Jena - Searching for Facts.

This story is garbled because of The Narrative.

In fact the Big Media has garbled it as bad as the Duke case for the same reason. Race, class, gender, theory has overtaken facts. Just as in the Duke case.

Jack Okie:

Some of your questions may be answered at the above link.

BTW I have heard that at least one of the Six has a prior for arson and is under investigation for the school fire.

rodeo team,

Your time line is messed up. Plus the guy who asked the "can I sit under the tree" is known as a school jokester. He assisted the boy under assault until the adults got there. The tree was never a whites only tree. It was a school spirit gathering place.

I'm also told that inter-racial dating was not unknown at the school.

A pastor from Jena who commented on the case (see above link) said that he thought Jena needed to work on its racial issues at first. Now he thinks that the drive by media has caused more problems for Jena than the racial divide did.

Different people may ascribe different meanings to similar events, you know, based on context.

Which goes to the mens rea of the "crime".

=

As to the racism of the justice system. Why no mention of the elephant in the closet?

The rawest deal blacks get in this society are the result of drug prohibition. And yet when the subject is brought up what do the vast majority of blacks call for? Harsher enforcement.

Okey doak.

Jesse Jackson in one of his more brilliant moves (in a career of mostly bad moves) called for an end to drug prohibition. He got no traction. The result is that blacks - like the Italians before them - now have a criminal reputation.

Swell. Just swell.

have you followed the reporting from democracy now! on this story? democracy now! (amy goodman) is the best daily news program i've found. highly recommended (not just for the jena story).

Both Reynolds and Althouse have this shtick of plausible deniability that enables them to make associate their blogs with outrageous smears and lies while claiming that they have no responsibility for those smears and lies.

As near as I can tell, that is absolutely not the behavior of you or Orin Kerr.

what happened months before this attack is irrelevant. it certainly doesn't mitigate the act.

two batteries are violent offenses, whether you think so or not. this history of violent offenses may, in part, explain the refusal to set bail. or maybe they just don't like this guy, who seems to be a walking offender.

is the DA of jena racist? i have no idea. neither do you, or any of the 1.000's of demonstrators, the rev. sharpton, or anyone else. absent a review of his cases (which hasn't been requested), it's all speculation.

how, exactly, was it that he looked only at the black kids in the auditorium? as you note, there's no video. were the black kids all sitting on one side, the white kids on the other, and he looked only at the black kid's side? i have no clue. if they were scattered about, perhaps they just felt he was only looking at them. maybe they felt guilty. again, i haven't a clue. that said, i've seen nothing that would lend creedence to that assertion.

i note also that the appeals court did its job, and reversed, based on the statute. the DA had to have figured that to be the case, assuming he actually knows the law. maybe he was just arrogant enough to think they wouldn't appeal. again, i've not a clue, since we've not been made privy to his thought process.

too many unanswered questions, for me to jump on this bandwagon. so far, what isn't in dispute is that 6 teens jumped another one, without provocation, from behind, putting him briefly in the hospital. they were arrested, charged, tried and convicted.

a couple of other things i've read:

1. the defense atty. was black. whether he felt intimidated by the DA, i don't know.
   
2. it was an all white jury, because no black citizens responded to the summons for jury duty.

I did, however, see a five-minute segment from someone named Mattingly, and it was extremely biased. And, it was taking advantage of (apparent) neo-Nazis printing the addresses of the perps: that was their "backlash".

CNN couldn't find a possible backlash from non-Nazis; the only one they could find was from extremists. A real news source might have tried to find non-Nazis who might object to what appears to be a demonstration in favor of a group of six thugs attacking a victim who had nothing to do with the noose incident.

In most states, the justification for the use of deadly force is that you have a reasonable fear for your life or limb.  The sequence of events on Dec. 2 are in dispute, but if Matt Windham felt threated my a larger group whom he believed was intent on seriously hurting him (even if they were unarmed) he has a solid justification for brandishing a weapon.  If Windham were taking a defensive posture, and he were forcibly disarmed, that would in fact constitute robbery.  If this is the case, I'm absolutely sure that Windham would not prosecutable in Michigan (where I'm from).  I'm not familiar with Louisiana law, but I'd be very surpised if it were different.

1.  How credible to you find the explanation for the nooses as being for "horse rustlers for Cowboy day" - related to Jena playing a football team named the "Cowboys"?

2.  Is it possible that Bell pled down in his earlier offenses, and that the original charges were more serious?  On another blog, I forget which, someone said the white residents of Jena helped Bell in these earlier incidents because he was a football star.  If they were more serious, perhaps that would explain why the DA went for attempted murder for Bell (but not explain the charge for the others).

As someone who grew up in the South, I find the "explanation" of the nooses in the tree from the anonymous Jena resident, enfiniti, to be an insult to my intelligence.  Perhaps those who hung the nooses thought they could weasel their way out of a common race-based threat, by claiming a naïve understanding of racial politics in America, but I ain't buying it, just as the African-American students of Jena didn't.

For anyone who isn't familiar, a noose hanging from a tree in the South has long been an open threat to the black community.  For centuries such threats have been followed by the appearance of strange fruit/black folk hanging in the trees, as recently as the 1970s.  Certainly no one that I know in the south could assert, with a straight face anyway, that they were unaware of such racist connotations.  I find the idea more than insulting, I find it to be nothing more than apologist racist propaganda.

As to the remarks by Pastor Eddie Thompson, asserting that Mychal Bell was accorded preferential treatment as a result of his star athletic status, this seems plausible, as such social distinctions are commonplace in America regardless of race. But it's also important to note that in small southern communities, such achievement by a Black athletes, is often accompanied by a certain notable degree of envy, specifically by those who have internalized feelings of inferiority with a bassist in racist stereotypes.

Being singled out as a celebrity and a star, also means you are singled out for special scrutiny and attention by those who feel it is their job to remind you of your mortality and vulnerability, which can come from your peers as well as those in positions of authority within the community.

In such instances you'll see some obvious differences in the way young white male athletes and young Black male athletes are treated when they display similar antisocial behavior.  Pranks, rowdiness and fighting are often dismissed as boyish high spirits when it is displayed by young white males, while the exact same type of behavior is viewed as threatening and unacceptable when the offenders are black, most usually though not exclusively by white authority figures, like the local sheriff, principles, judges and community leaders.

Such attitudes have been documented repeatedly, even manifesting themselves within the Black community.  Black male judges for example, on average have a tendency to sentence first time black offenders more harshly than first-time white offenders.  Such tendencies speak to attitudes that are so deeply ingrained that they have effectively bridge the racial divide, rising to the level of wider societal prejudices.

Is the prosecutor's remarks to the high school kids.  He can destroy their lives with a stroke of a pen? What kind of thing is that to say to kids? Who he was addressing specifically doesn't matter so much to me because that just sounds like a horrible thing to say to a student body. Almost like a person drunk with power.

The Justice Dept has investigated and found no evidence that the nooses were racially motivated.

So there may be something to the school spirit/football rivalry thing. Or the Justice Dept. is covering up.

When groups are not represented in the power structure (in the instant case, when the police only enforce crimes committed by one group versus another) people will organize and extract their own justice, whether correct, lawful or not. That's why gangs keep forming in poor neighborhoods. Humans organize when threatened.

Jenna isn't Birmingham. The right and wrong of the participants is never going to be clear enough to sway people from their positions. The media has helped to muddy the waters, but waters were already muddied.

I personally hope that the Jenna 6 are shown leniency, that the people of Jenna with the knowledge that no one's going anywhere anytime soon sit down and start working on these issues together. Good people with good hearts appear in some of the worst situations.

++++

I know for a fact that in this case, if the races were reversed, not a single one of the people posting here about how the "fight" was "provoked" would be making that argument.  If six white highschool athletes attacked a black student from behind, knocked him unconscious, and then they all stomped and kicked him, the fact that they claimed he was acting uppity earlier (daring to taunt one of the white boys) would be seen not as justification, but as proof that this was a hate crime.

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would still be in town, of course, but they would be crying racism because the attempted murder charges were dropped -- they would want the charges reinstated with hate crime enhancements.

1. There were two nooses, not three.   They were spray painted black and gold the school colors. Very few students actually saw them as they were taken down by a teacher well before school started because of a safety factor -- some kids had been "jump swinging" on them, chinning themselves and sticking their heads through etc. The few kids who actually saw them would either have arrived a half hour early or been required to come early for a pre-school disciplinary detention that last for 40 minutes before school starts.

2. Perversely Bell will likely receive a greater sentence if convicted as a juvenile rather than as an adult. This would be his fifth juvenile offense. Likely result will be confinement in a juvenile facility till his 21st birthday.  If convicted as an adult, juvenile offenses can not be considered in sentencing. Thus he would be treated as a first offender in the adult system and likely to receive a year of less (but would have a permanent felony conviction on his record).

3. In the Jena Barn incident Bailey was on of five black youths that attempted to crash a birthday party. A female at the door told them they could not get in, there was a confrontation, Sloan jumped in.  Female told them to leave.  They all ledt, there was more confrontation outside the building joined in by kids (white). Eventually there was a fight, Sloan hit Bailey in the head with a beer bottle.  Several young adult whites in parking lot had been drinking (beer was not allowed in barn) and got involved.  Sloan had possinbly been drinking as well.  Sloan has a record of run ins with law.

4. Kids + faculty uniformly deny that there was any such thing as a "white tree" prior to assembly where kid jokingly asked if he could sit under tree.  It was one of several humorous questions, met with laughter.    There had been tendency for kids to gather in semi-closed groups at various places in courtyard, just as at any school.

5. Uninvolved witnesses (including the store owner) generally agreed with Windham's version of events at convenience store. Windham claims that he thought kids were going to rob him and that they pursued him to his vehicle.

6. Football game after nooses was season opener with Aloyelles Mustangs (not "Cowboys"). Kids who put up nooses were members of rodeo team and said they got idea from comment about Lonesome Dove mini-series.Denied they intended racial meaning.

7. Most blacks and many whites saw nooses as racial intimidation, but note that information about nooses was secondhand for almost everyone because few had seen them,  they were quickly taken down before school. and school did not immediately address them. Rumors abounded.

8. Bell and Bailey were both regarded in the black community as troublemakers who had been allowed to get away with a lot because they were football stars.

Shortly after Sept. 20, 2007 the teachers are suddenly saying they saw kids swinging and playing on the ropes. Robert Bailey said what he thought when he arrived at school on the bus and saw the ropes: KKK, lynching.

The freshman was a "jokester"? Gee, why would he jokingly ask if he was allowed to sit under the tree? When I was in High School it would have been ludicrous for a black student to even think that he could not sit on a tree anywhere on school property, because anyone sat anywhere they wanted.

A read of the Town Talk forum comments one hears things like "the black boys were getting uppity" "he even asked my girlfriend out on a date" and then there is (or was) the Whites Only sign on the town Barber Shop and the owner's interview saying he would cut black people's hair, but his white clients would refuse to have their hair cut there if he did.

Hit him with a rock? Where ever did that one come from? According to, even "white" people that live in the area only 3 teens were involved with the incident with Justin.

It is truly up to the courts to prove guilt or innocence, but this case is about IN-justice, racial bigotry, DA Walters attempt to legally lynch 6 black teens.