Thus far, the Black America Web is the only media outlet to run this story. While that reflects well on the hardworking Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, it doesn’t suggest a high degree of interest in these hearings within the mainstream media.
I note that US Attorney Don Washington’s will be testifying. Washington says the assault on Justin Barker has no pre-history or context–it just came out of the blue; some black thugs looking for a white victim–any white victim.
This is the theory that reigned unchallenged before I began my research in January of this year. Asked to explain his statement, Washington noted that none of the witnesses who testified at trial mentioned the nooses. He failed to point out that Judge JP Mauffray had ruled the subject out of bounds.
In addition, the egregious Blaine Williams (who ought to be disciplined for his inept handling of Mychal Bell’s trial in adult court) made no attempt to tie the assault on Barker to the nooses, or to any other event. Like Mr. Washington, Williams was serving as a shill for the status quo.
Don Washington was appointed as a US Attorney by George W. Bush because he is (a) black and (b) conservative. Blaine Williams was appointed to serve as Mychal Bell’s court appointed attorney because (a) he is black and, (b) he could be counted on to take a fall.
That’s where the comparison ends. Washington is suave, sane and strategic; Williams is bizarre, bungling, and befuddled (that is, the perfect man for the job he was given). I have always had the impression that Washington, for all his conservatism, knows far more than he is willing to say.
I can’t think of Don Washington without remembering a federal trial in Lafayette in 2006 in which a Church Point housewife and three of her sons were charged with running a crack ring out of their home. The judge was white. The four attorneys were white. All the court officials were white. The jury was white. Only the defendants and several dozen federal inmates paid to perjure themselves with promises of time cuts, were black.
Don Washington attended the trial with his pre-adolescent son. I kept wondering what was going on in the young boy’s head as he watched black drug dealers testifying against a black family with all these white people looking on. The young man had no way of knowing that the charges against Ann Colomb and her sons were ridiculous; but the racial composition of the courtroom (though par for the course in America) must have left the child with an uneasy feeling.
When a growing stream of evidence suggested that the convicted drug dealers in this case were participants in an elaborate creative writing assignment, federal judge Tucker Melancon vacated the conviction and freed the defendants. At the conclusion of an FBI investigation, Don Washington was forced to announce that the Department of Justice was dropping all charges against Ann Colomb, Danny Davis, Sammy Davis and Edward Colomb.
Mr. Washington assured reporters that the family was guilty nonetheless.
If, like me, Mr. Washington had interviewed every member of the Colomb’s extended family, their neighbors, their pastors and priests, and had conducted extensive research into the racial history of Church Point, La., he would have realized that his case against the Colomb family was ludicrous. With his inmate snitches discredited, there was insufficient evidence to continue with the prosecution; but that didn’t stop the US Attorney from passing down his own guilty verdict.
You now understand why I wasn’t encouraged by the news that a black US Attorney would be “investigating” the Jena situation. The investigation, from the evidence at hand, appears to have consisted of a brief chat with the school superintendent, the DA, and a cursory examination of an FBI report from September into the noose incident. I assume that Washington also glanced through the eye witness statements in Mychal Bell’s file at the courthouse and a few other court documents.
But the US Attorney didn’t talk to the black community. He never asked them any questions. Instead, he attended a townhall meeting in which he assured everyone that the Jena 6 prosecution passed the smell test. The noose incident could have been handled better, he admitted, and he wasn’t impressed with the Lonesome Dove noose theory; but no hate crime had been committed. Then he severed the events of December 4th from their natural context.
I hope some members of the House Judiciary Committee have a few good questions for Mr. Washington. I certainly do.
Jena Six Case to Be Subject of Hearing Before House Judiciary Committee Tuesday Morning
The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on the Jena Six case Tuesday morning, less than a week after a youth at the center of the controversy was locked up again.
Mychal Bell, the only one of the six youths who had been convicted in connection with a Dec. 4 fight with a white classmate, was ordered to a juvenile facility on Thursday. The most recent sentence, handed down by LaSalle Parish Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr., was not directly related to the December 2006 incident. The judge said Bell had violated terms of his probation from earlier convictions on juvenile charges of simple battery and criminal destruction. He must now spend 18 months in a juvenile detention facility.
An appeals court ruled in September that the lower court erred by handling Bell’s charges for the 2006 incident in adult court and his conviction was overturned. He still is awaiting trial on juvenile charges related to the fight with Justin Barker at Jena High School.
Bell’s parents and civil rights leaders were outraged by the latest sentence. Attempts by Bell’s family and civil rights leaders so far to get another judge on the case have been unsuccessful. The same judge who handled the adult case is also handling the juvenile case in the small town.
“The judge did this out of madness,” Marcus Jones, Bell’s father said in an interview Friday with Jacque Reid on the “Tom Joyner Morning Show.” “It’s like he was saying, ‘I’m going to show him something.’”
Attempts by BlackAmericaWeb.com to interview the judge on Friday were unsuccessful. A secretary answering the phone in his office said the judge could not comment on the case because it is a juvenile matter.
Jones said he and Bell’s mother, Melissa Bell, have been told they will have to pay court costs, as well as $600 a month for the period their son is incarcerated.
The Rev. Al Sharpton has said he will assist in raising funds to help. “We’ll come up with the money,” Sharpton said in an interview on the “Tom Joyner Morning Show.”
“This is the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard of,” Sharpton said. “What about the 10 months he has already served?”
Bell was locked up December 2006 and remained in jail until late September. He was out only a couple of weeks before being taken away last Thursday following what he and his family believed would be a routine hearing.
“Right now, what we’ve got to do is be strong enough to say we’re not going to stand for it,” Sharpton said.
The New York-based activist is among the six witnesses scheduled to testify Tuesday before the Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan), said Jonathon Godfrey, a spokesman for the committee.
Other witnesses will include U.S. Attorney Donald Washington from the Western District of Louisiana; Lisa Krigsten, counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division; Richard Cohen, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center; Rev. Brian Moran, pastor of the Jena Antioch Baptist Church and president of the NAACP Jena chapter, and Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree.
Additional witnesses may join the list before the hearing begins at 9:30 a.m. in the Rayburn House Office Building, and currently there are no representatives of the Louisiana judicial system scheduled to appear, Godfrey told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
Conyers announced in September that he would convene a hearing looking into justice in Jena. In that small town, six high school youths faced charges of attempted murder and bonds of up to $130,000 for a school fight.
Months before that fight, white youths hung nooses in a tree at Jena High School. Those youths were suspended from school for several days.
On Sept. 21, over 50,000 people from across the country descended on the town of 3,000, calling for justice for the Jena Six. In addition to Bell, Carwin Jones, Robert Bailey Jr., Theo Shaw, Bryant Purvis and an unnamed juvenile await trials on charges in connection with the fight.
Ogletree said the congressional hearing is an important step.
“What the Congressional committee probably will do is something that will look forward. They can look at what can be done to prevent this from happening to other youths,” Ogletree told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “I don’t know what they can do to intervene in Mychal Bell’s case.”
Daryl Washington, who represents the National Bar Association members in the region that includes Jena, said it’s time to start striking back.
“Because this is now a juvenile matter, there is basically a gag on what the lawyers in the case can say,” Washington told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “It’s time to say this is vindictive prosecution.”
The same judge who originally convicted Bell on adult charges is the same judge who has sentenced him to 18 months in a juvenile facility on unrelated charges, Ogletree said.
“A judge should always consider to what extent an individual already has been punished,” he said. “And in juvenile sentencing, there is usually balance where a judge also considers what is in the best interest of the child.”
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