http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070904jena,1,4272535.story
chicagotribune.com
Part of ‘Jena 6’ conviction dropped; charges reduced
By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
September 5, 2007
HOUSTON — Ruling in a racially charged case that has drawn scrutiny from national civil rights leaders, a judge in the small central Louisiana town of Jena on Tuesday partially vacated the conviction of a black teenager accused in the beating of a white student while the district attorney reduced attempted murder charges against two other black co-defendants.
Judge J.P. Mauffray threw out a conspiracy conviction against Mychal Bell, granting a defense motion that Bell’s June trial was improperly held in adult court and should instead have been conducted as a juvenile proceeding.
But Mauffray let stand Bell’s conviction on aggravated second-degree battery, for which the 17-year-old faces up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced Sept. 20. On that date, thousands of demonstrators from across the nation are planning to descend on the town of 3,000 to protest the prosecution of Bell and five other black youths who have come to be called the “Jena 6.”
In the months since the Tribune first reported the Jena story in May, civil rights groups, including the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Congressional Black Caucus, have all criticized what they assert is the uneven application of justice in the mostly white town.
The six black youths were all initially charged with attempted second-degree murder after an incident in December at the local high school in which a white student was attacked and knocked unconscious after an alleged taunt by him.
That altercation capped months of violent racial unrest between blacks and whites throughout the town that was triggered in September 2006, when three white students hung nooses from a shade tree in the high school courtyard in a warning aimed at discouraging blacks from sitting there.
The white youths received brief suspensions after the Jena school superintendent termed the incident an “adolescent prank,” which in turn angered black students and parents who saw the nooses as a hate crime because of the history of lynchings in the Old South.
In the racially tense months that followed the noose incident, other white youths implicated in attacks on blacks were charged with misdemeanors or not at all, while the black youths in the school beating incident were charged with felonies.
“The court of public opinion is starting to coalesce rapidly around the defense of these kids,” said Alan Bean, director of Friends of Justice, a Texas-based civil rights group that has closely followed the Jena case. “Not that anybody justifies what these allegedly kids did, but they see that what’s happening to them isn’t fair and the district attorney and the school superintendent created the situation that led to this.”
Bell, a state-ranked high school football star who was 16 at the time of the attack, is the only one of the six defendants who has so far gone to trial. On the eve of his trial, District Atty. Reed Walters abruptly reduced the attempted-murder charge to aggravated second-degree battery; on Tuesday, Walters similarly reduced the charges against defendants Carwin Jones and Theo Shaw, whose trials are set for January.
Bell’s new defense attorneys said they plan further appeals before the Sept. 20 sentencing hearing in a bid to get his remaining conviction vacated.
“Basically, we are knocking things out one piece at a time,” said Louis Scott, the lead defense attorney. “We are going to try to knock the rest of it out soon.”
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Friends of Justice 
Whwere’s Oprah when you need her?
when i first heard about this i was so sad then angry first because this is STILL able to go on second because the has not been national media attention. i am a avid watcher of court tv, msnbc, fox news, ect. , and i feel very let down by these networks that I’ve depended on to keep me up on what’s going on in the world are either not on their jobs or they don’t believe this is important(not news). that is kinda scary
Unfortunately, those young men in Jena are facing a racist institution called the court system, that has remained unchanged in its’ opinion of the black race as three-fifths persons. We as black Americans need to remember the lessons history has taught us and stop trying to affect change by assimiliating, but by fighting for our rights in the judicial system, in the polls, and by maintaining our dignity at all times. Sisters, stop wearing long yellow hair-Brothers, stop thinking you must have a caucasian femaleon your arms to define your manhood. Let our young people know it is not only ok to be smart, it is expected because we are a brilliant people when we choose to be. Lastly, we need to let Hillary Clinton know she does not automatically get our vote because she was married to Bill. He wasn’t the first black president, but Obama should be the first half-black president. We can make a stand now.
It’s sad to know that this is still going on,but what troubles me is that how “people” still feel like they can AND really, in some cases, get away with it! I am very mad and angry that this happen to these kids and i want them to know I AM WITH THEM ALL THE WAY just keep your head up and JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL, thanks,tiff.(A MAD BLACK WOMAN).
At last, at last ! Justice WILL reign, even in a racist community like Jena.
Let’s show these boys that Americans will gather round to defend them, they are NOT alone and the District Attorney who threatened that he’d end their lives with a stroke of his pen, will not win out !!!
CNN is now broadcasting live from Jena, the first major mainstream media to carry the story.
There are at least 4 petitions to sign on the Internet :
on the Color of Change site;
on the NAACP site;
a third addressed to the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice.
The ball is beginning to roll !
I want to thank the Chicago Tribune for writing this story of hate crime, with racist
injustice added to the crime by the Prosecutor and the Judge.
They are prime examples that BIGOTRY and RACISM still exist in America today.
Leon Corbin
I was witness to what the Rodney King trial did to the city of L.A. and surrounding cities. This is no joke people, you convict these students in an adult court when they are juveniles, and its based on race wars, you will get a riot and your town will end up spending millions of dollars to get it back to the way it was, taking up years in the process.
Rethink your strategies folks or else its going to get ugly there like it did in L.A. almost 15 years ago.
Well my name is Latosha White and i hope everything works out for the best. To the familey keep your head up and to let yall know that my familey is praying for all of them.
I wish that one day that i can get to know yall and see how it feel to be in yall shoes because some people take this for a game but i dont and i would love to more big ups to the family.