Mounting Racial Tensions Explode In Violence And Leads To Disparity In Legal Treatment Along Racial Lines

     A series of events, in September of 2006, in Jena, Louisiana sparked violence and racial tension throughout the town.  The Jena High School has a tree in its front yard.  The tree is known as, the “white tree,” because white students generally claim the tree as a place to congregate.  In 2006, a black student asked the administration if he could sit under the tree.  The administration informed the student that he could sit anywhere he wanted.  The next day, three nooses hung from the “white tree.”  Three white students were apprehended for hanging the nooses but, over the school principle’s suggested punishment of expulsion, the school superintendent suspended the guilty students for three days.  Racial tension continued to mount and exploded in violence on several occasions throughout the following months.  On December 4, 2006, a white student was beat up by six black students because the white student began taunting the black students with racial slurs that indicated his support for the nooses hung in the “white tree.”  The white student was knocked unconscious but was released from the hospital to attend a school social function the same night.  The six black students who attacked the white student were arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. 

     Disparity in the crimes-charged-with and race-of-the-accused have brought criticism on the District Attorney’s office.  In an incident prior to the December 4th event, a white student was arrested for attacking a black student and was charged with simple battery.  Responding to the critical scrutiny over the case and the high burden of proof, the District Attorney reduced the charges against the first of the six students to come to trial to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery.  The first of the six students to come to trial, Mychal Bell, is sixteen and a sophomore in high school.  Bell is being charged as an adult.  Though Bell could be released on $90,000 bail, his family was unable to produce enough money to release him from jail.  Bell spent nearly a year in jail before his trial.  Eventually, Bell was convicted on both the battery and conspiracy counts.  However, early in September of 2007, a judge threw out the conspiracy charge.  Both sides assert that they will appeal the judge’s decision.  Bell’s attorneys are asking that the battery conviction be thrown out as well and the entire case be sent to juvenile court.  The District Attorney will ask for the ruling on the conspiracy charge is overturned.  Two of the other ‘Jena 6,’ as the black students have come to be known, have had their charges dropped to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery.   

For More Information on This Subject:

Help Support The Jena 6

Chicago Tribune – Racial Demons Rear Heads – 5/20/2007

Chicago Tribune – Charge Reduced in ‘Jena 6’ Case – 6/26/2007

NPR – Case of ‘Jena Six’ Tears at Small Town’s Harmony – 9/7/2007