Posted on 12/21/2007 8:31:48 AM PST by BradtotheBone
NEW ORLEANS — Members of the Congressional Black Caucus called on Gov. Kathleen Blanco to pardon Mychal Bell and five other teenagers known as the "Jena 6."
Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said in a letter to Blanco this week that Bell and the other teens have paid their debt to society and should be immediately pardoned.
"They and their families have suffered enough, as has the State of Louisiana and the town of Jena," the letter reads.
Fourteen other members of the caucus joined Lee in urging Blanco to support releasing Bell, who was sentenced to 18 months in a juvenile facility on Dec. 3 for his role in an assault last year on Justin Barker, a white student at Jena High School.
An e-mailed request for comment from Blanco was not immediately returned.
Bell pleaded guilty to a juvenile charge of second-degree battery in return for a deal that gave him credit for the 10 months he had already served. Without the deal, the 17-year-old faced being placed in a juvenile facility until his 21st birthday.
Although he has only about eight months left to serve in the case, Bell is serving a separate 18-month sentence for previous juvenile charges unrelated to the Barker dispute. He has about 16 months left on that sentence, which runs concurrently with the sentence in the Barker case.
The charges against Bell and the others sparked a huge civil-rights demonstration in Jena in September. The activists said prosecutors treated blacks more harshly than whites.
Three months before the attack on Barker, three other white teens were accused of hanging nooses from a tree at the high school. The three were suspended from school but were never criminally charged.
LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters, in an e-mailed statement Thursday, said the attack on Barker was not just a schoolyard fight "but rather an unprovoked, unforeseen assault on a young man who had nothing to do with the hanging of the nooses."
Charges against Robert Bailey Jr., 18; Carwin Jones, 19; Theo Shaw, 18 and Bryant Purvis, 18 have been reduced from attempted murder to aggravated second-degree battery.
There’s too much hatred for Whites in that “community”. So much, that they are willing to allow criminals to go free just because they beat up Whites.
With this sort of garbage, the “community” will never get over its self-inflicted pathologies.
OJ revisited.
I am ‘black’ and therefor cannot be held responsible for anything I do.
It’s one thing to stand up for someone being “railroaded”. It’s another thing all together to stand up for criminals because they are of the same race as you. This is pathetic.
The second time is the one that is going to be fun to watch Jesse and Al try to justify when the cameras get shoved in their faces...
So let me get this straight: Six black “youths” beat the living daylights out of a white kid, but because a different white kid had hung a noose up three months earlier, the black kids have already paid their debt to society?
So, in an earlier case in which a black all-pro running back stabs his ex-wife and her friend to death, if the investigating officer had used the “N-word” twenty years prior, the perpetrator is innocent, despite the existence of enough damning DNA evidence to float a battleship?
When you let thugs be thugs, don’t be surprised when they act like thugs. duh
"They and their families have suffered enough, as has the State of Louisiana and the town of Jena," the letter reads.
No mention of and thus no concern for the victims or their families. Typical black liberal...
We don't want her, but she has no business in La.
Hey, they’re just protecting their meal tickets in their local black communities. So their communities stay the same or become worse but who cares, it’s the numbers that matters most. The problem comes when affluent communities do the same and their communities become better and Americans have to explain why the rich get richer and the poor stay the same or become poorer.
I wish the best for these young men, but my gut says lifetime criminals.
We can’t get a pardon for our wrongfully convicted law enforcement, but lets pardon these thugs because they are black and the victim was white. Amazing the power of race politics.
How telling... These thugs (particularly in the case of Bell) already were criminals who were basically looking to whoop somebody.
Funny - had this been a gang of white kids beating up a black kid, those same congressional "Black Caucus" members would be screaming for hate crimes prosecution.
While hanging a noose from a tree is pretty ugly and distasteful, what physical harm did it cause? But the "appropriate" response was for a gang of black thugs to beat this other student?
These black "supposed" leaders scream about uneven application of the law - yet they are the biggest offenders. They only want "even" when it helps "their own". I am sick of double standards. How about holding criminals accountable for their crime - black, white, yellow, green, purple, red, whatever color they are. Is that so difficult?
No more excuses - you do the crime, you do the time (and or pay the cost). Skin color, social status, economics, gender, "orientation" - whatever - you pay the price.
Now THAT is an appropriate use of the term!
The party of thugs in action as usual.
No way. No how. They need to face the music.
They’re black - so they’re obviously innocent.
(/sarcasm)
If that is what you beleive happened, then you have been “hoodwinked”.
Re #6 Second Paragraph:
O.J. Simpson was not let off because Mark Fuhrman used the word “nigger” twenty years prior. O.J. Simpson was let off because the powers that be at that time did not want the blacks to burn down Los Angeles again. IMO.
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