Blacks Don't Stand a Chance in Jena

Tweet Reminiscent of the black teenaged girl sentenced to (possibly) 7 years for allegedly pushing an adult school aide (who was not harmed), the young man in this story has received a very harsh sentence (to 20 years) for an alleged beating of a white student at his school. Whole story here: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/blacks-dont-stand-a-change-in-jena/

"When Black students staged a protest under the tree at Jena High, LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters was called in. Appearing with police at an assembly, Walters reportedly warned Black students against any more “incidents,” allegedly telling them, “I can make your lives disappear with a stroke of my pen.”

"On December 4, the fight erupted that would lead to the charges against the Jena Six.
A group of Black students at the high school allegedly assaulted a white student, Justin Baker, on his way out of the gym, knocked him unconscious and kicked him after he hit the floor. Baker was reportedly a friend of the students who had hung the nooses, and some reports say he had been taunting Black students before the fight.

True to his word, the district attorney went on the attack, charging all six Black students–four as adults–and pushing for attempted murder charges, with maximum sentences of 100 years each. All six students were immediately expelled from school.

Later, the attempted murder charges were reduced to “aggravated battery.” But this charge is supposed to depend on the use of a dangerous weapon. Since there was no evidence that Bell or the other teens had a gun, knife or other weapon, Walters argued that the tennis shoes Bell was wearing at the time of the attack qualified as a “dangerous weapon.”

The trial that followed for Mychal Bell is all too typical of “justice” for Blacks in the U.S. today.
The jury that heard the case was all white, and took just three hours to convict Bell. The witnesses at the trial were all white. Trial Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr. ruled that the noose incident was irrelevant to the case and couldn’t be mentioned at trial, meaning that much of the original context of the fight was never heard.

Reports from witnesses at the trial suggest that Bell’s public defender, Blane Williams, was unprepared, and more interested in pushing for a plea deal than proving Bell’s innocence. He failed to put a single witness on the stand, or to present any evidence at all in Bell’s defense.
Williams failed to challenge the all-white composition of the jury, as well. He told the Associated Press that he was sure he could “get a fair trial” anyway.

Alan Bean, director of Friends of Justice, a Texas-based civil rights group, attended the trial and told the Associated Press, “Blane Williams did not want to go to trial, he was not prepared to go to trial, and he was angry when he was forced to go to trial. So he just sort of plowed ahead and decided to go through the motions.”

During the trial, several witnesses claimed they saw Bell struck the first blow in the assault–key to proving the charge against him. But other witnesses said that the white student struck first, and still others said they couldn’t tell who struck the first blow, or if Bell was even among the group of students–a clear indication that there should have been reasonable doubt as to whether Bell was guilty.

Now, Mychal Bell faces a 20-year sentence, five more young Black men will go on trial soon, and Black residents live each day in fear of racist violence. As Vivian Thompson, a friend of the Bell family, told the Alexandria-Pineville Town Talk, “Blacks do not stand a chance here. I want to see justice. This wasn’t it.”

Found on Dissident Voice.com