Jena Six
A number of events had taken place in and around Jena in the months before the Barker assault, which the media have associated with an alleged escalation of local racial tensions.
[1] Federal and parish attorneys concluded from their investigations that assessment was inaccurate for some of the events; for instance, the burning of the high school was an attempt to destroy grade records.
Six students—Robert Bailey, then aged 17; Mychal Bell, then 16; Carwin Jones, then 18; Bryant Purvis, then 17; Jesse Ray Beard, then 14; and Theo Shaw, then 17—were arrested for the assault of Barker.
The Jena Six case sparked protests by people who considered the arrests and subsequent charges, initially attempted second-degree murder, as excessive and racially discriminatory.
[7] According to Donald Washington, United States Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, the principal said the question was posed in a "jocular fashion".
[6] Craig Franklin, assistant editor of The Jena Times, said the nooses were hung as a prank by three students directed at white members of the school rodeo team.
The school's investigating committee had concluded that "the three young teens had no knowledge that nooses symbolize the terrible legacy of the lynchings of countless blacks in American history".
[1] On December 28, 2007, LaSalle Parish Sheriff-elect Scott Franklin announced that an investigation had shown that the fire was set in an effort to destroy grade records in the building and to close the school for a time.
[8] The following day, an incident occurred at the Gotta Go convenience store, outside Jena in unincorporated LaSalle Parish, between Matt Windham and three black youths, including Bailey.
On September 14, 2007, Louisiana's Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Bell's battery conviction, agreeing that this remaining charge was not among those for which a juvenile may be tried as an adult.
Three days before the trial began, he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of battery, and was sentenced to 18 months in a juvenile facility, with credit for time served.
[47] Because Louisiana law considers seventeen-year-olds to be adults for purposes of criminal culpability, the charges for these four were unaffected by the appellate ruling overturning Bell's conviction.
[51] Yeager, who presided over the plea and sentencing, also ordered the youths to avoid criminal activity, and not to disavow the statement made on their behalf in court.
[13] Witt had received a summary of the situation[57] from Alan Bean, a Texas minister who had founded the advocacy group Friends of Justice.
[60] The case began to receive more extensive national media coverage in July 2007, with CNN interviewing Jena residents and parents of those involved.
[61] Given the racial history of the Deep South, many news reports from Jena evoked the Civil Rights Movement, referred to historic lynching, or Jim Crow.
They have used the case to discuss broader trends of racism in the US criminal justice system and to call for a renewed civil rights movement.
The New York Post, in a September 23, 2007, editorial, stated "it's impossible to examine the case of the so-called Jena Six without concluding that these black teens have been the victims of a miscarriage of justice, with a clearly racial double standard at work".
[64] Byron Williams, writing on the Huffington Post, was one of several to cite the Urban League's 2005 finding that the average black male convicted of aggravated assault serves 48 months in prison, one-third longer than a comparable white man.
[68] Other columnists have argued that inaccuracies in the media coverage unfairly tarnish the town and have led to a national overreaction, part of the tendency in the 24-hour news cycle.
Dallas Morning News columnist Heather MacDonald, while condemning the noose hangings as a "despicable provocation", said that "the media, the (race) advocates and pandering politicians have erupted in an outpouring of seeming joy at the alleged proof that America remains a racist country".
[17] Craig Franklin, assistant editor of The Jena Times, who says that he is the only writer to have covered this story from its inception, wrote in The Christian Science Monitor, "I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism.
[38] Attendees included civil rights activists Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Martin Luther King III,[74] and rappers Mos Def[75] and Salt-n-Pepa.
[76] Darryl Hunt, an African American who was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a young white newspaper reporter in 1984, was scheduled as a keynote speaker.
Online advocacy group Color of Change, which had previously advocated for victims of Hurricane Katrina, called for District Attorney Walters to drop all charges and for Governor Kathleen Blanco to investigate his conduct.
Questions about the money were first sparked by photos posted on Robert Bailey's former MySpace account, which show him with quantities of hundred dollar bills stuffed in his mouth.
[89] In his November 10 report, Chicago Tribune correspondent Howard Witt noted that Color of Change was the only national civil rights group to be fully transparent with their use of the funds.
[90] On September 22, 2007, the FBI opened an investigation of a white supremacist website that listed the addresses of five of the Jena Six and the telephone numbers of some of their families "in case anyone wants to deliver justice".
When the Barkers' attorney learned that Jesse Ray Beard was using defense funds (which might be garnished under a civil suit) to pay for private school, he decided to push ahead with the case.
[53] On August 6, Judge Yeager terminated Beard's probation (he remained under the conditions of his bail release in the Barker incident) so he could attend the Canterbury School in Connecticut.
