What Went Wrong?
The Trial of Mychal Bell of the Jena 6
The Dallas Examiner
Many would argue that the case of Mychal Bell is one that never should have gone to court. In fact, some believe he should not have even been arrested.
Bell is the first youth to be convicted among a group of African American teenagers who have come to be known nationally as the Jena 6. The six youth were allegedly involved in a school fight that left a White teenager unconscious and landed the six youth in jail, facing charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Accusations of ineffective counsel have left many wondering just what went wrong in the trial of Mychal Bell.
Improper use of authority
The saga opens with Kenneth Purvis, a junior at Jena High School, who asked a school official if he and his friends could sit under a tree which was traditionally the gathering place of White students during lunch.
The school administrator told the boys they were free to sit wherever they wanted. But the following day, nooses hung from the tree where the Black students had sat. When the school failed to expel the boys who hung the nooses, racial unrest ensued.
At a school assembly, immediately following a staged protest under “the White tree,” District Attorney Reed Walters warned the Black students to stop the “acting out,” telling the youth, “I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of my pen.”
An ax to grind
Racial tensions came to a head on Dec. 4, 2006, when Justin Barker, a White student, allegedly began to taunt Robert Bailey for “getting his a** whooped” by several youth and adults at a party that weekend. According to reports, he continued his taunts, calling Bailey a n****r and speaking favorably of the nooses.
It is an allegation Barker denies.
However, several witnesses, including Barker, his girlfriend and best friend stated in court they had heard the Black students involved in the attack call out to Barker, “I’ll teach you to keep your M-F mouth shut.”
During the attack, Barker was knocked unconscious and rushed to the hospital.
Walters wrote in a statement to the Jena Times, “I will not tolerate this type of behavior. To those who act in this manner, I tell you that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and with the harshest crimes that the facts justify. When you are convicted, I will seek the maximum penalty allowed by law. I will see to it that you never again menace the students at any school in this parish.”
Subsequently, six youth were arrested and all, but one, were charged as adults with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
However, the White student who threw the first punch during the attack on Bailey the previous weekend was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor.
The others who were involved in the attack, some wielding beer bottles, were not charged at all.
Jena court system
Bail had been set at $90,000, more than Jones and Mellissa Bell were able to raise for their son. Many believe this is the real reason Bell was the first to go to trial.
“Whenever you get in a financial bind where you have to be depending on a court appointed lawyer, that’s what happens,” Marcus Jones, Bell’s father said.
According to the Department of Justice, “About three-fourths of the inmates in State prisons and about half of those in Federal prisons received publicly-provided legal counsel for the offense for which they were serving time.”
Many blame Bell’s court appointed attorney, Blane Williams, for not challenging the six-member, all-White jury, saying Bell was not tried before a jury of his peers.
Williams told reporters Blacks were called for jury duty, but failed to show up.
According to the Jena Times, during a town hall meeting, a LaSalle Parish resident said she had a copy of a jury pool list of over 150 residents called to serve and only four Black residents were on the list. Two of them, she stated, were relatives of Bell’s and the other two did not show up.
Only 50 residents in all showed up for jury duty that day.
Williams told reporters he believed his client could still get a fair trial with an all White jury. Attorney Lewis Scott, of Monroe disagrees, saying the trial should have been moved away from Jena because of pretrial publicity.
The jury found Bell guilty in less than three hours.
Exclusion of crucial information
“At the root is a civil rights issue,” Scott said. “That is whether or not citizens similarly situated can have equal access to public property. It’s an old-time 1957 civil rights issue in 2007.”
However, Williams was unable to present his case as such becauseJudge J.P. Mauffray Jr., who presided over the trial, ruled the noose incident was irrelevant to the case and couldn’t be mentioned at trial. This ruling caused many of the events that lead up to the attack to also be inadmissible.
Conflicting testimony
Of the 17 witnesses called on to testify, only seven said they actually saw the individual who initially punched Barker.
Both Jessica Oliver and Lexi Jones said the person who initially punched Barker was wearing a big green jacket with a hood confirming testimony by James Hutzler, who also said the attacker wore a hood.
Only four testified they saw Bell hit Barker: Jessica Hooter, Lacey Elliott Justin Cooper and Denim Robertson. Hooter was a family friend of Barker and was currently dating Eric Scroggs, Barker’s best friend.
Hooter said Bell was standing in front of Barker when he punched and kicked him, contradicting other reports that Barker was hit from behind.
Additionally, in a written statement a day after the fight, she indicated there were too many students involved in the attack to identify any of them, saying she saw “someone” hit Barker.
Cooper was not only Barker’s friend, he was one of the boys who hung the nooses. Coach Jeffrey Manning, who was present at the end of the attack, testified he did not recall seeing Cooper in the area. Manning also testified that immediately following the fight, Coach Benjy Lewis told him to grab Malcolm Shaw, but was not allowed by the judge to tell why.
Teacher, Kristy Martin was the only adult to place Bell in the group that attacked Barker, but did not see the incident.
Martin, who had obtained a list from one of the coaches who had been taking names of rowdy students during lunch, was the only one able to name more than three people allegedly involved in the assault.
No one else placed Bell at the fight.
Bean, who was at the trial and has been working closely with the Jena 6 since last year, stated all of the witnesses called to testify were clearly identified with one side of a long standing feud between the “country” Whites and the Black student athletes outraged about the nooses.
Although some witnesses testified with confidence that Bell hit and/or kicked Barker, other witnesses contradicted this testimony making it impossible to draw a clear conclusion as to Bell’s guilt.
He didn’t do it
“I saw Malcolm Shaw hit Justin Barker with his right fist to the right side of Justin’s head, right around the temple,” Coach Benjy Lewis wrote. “Justin went down face first, knocked out…”
According to Bean, Lewis, who provided a written statement detailing the fight blow-by-blow, was the only adult to directly witness the fight. Lewis, like Barker, stated that Barker was attacked from behind, conflicting with testimony citing a face-to-face confrontation.
Lewis was never subpoenaed to testify.
Ineffective counsel
“Basically the case screams out incompetent counsel,” Bob Noel said. “Everyone, despite what they are charged with, deserves a good defense and a fair trial.”
But some believe that Bell was set up from the beginning.
“Walter Reed walked into Blane Williams’office and dropped the file on his desk and said, ‘make this go away. I do not want the Black Panthers and the NAACP down here,’” Bean said Williams told him.
It appears Williams set out to do just that.
“The court appointed lawyer tricked him [Bell] into taking a plea and turning state evidence against the other boys in exchange for dropping the charges,” Jones said. “He told him to take the charge now or the DA would throw book at him,” His son had already agreed to the plea, but Jones advised him not to follow through with the agreement.
During the trial, Bell surprised Williams by pleading not guilty, but the charges had already been reduced.
It became apparent to some in the courtroom that Williams never expected to try the case.
Williams rested his case immediately after Walters rested his; failing to call a single witness or introduce a single piece of evidence in Bell’s defense.
Lack of jurisdiction
Louis Scott, one of the Monroe Lawyers who agreed to take Bell’s case following his conviction said that had Bell been charged with battery in the beginning, the case never would have been transferred from the juvenile system.
On Sept. 14, Louisiana’s 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Scott. Acting on an emergency defense appeal, the court reversed Bell’s conviction, stating that, based on the charges, Bell should have been tried as a juvenile.
The ruling will have no bearing on the rest of the Jena 6 who were 17 at the time of the fight and, therefore, no longer considered juveniles.
The battle continues
Walters said he will appeal the reversal to the Louisiana Supreme Court after he reviews the decision carefully. According to The Washington Post, Walters now has the option of trying Bell as a juvenile or charging him with attempted murder and trying him as an adult.
According to Sheriff Carl Smith, Walters must appeal within two weeks. Bell cannot be released unless Walters misses the deadline or unless the Supreme Court rules in Bell’s favor, the Sheriff told reporters.
http://www.dallasexaminer.com/cgi-bin/examiner/display_story.cgi?front_Page/story1.txt
Looks like a fucking set-up of a lynching to teach black boys a lesson while trying to make it go away as fast as possible "before the Black Panther and the NAACP get here"
The Trial of Mychal Bell of the Jena 6
The Dallas Examiner
Many would argue that the case of Mychal Bell is one that never should have gone to court. In fact, some believe he should not have even been arrested.
Bell is the first youth to be convicted among a group of African American teenagers who have come to be known nationally as the Jena 6. The six youth were allegedly involved in a school fight that left a White teenager unconscious and landed the six youth in jail, facing charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Accusations of ineffective counsel have left many wondering just what went wrong in the trial of Mychal Bell.
Improper use of authority
The saga opens with Kenneth Purvis, a junior at Jena High School, who asked a school official if he and his friends could sit under a tree which was traditionally the gathering place of White students during lunch.
The school administrator told the boys they were free to sit wherever they wanted. But the following day, nooses hung from the tree where the Black students had sat. When the school failed to expel the boys who hung the nooses, racial unrest ensued.
At a school assembly, immediately following a staged protest under “the White tree,” District Attorney Reed Walters warned the Black students to stop the “acting out,” telling the youth, “I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of my pen.”
An ax to grind
Racial tensions came to a head on Dec. 4, 2006, when Justin Barker, a White student, allegedly began to taunt Robert Bailey for “getting his a** whooped” by several youth and adults at a party that weekend. According to reports, he continued his taunts, calling Bailey a n****r and speaking favorably of the nooses.
It is an allegation Barker denies.
However, several witnesses, including Barker, his girlfriend and best friend stated in court they had heard the Black students involved in the attack call out to Barker, “I’ll teach you to keep your M-F mouth shut.”
During the attack, Barker was knocked unconscious and rushed to the hospital.
Walters wrote in a statement to the Jena Times, “I will not tolerate this type of behavior. To those who act in this manner, I tell you that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and with the harshest crimes that the facts justify. When you are convicted, I will seek the maximum penalty allowed by law. I will see to it that you never again menace the students at any school in this parish.”
Subsequently, six youth were arrested and all, but one, were charged as adults with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
However, the White student who threw the first punch during the attack on Bailey the previous weekend was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor.
The others who were involved in the attack, some wielding beer bottles, were not charged at all.
Jena court system
Bail had been set at $90,000, more than Jones and Mellissa Bell were able to raise for their son. Many believe this is the real reason Bell was the first to go to trial.
“Whenever you get in a financial bind where you have to be depending on a court appointed lawyer, that’s what happens,” Marcus Jones, Bell’s father said.
According to the Department of Justice, “About three-fourths of the inmates in State prisons and about half of those in Federal prisons received publicly-provided legal counsel for the offense for which they were serving time.”
Many blame Bell’s court appointed attorney, Blane Williams, for not challenging the six-member, all-White jury, saying Bell was not tried before a jury of his peers.
Williams told reporters Blacks were called for jury duty, but failed to show up.
According to the Jena Times, during a town hall meeting, a LaSalle Parish resident said she had a copy of a jury pool list of over 150 residents called to serve and only four Black residents were on the list. Two of them, she stated, were relatives of Bell’s and the other two did not show up.
Only 50 residents in all showed up for jury duty that day.
Williams told reporters he believed his client could still get a fair trial with an all White jury. Attorney Lewis Scott, of Monroe disagrees, saying the trial should have been moved away from Jena because of pretrial publicity.
The jury found Bell guilty in less than three hours.
Exclusion of crucial information
“At the root is a civil rights issue,” Scott said. “That is whether or not citizens similarly situated can have equal access to public property. It’s an old-time 1957 civil rights issue in 2007.”
However, Williams was unable to present his case as such becauseJudge J.P. Mauffray Jr., who presided over the trial, ruled the noose incident was irrelevant to the case and couldn’t be mentioned at trial. This ruling caused many of the events that lead up to the attack to also be inadmissible.
Conflicting testimony
Of the 17 witnesses called on to testify, only seven said they actually saw the individual who initially punched Barker.
Both Jessica Oliver and Lexi Jones said the person who initially punched Barker was wearing a big green jacket with a hood confirming testimony by James Hutzler, who also said the attacker wore a hood.
Only four testified they saw Bell hit Barker: Jessica Hooter, Lacey Elliott Justin Cooper and Denim Robertson. Hooter was a family friend of Barker and was currently dating Eric Scroggs, Barker’s best friend.
Hooter said Bell was standing in front of Barker when he punched and kicked him, contradicting other reports that Barker was hit from behind.
Additionally, in a written statement a day after the fight, she indicated there were too many students involved in the attack to identify any of them, saying she saw “someone” hit Barker.
Cooper was not only Barker’s friend, he was one of the boys who hung the nooses. Coach Jeffrey Manning, who was present at the end of the attack, testified he did not recall seeing Cooper in the area. Manning also testified that immediately following the fight, Coach Benjy Lewis told him to grab Malcolm Shaw, but was not allowed by the judge to tell why.
Teacher, Kristy Martin was the only adult to place Bell in the group that attacked Barker, but did not see the incident.
Martin, who had obtained a list from one of the coaches who had been taking names of rowdy students during lunch, was the only one able to name more than three people allegedly involved in the assault.
No one else placed Bell at the fight.
Bean, who was at the trial and has been working closely with the Jena 6 since last year, stated all of the witnesses called to testify were clearly identified with one side of a long standing feud between the “country” Whites and the Black student athletes outraged about the nooses.
Although some witnesses testified with confidence that Bell hit and/or kicked Barker, other witnesses contradicted this testimony making it impossible to draw a clear conclusion as to Bell’s guilt.
He didn’t do it
“I saw Malcolm Shaw hit Justin Barker with his right fist to the right side of Justin’s head, right around the temple,” Coach Benjy Lewis wrote. “Justin went down face first, knocked out…”
According to Bean, Lewis, who provided a written statement detailing the fight blow-by-blow, was the only adult to directly witness the fight. Lewis, like Barker, stated that Barker was attacked from behind, conflicting with testimony citing a face-to-face confrontation.
Lewis was never subpoenaed to testify.
Ineffective counsel
“Basically the case screams out incompetent counsel,” Bob Noel said. “Everyone, despite what they are charged with, deserves a good defense and a fair trial.”
But some believe that Bell was set up from the beginning.
“Walter Reed walked into Blane Williams’office and dropped the file on his desk and said, ‘make this go away. I do not want the Black Panthers and the NAACP down here,’” Bean said Williams told him.
It appears Williams set out to do just that.
“The court appointed lawyer tricked him [Bell] into taking a plea and turning state evidence against the other boys in exchange for dropping the charges,” Jones said. “He told him to take the charge now or the DA would throw book at him,” His son had already agreed to the plea, but Jones advised him not to follow through with the agreement.
During the trial, Bell surprised Williams by pleading not guilty, but the charges had already been reduced.
It became apparent to some in the courtroom that Williams never expected to try the case.
Williams rested his case immediately after Walters rested his; failing to call a single witness or introduce a single piece of evidence in Bell’s defense.
Lack of jurisdiction
Louis Scott, one of the Monroe Lawyers who agreed to take Bell’s case following his conviction said that had Bell been charged with battery in the beginning, the case never would have been transferred from the juvenile system.
On Sept. 14, Louisiana’s 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Scott. Acting on an emergency defense appeal, the court reversed Bell’s conviction, stating that, based on the charges, Bell should have been tried as a juvenile.
The ruling will have no bearing on the rest of the Jena 6 who were 17 at the time of the fight and, therefore, no longer considered juveniles.
The battle continues
Walters said he will appeal the reversal to the Louisiana Supreme Court after he reviews the decision carefully. According to The Washington Post, Walters now has the option of trying Bell as a juvenile or charging him with attempted murder and trying him as an adult.
According to Sheriff Carl Smith, Walters must appeal within two weeks. Bell cannot be released unless Walters misses the deadline or unless the Supreme Court rules in Bell’s favor, the Sheriff told reporters.
http://www.dallasexaminer.com/cgi-bin/examiner/display_story.cgi?front_Page/story1.txt
Looks like a fucking set-up of a lynching to teach black boys a lesson while trying to make it go away as fast as possible "before the Black Panther and the NAACP get here"
