting the various reporting errors that have been made, including whether the tree was a "white tree", the number of nooses, and the discipline meted out on the nooses-hanging students.[4] Based on this, MTV posted a retraction for incorrect information that it had reported on the case from other news sources.[86]

Columnists and editorials

Many major editorial pages and columnists have been sympathetic to the supporters of the Jena Six, and have used the case to discuss broader trends of racism in the U.S. criminal justice system and to call for a renewed civil rights movement. Most editorials were published around the time of the Jena rally.

  • The New York Post, in a September 23, 2007 editorial, states, "it’s impossible to examine the case of the so-called Jena Six without concluding that these black teens have been the victims of a miscarriage of justice, with a clearly racial double standard at work."[87]
  • The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial page wrote on the same day that "The discrepancy in the original charges sent a chilling message to others in this nation whose race, ethnicity, religion or other distinctions have made them targets of discrimination."[88]
  • Byron Williams, writing on the Huffington Post, was one of several to cite the Urban League's 2005 State of Black America report, which states that the average black male convicted of aggravated assault serves 48 months in prison, one third longer than a comparable white man. That report also stated that a black male who is arrested is three times more likely to go to prison than a white male convicted of the same crime.[89][85][90][91][92][89]
  • Citing the same statistics, syndicated columnist Clarence Page wrote that "The best legacy for the Jena 6 March would be a new movement, dedicated this time to the reduction and elimination of unequal justice wherever it appears. I don't care who leads it, but it shouldn't be for blacks only."[92]
  • Writing in the New York Times, Professor Orlando Patterson of Harvard University used the case to highlight the use of the prison system as a means of "controlling young black men," which is one factor in a broader "crisis in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life."[93]

Columnists critical of the response to the case have argued that inaccuracies in the media coverage unfairly tarnish the town and have led to a national overreaction.

  • Dallas Morning News columnist Heather MacDonald, while condemning the noose hangings as a "despicable provocation", expressed her view that "the media, the (race) advocates and pandering politicians have erupted in an outpouring of seeming joy at the alleged proof that America remains a racist country."[94]
  • In a column in the Kansas City Star, Jason Whitlock drew attention to what he called factual inaccuracies in reporting of the story. He focused on the piece circulated by Bean to news outlets, "Bean's story is framed—by his own admission—as an indictment of the criminal justice system and the people in power in Jena and, therefore, the story is unfairly biased."[21]
  • Craig Franklin, assistant editor of The Jena Times, who states that he is the only writer to have covered this story from the inception, wrote in The Christian Science Monitor stating his version of a number of events and writing of what he deems to be incorrect reporting, "I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts…The truth about Jena will eventually be known."[22]

Media petition

On October 22, 2007, a petition for intervention was filed in LaSalle Parish District Court in the Bell case by The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and about two dozen other news organizations. The petition is a First Amendment challenge to open previously sealed court records and transcripts, to lift the gag order imposed by Mauffray, and to open the proceedings in the Bell case. The petition argues that juvenile proceedings involving violent crime or subsequent felony-grade adjudication are required by Louisiana law to be open to the public.[95] The lawsuit alleges that the sealing of the records and restrictions imposed upon counsel and the media "substantially limit the (media's) ability to report to the public the facts about this significant case and unconstitutionally stifle the flow of information to the public."[96][97] As Mauffray was named as a defendant in the case, he recused himself from hearing the media petition (but not any of the other cases), and the matter was heard by Rapides Parish District Judge Thomas Yeager.[98] On November 21, 2007, Judge Yeager ordered that Bell's upcoming criminal trial, as well as any pretrial hearings, must be open to the press and the public. Yeager also ruled that the court record and transcripts of any closed proceedings held so far be made available to the news media, and that attorneys for Bell be released from the trial judge's gag order directing them not to speak about the case. Mauffray immediately indicated that he would appeal.[99] And while Mauffray appeals the Yeager's ruling, he has instructed the clerk's office to keep the files closed pending the outcome of the appeal.

Developments since September 20 rally

Songs about Jena

Multiple songs have been produced in response to the Jena Six case. Bomani Armah, who earlier in the year wrote the controversial Internet single "Read a Book", released a song called "Jena 6".[100] John Mellencamp released a video for a song called "Jena," which got considerably more play in the media, that implied the Jena Six case was unfairly tried due to the racist attitudes of the town.[101] This led to the mayor of Jena, Murphy R. McMillan, issuing a statement rebutting the accusations expressed and implied in the video.[102] In an episode of the Salt-N-Pepa Show on VH1, after Salt and Pepa are traveling home from the Jena Six protest rally, the two devise a rendition of their single "Push It" in which the lyrics are changed to relate to the Jena Six case. Rapper Jay-Z mentions the Jena Six at the end of the song "Say Hello" from his latest album, American Gangster. Baltimore, Maryland-based rapper Bossman recorded a song called "Far Too Long", which states that racism is back in full effect and that the late great Martin Luther King Jr. is turning in his grave over this.

Action by Members of Congress

On September 25, 2007, Representative John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced that he would hold congressional hearings on what he described as "the miscarriages of justice that have occurred in Jena, Louisiana," with the goal of pressuring the U.S. Department of Justice into taking action.[103] On September 27, 2007, the Congressional Black Caucus called upon the Department of Justice to investigate possible civil rights violations in the Jena Six case, saying "This shocking case has focused national and international attention on what appears to be an unbelievable example of the separate and unequal justice that was once commonplace in the Deep South."[104]

The hearing took place on October 16, 2007, with Washington and Sharpton, among others, testifying. Walters was invited to testify but declined. Most Republican members of the committee declined to attend. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) exclaimed to Washington and other Justice Department officials, "Shame on you…As a parent, I'm on the verge of tears,"[105] and demanded, "I want to know what you're going to do to get Mychal Bell out of jail!" Washington responded that the federal government had a limited role to play in the matter.[18]

On December 19, 2007, Representative Lee and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus called upon outgoing Louisiana Governor Blanco to pardon the Jena Six, stating that "we believe Mychal Bell and the Jena 6 have paid a sufficient debt to society for any transgressions they may have committed." Blanco's office responded that she cannot grant pardons without a recommendation from the state Pardon Board, and no meeting of that body was scheduled during her remaining term of office. Walters commented that Lee's "passion for racial equality is admirable, but her grasp of the facts is not." He noted that the attack on Barker was not just a "schoolyard" fight "but rather an unprovoked, unforeseen assault on a young man who had nothing to do with the hanging of the nooses."[106] Governor Blanco's term of office ended without any pardons being granted.

BET Hip Hop Awards appearance

Jones and Purvis attended the BET Hip Hop Awards in Atlanta on October 13, 2007 and presented the award for Video of the Year.[107] When the two defendants came out on stage, they were greeted by a standing ovation. Emcee Katt Williams joked, "They don't look so tough, do they?" The two members delivered speeches thanking family, friends, the "Hip-Hop Nation," and those who came to Jena. Jones' parents, and the fathers of Bell and Shaw were in the audience. The two defendants were photographed on the red carpet, "modeling like rap stars."[108]

According to Jones's mother, BET invited the families to come to the awards show for "a relaxing weekend" and a spokesman for the LaSalle Parish District Attorney said the defendants sought and received the court's permission before going to the event. The (Alexandria, Louisiana) Town Talk reports that "criticism has been extensive" concerning the appearance.[109]

Money controversy

In the months following the Jena Six rally, controversy arose about accounting and dispersal of the legal defense funds. Questions about the money were first sparked by photos posted on Robert Bailey's former MySpace account, which show him with quantities of hundred dollar bills stuffed in his mouth, an episode reported by the Town Talk.[110]

The controversy grew significantly when radio host Michael Baisden accused the advocacy group ColorOfChange of being "shady" with their use of the funds. Some saw this move as a self-interested ploy by Baisden to promote his own fundraising.[111] ColorOfChange responded to the accusations by posting posted links to canceled checks on their web site.[112] In his November 10 report, Chicago Tribune Witt noted that they were the only national civil rights group to be fully transparent with their use of the funds.[113] Witt also raised broader questions about the funds, which totaled more than half a million dollars, reporting that attorneys for Bell claimed that they have yet to receive any money from him, and that the families had refused to publicly account for the donations.[113]

Barker lawsuit

On November 29, 2007[114] Justin Barker and his parents David and Kelli Barker filed a civil lawsuit against the parents of those accused of beating him, the adult teens of the Jena Six (at the time of the attack), an additional student named Malcolm Shaw (Theo's brother, who had been identified by Coach Lewis as the initial aggressor) and the LaSalle Parish School Board.[115] The lawsuit states "Petitioners show that Justin was singled out by Mychal, Bryant, Robert, Carwin, Theodore, Malcolm and Jesse, and that the malicious and willful attack of Justin was of such extreme nature, so as to require emergency medical care and treatment for the harm inflicted by the attack, and resulting in extensive and permanently disabling injuries,".[115]. Barker's medical bills from his emergency room visit totaled more than $5,000.[115] The lawsuit alleges that the LaSalle Parish School Board, through its employees, was not adequately supervising students and maintaining discipline and did not assign enough teachers for supervision.[115] The Barkers also claim the school board did not implement a plan to "discourage the dangerous activity of threatening and attacking other students while in possession of actual knowledge of said threats and prior attacks while the students are on school grounds".[115]

Bryant Purvis arrested for assault

Bryant Purvis, aged 19, was arrested on February 7, 2008 for the assault of Christopher Jones, a student at Hebron High School in Carrollton, Texas, near where Purvis's family had moved. Purvis was arrested and charged on the misdemeanor following an incident at 8:30 a.m. in which he allegedly choked Jones and slammed his head into a table.[116][117]

References

  1. ^ Gallacher, Andy (2007-09-21). "Huge rally in small-town Louisiana". BBC News. Jena, Louisiana: BBC. Retrieved 2008-02-02.
  2. ^ Newman, Maria (2007-09-24). "Jena, La". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2008-02-02.
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