Can someone explain me the "Jennings" reference in this article?

PS. Can Motherjones' webmasters fix the new screw up on the site?

"fix the new screw up"?

we'll bite. what screw up? where? what browser are you using, because we don't see anything amiss?

Channon Christian is dead. Nobody is dead here. Keep things in perspective.

What does the fire in the high school have to do with any of this? Is there some reason to believe the arson was racially motivated?

To hell with the fire. What about the boys who grabbed the shotgun in SELF DEFENSE being charged with assault and theft? That's asanine.

Here is the original document that attracted the media to this story.
RESPONDING TO THE CRISIS IN JENA, LOUISIANA

The Jena Case in Brief

On the morning of September 1, 2006, three nooses dangled from a tree in the High School square in Jena, Louisiana. The day before, at a school assembly, black students had asked the vice principal if they could sit under that tree.

Characterizing the noose incident as an innocent prank, a discipline committee meted out a few days of in-school suspension and declared the matter settled.

At the end of November, the central academic wing of Jena High School was destroyed by fire (the smoke damage is evident in the picture above). Over the weekend, a stream of white-initiated racial violence swept over the tiny community, adding to the trauma and tension. The following Monday, a white student was punched and kicked following a lunch-hour taunting match. Six black athletes were arrested and charged with conspiracy to attempt second-degree murder. If convicted, some defendants are facing sentences of between twenty-five and 100 years in prison without parole.

A survey of relevant events:

• On Thursday, August 31, 2006, a small group of black students asked if they could sit under a tree on the traditionally white side of the Jena High School square.
• The students were informed by the Vice Principal that they could sit wherever they pleased.
• The following day, September 1, 2006, three nooses were found hanging from the tree in question. Two of the nooses were black and one was gold: the Jena High School colors.
• On Tuesday night, September 5, 2006, a group of black parents convened at the L&A Missionary Baptist Church in Jena to discuss their response to what they considered a hate crime and an act of intimidation.
• When black students staged an impromptu protest under the tree on Wednesday, September 6, 2006, a school assembly was hastily convened. Flanked by police officers, District Attorney Reed Walters warned black students that additional unrest would be treated as a criminal matter. According to multiple witnesses, Walters warned the black student protestors that, "I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of my pen." This was widely interpreted as a reference to the filing of charges carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison.
• On Thursday, September 7th, police officers patrolled the halls of Jena High School and on Friday, September 8th, the school was placed on full lockdown. Most students, black and white, either stayed home, or were picked up by parents shortly after the lockdown was imposed. The Jena Times suggested that black parents were to blame for the unrest at the school because their September 5th gathering had attracted media attention.
• Principal Scott Windham recommended to an expulsion hearing committee that the three white boys responsible for hanging the nooses in the tree should be expelled from school.
• On Thursday September 7, 2006, asserting that the noose were merely a silly prank inspired by a hanging scene in the television min-series ‘Lonesome Dove’, the committee opted for a few days of in-school suspension. The names of the three students were not released to the public for reasons of confidentiality.
• According to press accounts, on September 10, 2006, several dozen black parents attempted to address a meeting of the school board but were refused an opportunity to speak.
• At a second September meeting of the school board, September 18, 2006, a representative of the black families was allowed to give a five-minute statement, but school board refused to discuss the "noose issue" because the matter had been fully addressed and resolved.
• Although few major disciplinary issues emerged during the fall semester at Jena High School, there is strong evidence that several black male students remained unusually agitated throughout the semester and that disciplinary referrals on these students spiked sharply.
• On Thursday, November 30, 2006, the academic wing of the Jena High School was largely destroyed by a massive fire. Officials strongly suspect arson.
• Throughout the following weekend, Jena was engulfed by a wave of racially tinged violence.
• In one incident, a black student was assaulted by a white adult as he entered a predominantly white partly held at the Fair Barn (a large metal building reserved for social events). After being struck in the face without warning, the young black student was assaulted by white students wielding beer bottles and was punched and kicked before adults broke up the fight. It has been reported that the white assailant who threw the first punch was subsequently charged with simple battery (a misdemeanor), but there is no documentary evidence that anyone was charged.
• In a second major incident, a white high school graduate who had been involved in the assault the night before pulled a pump-action shotgun on three black high school students as they exited the Gotta-Go, a local convenience store. After a brief struggle for possession of the firearm, the black students exited the scene with the weapon.
• The Jena Times has reported that, in light of these racially-tinged incidents, several high school teachers begged school administrators to postpone the resumption of classes until the wave of hysteria had dissipated. This request was ignored and classes resumed the morning of Monday, December 4, 2006.
• Shortly after the lunch hour of Monday, December 4, 2006, a fight between a white student and a black student reportedly ended with the white student being knocked to the floor. Several black students reportedly attacked the white student as he lay unconscious. Because the incident took place in a crowded area and was over in a matter of seconds eye witness accounts vary widely. Written statements from students closest to the scene (in space and time) suggest that the incident was sparked by an angry exchange in the gymnasium moments before in which the black student assaulted at the Fair Barn was taunted for having his “ass whipped”.
• The victim of the attack is close friends of the boys who have admitted to hanging the nooses in September of 2006.
• Within an hour of the fight, six black students were arrested and charged with aggravated battery. According to The Jena Times, at least a dozen teachers subsequently threatened a "sick-out" if discipline was not restored to the school. According to the Alexandria Town Talk, District Attorney Reed Walters responded to the teacher's threat by upping the charges on the six boys to attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder—charges carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison.
• On the basis of the charges filed by the District Attorney's office, all six black students have been expelled for the remainder of the school year and, according to The Jena Times, several teachers quickly demanded that the accused boys be barred from the school for life.
• On December 13, 2006, District Attorney, Reed Walters published a statement in The Jena Times in which the young men arrested in the school fight incident were characterized as criminals who had been terrorizing both the school and the community. The sloppy wording of the statement and an introduction associating the tirade with the “recent two incidents at Jena High School” created the impression that those accused of involvement in the fight were also suspected of settling the school fire.
• The Louisiana Rules of Professional Conduct 3.6(a) state that: “A lawyer who is participating or has participated in the investigation or litigation of a matter shall not make an extrajudicial statement that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.”
• At a January 29 school board meeting called to consider the possibility of reversing the decision to expel the students, District Attorney Reed Walters, appeared as the school district's legal counsel. Although it is standard practice in Louisiana for district attorneys to represent the local school board, there is strong evidence that the disciplinary investigation undertaken by the school and the criminal investigation of the December 4 fight are virtually indistinguishable. This heightens the impression that the charges filed by DA Reed Walters reflect the understandable hysteria engulfing both the student body and the school faculty in the wake of the school fire and a weekend of racial violence.
• An attorney hired to represent two of the defendants was informed by District Judge J. P. Mauffray that he could represent neither because, having interviewed both clients, he had a conflict of interest if one of them should decide to testify for the state. This ruling has been appealed.

Preliminary Observations:

The competence and independence of investigators is seriously in doubt.
• There can be little doubt that a white student was assaulted by several black students at Jena High School on December 4, 2006. However, conflicting eye witness statements make it extremely difficult to determine the number of participants or the identity of the alleged assailants with any degree of certainty.
• It is virtually certain that at least one of the alleged assailants was not near the scene of the fight. Most of the students accused of participating in the assault deny involvement.
• The defendants are invariably described as “good kids” by black residents. One of the defendants is a highly respected athlete with a clean disciplinary record who has been repeatedly praised by his coaches as an exemplary student on and off the football field.
• The assault on a black student at the Fair Barn on Friday night and the fight at Jena High School on Monday morning are mirror images. In the first instance, a white twenty-two year-old initiated the fight with a punch to the face of a black seventeen year-old; at the school, a yet unidentified black student initiated the fight with a punch to the face. In both instances, the assailant’s friends joined the fray instantly. The striking difference is that the white youth responsible for the Friday incident have not been charged while those allegedly responsible for the school fight are facing charges that could send them to prison for 100 years without parole..
• Although a “bill of information” (based largely on mutually contradictory eye witness accounts) has been filed in connection with these cases, none of the accused has been formally indicted. In the state of Louisiana, only defendants facing the death penalty or life in prison must be indicted.
• In the state of Louisiana, if the victim of an alleged assault is a juvenile, the assailant can be found guilty of attempted second-degree murder even if there was no clear intent to do serious bodily harm. In other words, a seventeen year-old who strikes another seventeen year-old can end up doing fifty years without parole. Any “enhancement” (such as a prior conviction) doubles the penalty.

The behavior of school officials and school board members reflects a breathtaking insensitivity to the mixture of anger, intimidation and horror inspired by the hate crime of late August.
• The response of school administrators to a flagrant hate crime was radically insufficient. According to The Jena Times, the noose incident was officially characterized as a harmless prank in which white students were merely imitating the actions of cowboy vigilantes in the television mini-series, ‘Lonesome Dove’ with no intent to intimidate the black students who had expressed a desire to sit under the tree. This construal of the noose incident is so unconvincing that the objectivity of anyone who accepts it must be questioned by any reasonable observer.
• In several statements published in The Jena Times, investigators have insisted that the alleged fight at the High School has no connection to either the November fire or the September noose incident. This statement violates the canons of simple common sense. Indeed, as the teacher's post-fire plea to administrators suggests, the incendiary atmosphere created by the tragic fire and a weekend of white-initiated racial violence made a violent episode at the High School virtually certain. The objectivity and independence of LaSalle Parish investigators would be regarded as suspect by any reasonable person.
• Unambiguous hate crimes call for harsh discipline and an extensive program of sensitivity training for administrators, teachers and the student body. Yet school administrators failed to discuss this or any other serious option.
• Even in the face of heartfelt pleas from black parents, school administrators and the LaSalle Parish School Board refused to discuss the implications of the noose issue.
• This derogation of responsibility would be deeply troubling to any reasonable observer with even a cursory appreciation for the racial history of the region.
• Similarly, school administrators who placed the school on lockdown following the noose incident in September failed to anticipate trouble on December 4, 2006.

The ethical lapses and flawed professional judgment of LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters call for strong remedial action:
• On September 6, 2006, Mr. Walters made intimidating remarks interpreted by many black students as a suggestion that any illegal acts committed in response to the noose incident would result in a life sentence.
• Mr. Walters’ published comments in the December 13, 2006 edition of The Jena Times represent an unambiguous attempt to poison the minds of potential jurors and grand jurors.
• Mr. Walters’ decision to increase the charges of defendants involved in the alleged fight at the school to attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to attempt second-degree murder have transformed a routine school fight into a premeditated gangland hit perpetrated by street thugs intent on murder. This bizarre escalation of charges is impossible to justify on even the most extreme and pro-prosecution interpretation of the meager facts at hand.
• There is strong evidence that Mr. Walters, in his role as counsel for the LaSalle School Board, has been so influenced by the atmosphere of paranoid trauma sweeping the school in the aftermath of (a) the noose incident, (b) the school fire and (c) a weekend of racial violence, that he has lost any remnant of professional objectivity.

Response
Restoring justice to Jena will require the following:
• The Louisiana State Police must be assigned to the investigation of the alleged fight at the school.
• District Attorney Reed Walters must recuse himself from the investigation and prosecution of the black defendants in the alleged school fight of December 4, 2006 or the incident at the Gotta Go Convenience store on December 2, 2006.
• The legal cases cited above must be transferred to an alternative venue.
• A special prosecutor must be assigned to prosecute whatever charges (if any) are deemed appropriate on the basis of an independent state police investigation.
• The Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice should launch a full investigation into events in Jena, Louisiana, beginning with the noose incident of August 31, 2006, and culminating in the alleged fight of December 4, 2006 to determine if the civil rights of Jena residents have been violated.
• The inaction of the LaSalle Parish School Board on the noose incident represents a clear violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Therefore, a written complaint should be filed with the U.S. Department of Justice.
• The LaSalle Parish school system must institute a rigorous program of diversity education beginning in elementary school and continuing through high school with a particular focus on the history of race relations in America and the virtues of pluralism, mutual respect and equal opportunity. In addition, a yearly, system-wide in-service diversity training program must be provided for teachers and administrators.

Alan Bean
Friends of Justice
(806)995-3353
(806)729-7889
bean@cebridge.net

Alan Bean, Channon Christian is dead. Nobody died here. Keep things in perspective.

White side of the playground??...enough said

What does the grisly death of Channon Christian have to do with the obviously discriminatory atmosphere in Jena, LA? Are you trying to say that unless or until one of these black children is killed we shouldn't get too excited about it?

C'mon, Carrie. You CAN'T be serious...

So.....because Channon Christian was brutally murdered, I'm sorry, Channon and Hugh (since you apparently are not going to mention him Carrie), these incidents in Jena should just be ignored or left alone. Maybe it makes these incidents ok. For someone who is seemingly attempting to make sure folks don't forget about brutal injustice that Channon and Hugh suffered, it seems a little contradictory to minimize these incidents. As MaoMauMeow said, maybe one of the students needs to die before you care.

Is there anyway us distant yet concerned citizens can help support the African American community? Is there any type of formal organization in place where we can lend support?

Why yes there is Melissa, you can support the African American community by sending your donation to Rev. Jesse Jackson, Founder and PresidentRainbowPUSH Coalition, Inc , on the internet-RainbowPUSH Coalition. Reverend Jackson has been called the "Conscience of the Nation" and "the Great Unifier," challenging America to be inclusive and to establish just and human priorities for the benefit of all. He is known for bringing people together in common ground across lines of race, culture, class, gender and belief.

As to the idea that the DOJ should/could investigate or in any way get involved is in sane times a good idea, but these are not sane times. Gonzales,Bush and the Republican party of the south are or would be a proper investigatory body or do a proper investigation is in great doubt. And if they were involved they would politicise the entire incident and bend it or use it for spin fodder to their own biased advantage.
And these people call themselves pro-life and christians. So much for pro-life and christianity. The pro-life and christian movement has sold out to the Bushies and the republican party.
So much for my religion which has sold out to republican politics.

C'mon People!!!! This is 2007 not 1950! What the hell is wrong with this country?? Kids are Kids doesnt matter what color, and WHY SHOULD THEY EVEN HAVE TO ASK IF THEY CAN SIT ON A PARTICULAR SIDE OF PUBLIC OWNED PROPERTY??? EQUAL OP FOLKS! When is this school board, and apparentlt, the law, in this area of the country going to get with the times? There is no excuse for this.

In Compton, California, the Blacks don't like us Mexicans taking over the town and they bang us. Seems to me, this Jena, Louisiana stuff doesn't involve banging, so what's the big deal. Just some feeling got hurt. I wish that that was the extent of the problem in Compton. In the L.A. county jail, same problem, the Blacks don't like it that we are the new power now. The local politicians are smart enough to stay out of the problem. We know how to handle it.

This is another disturbing story of the no so latent racism that continues to simmer, just under the surface, and then occasionally boil up down in these parts. Just to put things into geographic perspective consider that in June 1998 James Byrd was dragged to death by racist skinhead Neo-Nazi about 3 hrs southwest of Jena in Jasper, Tx (the three suspects were convicted and sentenced to life and/or long prison terms).

In 2003 a group of white kids at a ‘pasture party’ beat Billy Ray Johnson senseless in Linden, TX (home of ragtime composer Scott Joplin, the Eagles’ Don Henley, and birthplace of blues legend T-Bone Walker [They Call It Stormy Monday’]) about 4 hrs drive northwest of Jena. The “kids” received minimal sentences from an all-white jury in their criminal trial - “Just boys being boys” - but the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees recently won a $9 million settlement for Mr. Johnson in Jasper’s civil court . Mr. Johnson is confined to a care facility for the rest of his life as a result of his head injury.

On December 30, 2006 newly elected black mayor Gerald Washington of Westlake, LA - 3 hrs southwest of Jena (right near Lake Charles) was found dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest in a parking lot. Although much controversy arose over this death and the evidently cavalier investigation by the local sheriff’s dept it now appears that his death was a bona fide suicide brought on by the recognition that his new found notoriety would also make public his massive gambling losses and serial marital infidelities and the case has been closed. The family, it must be said, continues to contest the findings of several supporting investigations and a 3rd autopsy by an independent pathologist hired by the family was inconclusive due to insufficient material evidence - a likely result of the poor crime-scene management.

On the 1st Sunday of the New Year, parties still unknown fired two shotgun blasts through the front window of the newly elected black mayor of Greenwood, LA - about 3 hrs northwest of Jena, just west of Shreveport - without injury to anyone. Despite an investigation including the FBI no charges have been filed.

Viewed in this perspective, it’s not at all surprising to see the kids in this story charged from the Jim Crow edition of the U.S. Penal Code.

I am not sure what happens with recent posts to old article, but here's hoping that some folks will see this.

Reading many of the comments, it seems it is easy to lose sight of the kids who are defendants (and one a convict). They are actually facing jail time which will have them out only by age 40!

My interest is "can I do something that will take only a little time, and make a difference?

I made an e-mail and sent it around and asked those I sent it to, to send it to five others, etc. I included info as the District Attorney's office, a link to an online petition, etc.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.
Just for info., the chronology in the initial posting by Diane Dees, is incorrect. The noose incident took place before, not after, the others.

Here are some addresses:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x37313

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2083762,00.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-elf2u1mmay20,1,3301167.story

SIGN the petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/aZ51CqmR/petition.html

District Attorney’s Office in Jena: 318 – 992 – 8282

The latest is that Mychal Bell, 17, is scheduled to be sentenced 7/31/07 he might be in prison for at least 25 years...

Any further info and ideas appreciated

What kind of world are we really living in. How do these people think that hanging a noose is funny and cute? We have children that are growing up in this madness. What do we tell them? How do we as sensable people deal with this type of mess?

What kind of world are we really living in. How do these people think that hanging a noose is funny and cute? We have children that are growing up in this madness. What do we tell them? How do we as sensable people deal with this type of mess?

An Open Letter To The Jena Six
By Joseph Young
Dear Mychal,
I keep thinking about you. I also think about the other young men who have fallen prey to racial hatred. Its existence, more than a century after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, makes me fearful for your life, your safety. The freedom that it promised was tenuous.
It was not entirely without strength. In the proclamation, issued three years into the Civil War, Lincoln declared, at the urging of Frederick Douglass, that the former slaves would be accepted into the Union Army and navy, making the liberated the liberator. By the war’s end, almost 200,000 black servicemen had fought for freedom and saved the Union.
Your generation, like mine, is being denied this freedom our ancestors risked life and limb, so that we may live as free men and women. You can call them heroes, but they were not thinking of themselves when they displayed courage and self-sacrifice on the battlefields of America.
Today, then, to guard against the impending doom of American civilization, is not only opposition to racism, but also the determination to secure the civil rights for which many Americans have paid a heavy toll. Of all the civil rights, the right to learn is the surest prevention from ignorance. If at any time, children are instructed with anti-black bias; and they are made to learn what is not true and what the dominate forces in their lives want them to think is true; there’re guilty of impeding the march toward American civilization.
Astonishing as it is that those students would hang three nooses from the tree at Jena High School as a racial taunt, including calling the black students ‘niggers’; you would think that America would never again want to see a black person hang from a tree, or behind bars. The nooses show that we, Americans, have not come that far from the cruelties and barbarity of slavery as we think. (Between 1882 and 1968, an estimated 5,000 people, mostly blacks, met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs.) And this also is an unfortunate comment upon the belief that our schools are the great path to progress, the great equalizer. If our schools are the great path to progress, they must be the freest of our institutions, opposed bitterly to the attempt to indoctrinate our children with racial hatred.
Well, Mychal, as you and the others wait behind bars because of a racially biased and an over zealous prosecutor, it is for us on the outside to continue the unfinished work of our fathers, to set you free. All of you were willing to fight racial hatred, and you know people of goodwill are beside you. If the Confederacy couldn’t stop us, the opposition we now face will fail. When history is written your detractors will get little note, but you will be remembered for standing up for what’s best of the American creed. You are part of a legacy in which our slave forebears fought to birth a new nation. You, Mychal, are a child of America’s destiny.
It was Martin Luther King who said if a man doesn’t have something worth dying for he is not fit to live. Freedom is worth dying for. Justice is worth dying for. Equality is worth dying for. A child is worth dying for, because our job as parents is to protect children.
Mychal, when you feel complete frustration and your narrow jail cell is closing in on your spirit and mind; remember the message of the old slave preacher to his flock whose resistance to oppression might have been completely in vain:
“You are created in God’s image. You are not slaves, you are not ‘niggers’; you are God’s children.”
Godspeed Mychal,
Your brother in the struggle, Joseph

It is indeed a sad state of afffairs when in this day and age so many of our young people have lost faith in the political and criminal justice system. Why, because of incidents just like this one. Our youth have been lied to for so long that they fear nothing, they respect nothing and they care about nothing. The courts,law enforcement and educators are not our children, they are the "smart, educated" law maker and enforcers who have done nothing to ensure equality. What is right about anyone serving 20 years in prison for an assult and battery case, nothing! What is fair or just about having to get permission to sit anywhere on public property, again nothing. Responsible adults have been entrusted to make decisions to protect and care for our well being but at what price. We elect politicians to represent us, to speak up again injustice, to make wrong things right, yet where are they when the elections are over? It's time to fix the problem, it's time to make wrong things right, it's time we do more than talk about change, it's time to make a positive change, and it starts with you and me and countless others who are sick and tired of injustice and political corruption. The time for change is NOW!!!

Has anyone looked into the background of Reed Walters, the prosecuting DA? The reason why I asked is because I cant seem to find anything on him except for his own home page.

I am not sure if any of you remember this, but when Michael Vick pleaded guilty to dogfighting charges, Senator Byrd took the podium on the floor, and announced "There's a special place in hell for you Michael Vick!" (in reference to his killing dogs). When I looked up his background in the senate, I found that Senator Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and recruited more than 1,000 members. He claimed when confronted with this information, that this was in his younger days and he was only a member no more than a year or two. When further investigation was done, it was found that he was a member of this organization possibly stretching into more than a couple of decades. I guess it was alright to intimidate, maim and kill black folk.

Apparently, Barbara, it's still alright to intimidate, maim and kill black folk: But this time, it's black folks killing black folks at record rate in America--to say nothing of the black folk who rape, beat, and kill white folk. Get your story straight, baby girl.

Barbie, your post is nonsense. People can change. It doesn't matter what you did yesterday, what are you doing for me today. Live in the present, not the past. The past is gone, the future has not come, you only have the present. Make the most of today. Ommm.

Following the beating incident, the Justice Department reopened its investigation into the noose-hanging incident and determined there was no link between the nooses and the attack on Justin Barker at Jena High School. U.S. Attorney Donald Washington told CNN that, “A lot of things happened between the noose hanging and the fight occurring, and we have arrived at the conclusion that the fight itself had no connection.” He added that none of the black students involved in the beating made “any mention of nooses, of trees, of the ‘N’ word or any other word of racial hate.” According to CNN, federal official also examined the way the school handled the infractions and whether black students were being treated differently than white students. Washington told CNN that they discovered “it was not unusual for the school superintendent to reinstate students after the principal recommends expelling them.” Washington also told CNN that the 16-year-old defendant, Mychal Bell, has “several previous assault charges on his record.”

The CNN story (”U.S. Attorney: Nooses, Beating at Jen High Not Related”) is online at http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/09/19/jena.six.link/index.html

As Washington pointed out, none of the black students accused of assaulting Barker allege that Barker taunted them or used racial slurs. Witnesses to the beating said that Barker never spoke to the black students and was unaware of their presence until he was attacked. Two of the Jena Six denied they were involved in the beating and the others said they were angry because they overheard Barker discussing the fight at the private party.

The fight at the private party did not involve white students or white kids, it involved some members of the Jena Six and white adults. Both blacks and whites were invited to the private party at the Jena Fair Barn. Trouble started when a group of uninvited black youths, including Robert Bailey, attempted to crash the party. When one of the hosts, a white woman, asked them to leave, they refused. Rather than calling police to eject the party crashers, a 22-year-old white male named Justin Sloan confronted the party crashers and hit Robert Bailey. Sloan was charged with battery. He pled guilty to the charge and was granted parole because it was his first offense.

The Jena Police Department and prosecutor’s office have repeatedly refuted allegations Sloan hit Bailey with a beer bottle are false or that the fight involved gangs of white kids are false. These allegations began appearing in blogs only after the Jena incidents drew national attention. In his police statement, Bailey says merely that Sloan and Matt Windham, a 21-year-old male, hit him. To date, Sloan is the only person convicted and sentenced in connection with the Jena Six incidents.

Three circumstances elevate charges of simple battery to aggravate battery: (1) a deadly weapon is used, (2) serious bodily injury is inflicted, and (3) the victim is vulnerable, defenseless or helpless. Sloan was charged with simple battery rather than aggravated battery because he did not use a weapon, and no serious injures were inflicted (Bailey did not require medical attention). The Jena Six have been charged with aggravated battery because serious injuries were inflicted (Barker required medical treatment and his medical expenses are estimated at $14,000) and because the attack continued after Bailey lay helpless and unconscious on the ground.

(The police documents relevant to the Jena Six incidents, including police statements made by alleged victims, alleged assailants and witnesses to the events, are posted near the bottom of the page at http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/http. The site includes the medical report on Barker’s injuries.)

The local prosecutor “said he didn’t prosecute the students accused of hanging the nooses because he could find no applicable Louisiana law.” This does is not an indication of unequal treatment. Walters also filed no hate crime charges against the Jena Six. Louisiana has no applicable hate crime laws