Jena Six, Mychal Bell, Ex-offender and Wrongfully Imprisoned, is Freed

Jena Six, Mychal Bell, Ex-offender and Wrongfully Imprisoned, is Freed
By Van Stone.

JENA, La. - A Louisiana appeals court has tossed out the battery conviction of a black teenager who faced 15 years in prison for the beating of a white classmate amid racial tensions in the north Louisiana town of Jena.

Mychal Bell had been convicted of aggravated second-degree battery. He's one of the so-called Jena Six, a group of black teenagers charged in the beating of Justin Barker last December.

Bell, who was 16 at the time of the beating, was due to be sentenced Thursday in a case that has drawn international attention. He and four others were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder. Those charges brought widespread criticism that blacks were being treated more harshly than whites following racial altercations involving Jena High

Nearly a year ago, in the small northern Louisiana town of Jena, a group of white students hung three nooses from a tree in front of Jena High School. This set into motion a season of racial tension and incidents that culminated in six Black youths facing a lifetime in jail for a schoolyard fight.

The story that has unfolded since then is one of racism and injustice, but also of resistance and solidarity, as people from around the world have joined together with the families of the accused, lending legal and financial support, adding political pressure, and joining demonstrations and marches. Nooses were hung after a Black student asked permission to sit under a tree that had been reserved by tradition for white students only. In response to the three nooses, nearly every Black student in the school stood under the tree in a spontaneous and powerful act of nonviolent protest. The town's district attorney quickly arrived, flanked by police officers, and told the Black students to stop making such a big deal over the nooses, which school officials termed to be a "harmless prank."

Black students were warned. "I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of a pen," District Attorney Reed Walters said. Meanwhile, white students hanging the nooses never received any real punishment. Months later white students beat up a Black student at a school party, also threatened two Black students with a shotgun. They were never punished. But, after these incidents, when Black students got into a fight with a white student, six Black youths were arrested and charged with attempted murder. All together they faced a lifetime in prison.

The white student was briefly hospitalized, but had no major injuries and was socializing with friends at a school ring ceremony the evening of the fight. Despite this, when Mychal Bell, the first youth to go to trial, refused to take a deal in exchange for testifying against his friends, he was quickly convicted by an all-white jury. Bell’s public defender, Blane Williams, called no witnesses and gave a short defense. The Justice System in the United States must be looked at more closely to end discrimination.