Injustice for the Jena 6
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Written by: TheGatheringforJustice
Published on: August 20, 2007
Greetings and Salutations from Lillian V. Udell, intern at The Gathering for Justice, I am a sophomore at Columbia University and plan to attend law school after completing my undergraduate career. More importantly, under the watchful eyes of my parents, I have been a political activist since childhood, and plan to incorporate activism into my future aspirations as well as my daily life. The following is the what I gleaned from my current research concerning the startling injustices against youth in the criminal justice system. Look forward to my future blogs. In the town of Jena, Louisiana, where white people make up 85% of the population, six black high schoolers were charged with attempted murder in December, 2006. The confrontation started after a group of black students asked school officials if they could sit under a shade tree, which had unofficially been regarded as a “whites only� spot. A day after the students sat under the tree, three nooses were found hanging from the tree. The superintendent considered this threat a harmless prank. The three white students who did this received a three day suspension. This instigated a series of racially motivated offenses that autumn- one night, a black student was assaulted at a “whites only� party and the next day a young white man brandished a gun in front of black students at a gas station. In the first instance, the white assailant from the party was charged with simple battery, a misdemeanor, while no charges were brought against the white assailant who pulled the gun at the gas station. Instead, the black students were arrested for taking the shotgun away from the assailant. The District Attorney (DA) Reed Walters reportedly came to the school and threatened black students saying, “I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.� On December 4th, a group of black students attacked a white student who had allegedly been calling black students “niggers.� The student had been known to support the white students who hung the nooses from the tree. Immediately, charges of attempted murder were brought by DA Walters against six students- Carwin Jones, who was 18 years old; Bryant Purvis, Theo Shaw, and Robert Bailey, who were 17 years old; Mychal Bell, who was 16 years old; and an unidentified juvenile. Bell was found guilty by an all-white jury, and may face over 20 years in prison. His charge of attempted murder was lowered to aggravated second-degree battery assault, implying that there was the threat of a weapon. That weapon, in this case, was the tennis shoes that Bell was wearing, which the prosecutor claimed have threatening potential. Bell will be sentenced in September, while the other young men of what’s now been named the “Jena 6� will face trial in the near future. Bill Quigley, a human rights attorney, commented about the case, “Meanwhile, the ‘white tree’ outside Jena High sits quietly in the hot sun.� Sign the petition: http://www.naacp.org/get-involved/activism/petitions/jena-6/index.php Source: Democracy Now, NAACP, and Bill Quigley, Human Rights Attorney and Professor of law at Loyola University of Louisiana
