Jena 6 are Free

My blog is a mere cog in the afrosphere ... however, my blog was part of the online mobilization in support of the Jena Six that led to today's deal allowing five of the young men to plead 'no contest' to greatly reduced charges.

This is a just resolution to the racially-charged case. These young men were initially charged with attempted murder and conspiracy, they ultimately pleaded no contest to simple battery, and will serve a sentence of just 7 days of probation.

In addition, a civil suit filed by the family of Justin Barker was settled when the Jena 6 defendants (including Mychal Bell) agreed to pay the Barker family an undisclosed settlement. Attorneys are not allowed to reveal the details of the settlement but a reliable source has disclosed that the payment was approximately $24,000.

ColorOfChange.org said that the plea deal marked an acknowledgement by officials that the Louisiana justice system initially treated the then-teenage boys too harshly, privileging white students' accounts of a schoolyard fight over those of Black students in the largely segregated town of Jena.

"Today's plea deal shows that the original charges in the case were unfair and vastly overblown," said James Rucker, ColorOfChange.org's executive director. "The story of the Jena 6 was an extreme example of what can happen when a justice system biased against Black boys operates unchecked. But it's also an example of what can happen when hundreds of thousands of people across the country stand up to challenge unequal justice. Together, we drew the country's attention to this case and raised the money necessary to fund a strong legal defense."

The Jena 6 are now free to move ahead with their lives. Mychal Bell served his time under an earlier agreement. Each of the five remaining defendants in this case pleaded 'no contest' to the misdemeanor charge of simple battery. Each will be placed on non-supervised probation for one week and must pay a $500 fine and in most cases an additional $500 in court costs.

Pictured (left to right) are Corwin Jones, 20, Jesse Ray Beard, 18, Bryant Purvis (20), Robert Bailey (19) and Theo Shaw (20) and attorney Alan Bean. Judge Thomas Yeager was clearly impressed that all five of the defendants who appeared before him today are enrolled in college.

In a week of tragic news ... it is nice to end it with a victory. The Jena 6 are free!

‘Jena Six’ Mom is Arrested

Some families have bad luck. It appears that the Bell family ... of Jena Six fame ... is one of those families. The mother of Mychal Bell, Jena 6 youth, was arrested on charges of failure to pay child support.

Have you ever heard of a woman paying child support?

Mychal Bell is one of six Black youths who were charged with attempted murder in 2006 following a schoolyard fight with a White student in Jena, La. The racially biased prosecution sparked cries of racism. Thousands of protestors marched on Jena to show support for the six youths. Bell is the only one of the Jena Six youths to serve time for the original incident.

Late last year, Bell shot himself with a gun and told authorities that it was a suicide attempt after being caught shoplifting. He said at the time that he thought about all of the people he had disappointed by his actions.

Next stop for this family has got to be a reality television show!

Mychal Bell, Jena 6 Student, Shoots Himself

Mychal Bell was arrested for shoplifting on Christmas Eve. He was realeased on $1,300 bail. Today we learn that the troubled youngster shot himself in the shoulder.

Mychal Bell was cleaning a gun when it accidentally discharged, shooting him in the shoulder, his attorney, Carol Powell-Lexing, told CNN. He had surgery Monday night at a hospital in Monroe, Louisiana, and has not yet been able to talk, she said. CNN.com

I encourage visitors to read the post on What About Our Daughters for some very insightful comments and analysis of this latest incident by a Jena 6 student.

Mychal Bell, Jena 6 Student, Arrested for Shoplifting

Prison reform wouldn't be necessary if our young men would simply do right in the first place. Drumbeats from Dallas South Blog informed us that Mychel Bell ... one of the Jena 6 youth ... was arrested for shoplifting $370 worth of merchandise from Dillard’s in Pecanland Mall in Monroe LA.

Bell's arrest comes less than less than a month after he completed a sentence for his role in a fight with classmate, Justin Barker, at Jena High School in 2006.

The national uprising about the racially-biased prosecution by Louisiana criminal justice system during the Jena 6 trials last year were on point. Unfortunately, a number of the Jena 6 youth appear to have misread the point of the protest.

We were not giving them carte-blanche to act a fool. We were giving them a second chance to make their families and community proud.

It appears that Mychal Bell turned down his second chance.

Jena 6 Youth Wants to Play Football

Mychal Bell, the teen at the center of the controversial Jena Six trial, is now a Carroll High School student. He awaits a decision from the hardship committee of the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, which meets in July. Bell spent 10 months in jail following the trial, and has already been in high school for eight semesters, but wants to play football in 2008. [SOURCE]

Jena 6 Odd Couple: Mychal Bell and Reed Walters Agree to Plea Deal

12/4/07 UPDATE: AfroSpear Media Release on Jena Six Case

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Drumbeats from Howard Witt with some great news on the Jena Six case. It appears that the endgame is coming to Jena, LA. Mychal Bell, 17, agreed to a plea bargain with LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters that sharply reduced the charges against him. Walters was the foolish law enforcement official who made the original decision to charge the Jena 6 with attempted murder for beating a white youth.

Walters accepted guilty plea to a juvenile charge of second-degree battery, with a sentence of 18 months and credit for time he has served in jail over the last year.

District Judge J.P. Mauffray approved the plea agreement Monday afternoon, just three days before Bell's trial in juvenile court was to have begun. It appears that both the Jena legal system and the other Jena Six families are in plea negotiations that could bring a conclusion to a controversial case that drew more than 20,000 civil rights protesters to Jena in September and earned the town a portrayal in the national media as a racist backwater.

Villagers have been following this story well before the mainstream media learned about it. It was national pressure from groups like The AfroSpear and others last spring that caused Walters to back away from attempted murder charges. Walter was hard-headed when he tried Bell on those charges as an adult in June and won a conviction, but a state appeals court reversed the verdict in September, ruling that Bell should have been prosecuted as a juvenile.

Since then, Walters has come under growing political pressure to conclude the Jena 6 cases. Local leaders had been dreading a drawn-out series of criminal trials that would have kept Jena in the spotlight throughout 2008. And Louisiana's outgoing governor, Kathleen Blanco, directly pressed Walters in September not to pursue an appeal of the decision that struck down Bell's adult conviction.

Walters said in a statement Monday that he hopes to have the remaining Jena 6 cases resolved "early next year."

"A trial would be very bad for the town, very bad for Reed Walters, very bad for anybody in Jena associated with the process, and it could turn out very bad for the defendants as well," said Alan Bean, head of a small civil rights group called Friends of Justice who was the first activist to call attention to the Jena case. "It had the potential for being a perfect storm in which everybody lost."

Parents on both sides of the case agreed.

"If the district attorney makes an offer to us and my son doesn't have to do any jail time, that would be fine," said Tina Jones, who insists that her son, Jena 6 defendant Bryant Purvis, was not involved in the school attack. "I'm ready to get this all over with."

Plea bargains "would be the best solution, as long as they don't get away with no punishment at all," said David Barker, father of Justin Barker, the school beating victim. "This case has taken its toll on everybody. Justin has ulcers now. Letting it drag on for years would just be additional stress for him."

Bell's attorneys said they agreed to the plea bargain to spare the former high school football star the danger of being convicted of more serious charges and also to win early release from juvenile custody. Mychal Bell will get credit for the nine months he spent in jail while awaiting trial. His attorneys said he could be released by June.

When this is over I hope that the Jena Six young people take a lesson from the sad story of Rodney King.

Judge Backpedals, Opens Jena Trial to Public

UPDATE: Judge Mauffray has been pimp-slapped by another judge who ordered that the entire Mychal Bell hearing should be open to the public and the press. Click here for the full story.

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Villagers, there was some positive news for those of us concerned about justice in the Jena Six trials that are still ongoing down in Louisiana. Judge J.P. Mauffray, the judge overseeing the trial of Mychal Bell, one of the teenage defendants in the racially charged Jena 6 case in Louisiana, reversed course and agreed to open Bell's upcoming juvenile trial to the public.

The lawsuit asserts that the judge's earlier decision to close all the proceedings in Bell's case runs counter to Louisiana juvenile laws and provisions of both the Louisiana and U.S. Constitutions.

"Judge Mauffray does acknowledge that [sections of the Louisiana Children's Code] permit or require adjudication, disposition and modification hearings in those specified cases to be public, and he intends to comply with applicable law," Mauffray's attorney, Donald Wilson, wrote in response to the lawsuit.

Bell, 17, is scheduled to go on trial Dec. 6 on charges of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy for his alleged part in an attack on a white student at Jena High School last December. Bell was initially tried and convicted of the charges as an adult, but an appellate court threw out the conviction, ruling that Bell should have been prosecuted as a juvenile.

Kudos to Howard Twitt (Chicago Tribune senior correspondent) for continuing to share his drumbeat on the Jena Six story.

Some Want Mychal Bell Free, Others Want to Shoot or Stab Him

Drumbeats came to us from Too Sense about decision by Rep. John Conyers to call for the release of Mychal Bell from adult prison in Jena, LA.

"Our first responsibility is to get young Mychal Bell out of prison," said Rep. John Conyers, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who said he will pressure the Justice Department to take a hard look at "the miscarriages of justice that have occurred in Jena, Louisiana."

On the other side of the spectrum, we see villages on the far side of the river that are so scared of diversity and harmonious race relations that they fantasize about shooting 17-year old Mychal Bell or stabbing him with his puny knife. Is it any wonder that race relations are so difficult to move in a positive direction?

And don't get me started about Bill O'Reilley and his consistent difficulty understanding Black people. He simply refuses to accept that African Americans are no different than other Americans in our abilities and our dreams for the future.

I had to smile last night when I decided to watch a Billy Bob Thornton movie called 'The Badge'. Billy Bob was LaSalle Parrish sheriff. Yep, the movie was set in Jena, LA. Also, one of the actresses in the move is named Jena. The universe is strange...

Jena 6 Conviction Overturned, Mychal Bell is Almost Free

A state appeals court threw out the only remaining conviction against Mychal Bell, one of the Black teenagers accused in the beating of a white schoolmate in the racially tense Louisiana town of Jena.

This is fantastic news for the Jena 6. The young man was 16 at the time of the school fight. He and four others were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder. Mychal Bell has been in court for a long time. He is still subject to charges that have been filed against him as a juvenile. In fact, all six teenagers are facing charges. As such, I anticipate that the massive protest scheduled to take place in Jena will go on as planned on September 20.

Jena politicians feel the pressure of the world bearing down on them. Our American tragedy is slowly moving in the right direction.

Villagers, any thoughts on this appeals court ruling?

Jena 6: Mychal Bell Back in Court

The latest on the Jena 6/Mychal Bell situation courtesy of Matt Olson - Mychal Bell’s Upcoming Court Hearings via post on Pursuing Holiness.

Mychal Bell’s Upcoming Court Hearings

The latest out of Jena, Louisiana is that Mychal Bell, who was convicted of second-degree battery on thin and contradictory evidence but has new legal counsel, will have a bond reduction hearing on August 24.
…A motion hearing will be held at LaSalle Parish Courthouse on September 4 to determine whether Bell’s case should have been under the jurisdiction of the juvenile courts when his charges were reduced from second-degree attempted murder to second-degree battery just before his trial. This would effectively void his conviction in adult court.

The entire Jena 6 situation remains an American tragedy as I explained in an earlier post. At the end of the day ... this was a high school fight. The white kids were dealt with by school discipline. That is how the six Black youths should have been dealt with as well.

Instead, Mychal Bell has been in jail since September. The gameplan is to have him released on August 24 at the bond reduction hearing. Then the courts will be asked to reconsider decision to try him as an adult, instead of as a juvenile. This is critical for the others that are awaiting trial. Juvenile justice system is much more forgiving in terms of punishment for a school fight.

In any case Mychal Bell has already lost his football scholarships for college. He lost chance to enjoy New Year's Eve with his friends. He lost chance to celebrate his 17th birthday with his family. for a high school fight. The young brother faces the fight of his life.

He needs our support and prayers. Juliette Aiyana suggested that the The AfroSpear and others write Mychal a postcard or letter. It can be short. The key is simply that it's hearfelt. You can send your cards and letters to:

Mychal Bell
Inmate, A-Dorm
LaSalle Correctional Center
15976 Highway 165
Olla, LA 71465-4801

Villagers, a few moments of your time could really brighten this young man's spirit.