The case of the amazing disappearing hate crime.
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1847
by Charlotte Allen
Jena, Louisiana
In early December the case of the “Jena Six”–the six African-American high school students in Louisiana accused of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1950. The Jena Six were supposed to be the new Scottsboro Boys, the nine black youths railroaded to death sentences by all-white juries in 1930s Alabama on charges of raping two white women.
But the best known of the Jena Six, Mychal Bell, appeared with his team of lawyers at the parish courthouse in this tiny Central Louisiana town of 3,000 on December 3 and pled guilty to second-degree battery, intentionally inflicting serious bodily injury on another person. In doing so, Bell–who will turn 18 this month and who had repeatedly denied any involvement in the attack–admitted that on December 4, 2006, he hit 17-year-old Justin Barker from behind, slamming Barker’s head against a concrete beam outside the gym at Jena High School and knocking him unconscious, and that he then joined a group in stomping and kicking Barker in the head. Bell agreed to serve 18 months in juvenile custody for the offense and to “testify truthfully” concerning the involvement of the other five members of the Jena Six should their cases come to trial.Three months before the attack on Barker, on the morning of August 31, teachers and administrators at Jena High School had discovered two crudely constructed hangman’s nooses made of nylon rope hanging from an oak tree in the center of the campus. The nooses were promptly cut down so that few students of any race actually saw them, and the perpetrators, three white male students, were identified and disciplined–fairly severely, school officials later revealed, with nine-day suspensions during which they had to attend classes at an alternative school off-campus and go to extended counseling sessions with their families.
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/589bfhgz.asp?pg=1