The widely villified district attorney for LaSalle Parish, Louisiana pens an op-ed in the New York Times, explaining why he didn't charge the students who hung three nooses from a tree in Jena, Louisiana with a crime, and why he felt that the attack on white student Justin Barker, who he claims had nothing to do with the noose incident, was a case of attempted murder. Walters writes that the hanging of nooses broke no law under the Louisiana criminal code. And he quotes the African-American U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana in stating that it did not qualify as a hate crime, and that furthermore, no stand-alone hate crim law exists under Louisiana law. Fair enough. He then adds this:
Last week, a reporter asked me whether, if I had it to do over, I would do anything differently. I didn’t think of it at the time, but the answer is yes. I would have done a better job of explaining that the offenses of Dec. 4, 2006, did not stem from a “schoolyard fight” as it has been commonly described in the news media and by critics.
Conjure the image of schoolboys fighting: they exchange words, clench fists, throw punches, wrestle in the dirt until classmates or teachers pull them apart. Of course that would not be aggravated second-degree battery, which is what the attackers are now charged with. (Five of the defendants were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder.) But that’s not what happened at Jena High School.
The victim in this crime, who has been all but forgotten amid the focus on the defendants, was a young man named Justin Barker, who was not involved in the nooses incident three months earlier. According to all the credible evidence I am aware of, after lunch, he walked to his next class. As he passed through the gymnasium door to the outside, he was blindsided and knocked unconscious by a vicious blow to the head thrown by Mychal Bell. While lying on the ground unaware of what was happening to him, he was brutally kicked by at least six people.
Imagine you were walking down a city street, and someone leapt from behind a tree and hit you so hard that you fell to the sidewalk unconscious. Would you later describe that as a fight? Uh-huh ... Walters also takes the opportunity to play down the recent protests in Jena, undercutting even the low-balled Associated Press count by stating that "10,000 people" came to his "little town" of Jena on September 20th. And his column, while dripping with sympatico for Justin Barker, fails to answer some important questions: - What did Justin Barker say to Robert Bailey Jr. before he was attacked, initially by Mychael Bell according to prosecutors?) According to eyewitnesses, Barker mocked Bailey for having been beaten, and hit in the head with a bottle, by a white man named Justin Sloan the Friday before at a place called the Fair Barn. (Barker denies it). Sloan, by the way, was charged only with simple battery -- not attempted murder. In his op-ed, Walters didn't even mention the Fair Barn incident.
- What about the incident which occured on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006, the day after the Fair Barn attack on Bailey, in which Bailey and several friends were encountered by a white student from their high school, who pulled a shotgun. In that incident, Bailey and his friends wrestled the gun away, and then THEY were charged with theft of a firearm, second degree robbery and distubing the peace, while the white student wasn't charged with anything -- nothing -- nada. Can Mr. Walters imagine going to a convenience store and having a gun pulled on him, wrestling that gun away and then being charged with stealing it? That's not disturbing the peace, it's just disturbing.
- If Justin Barker was nearly killed, why was he never admitted to the hospital? Barker was treated and released after two hours in the emergency room. And while Barker testified at Bell's trial that his eye was swollen shut and he had pain and loss of vision, no medical evidence has ever been produced that verifies that he had anything other than the kinds of injuries you'd expect to see in a fight -- namely a swollen eye and injuries to his hands.
- Why wasn't Coach Benjy Lewis, who was the only adult to witness the attack on Barker, called in Michael Bells' case? Lewis told police it wasn't Bell who initiated the attack -- and that Bell wasn't even on the scene. Instead, Lewis identified another student, Malcolm Shaw, as the initial attacker.
- And last, but certainly not least, why did Walters feel it appropriate to go the Jena High School and announce to the African-American students who were still enraged about the noose incident and subsequent violence against them in Jena -- and before any charges had been filed -- that he could "end their lives with a stroke of a pen?" In hindsight, would he make that statement again?
Mr. Walters' op-ed was disengenuous and trite. He trivializes the attacks on Robert Bailey, and quite frankly, his failure to prosecute the people who attacked him will go down in history, along with his over-prosecution of the Jena 6, as a low point in American juris-prudence. Update: Gov. Blanco has announced that Walters has agreed not to appeal the ruling overturning Mychal Bell's adult conviction. The case will now be tried in juvenile court. Update 2: Mychal Bell is now free on bail. He was released today (Thursday afternoon). Here's video of him walking out of the courthouse into the arms of happy family members and supporters, along with Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III. Watch video of Walters' press conference, in which he continues to stump for his case, here. And note the comment that "had it not been for law enforcement, and God, there would have been major trouble in Jena during last Thursday's march. And where would you get that idea from, Mr. Attorney General? Does that many Black people in one place scare you? Previous:
Labels: Jena 6, racism |
