Posted on 01/14/2008 12:56:46 PM PST by mojito
In early December the case of the "Jena Six"--the six African-American high school students in Louisiana accused of viciously beating a white classmate in 2006--collapsed dramatically with a felony guilty plea by one of the defendants. As something that was going to trigger "America's next great civil rights movement" (to quote National Public Radio) and grassroots protests against the "new Jim Crow" and the systematic discrimination against blacks in the criminal justice system, this was quite a letdown. The Jena Six were supposed to be the new Scottsboro Boys, the nine black youths railroaded to death sentences by all-white juries in 1930s Alabama on charges of raping two white women.
But the best known of the Jena Six, Mychal Bell, appeared with his team of lawyers at the parish courthouse in this tiny Central Louisiana town of 3,000 on December 3 and pled guilty to second-degree battery, to intentionally inflicting serious bodily injury on another person. In doing so, Bell--who will turn 18 this month and who had repeatedly denied any involvement in the attack--admitted that on December 4, 2006, he hit 17-year-old Justin Barker from behind, slamming Barker's head against a concrete beam outside the gym at Jena High School and knocking him unconscious, and that he then joined a group in stomping and kicking Barker in the head. Bell agreed to serve 18 months in juvenile custody for the offense and to "testify truthfully" concerning the involvement of the other five members of the Jena Six should their cases come to trial....
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Ecxept in this instance there IS a victim of violent crime.
I think stories like this, and the Duke “rape” case, and Tawana Brawley, and accusations that the Clintons themeselves are racist for attacking a black politician are starting to make more and more people grow weary of seeing the race card played.
The facts of the Jena case were not seriously disputed. The claim was that the attempted murder charge was excessive, and if it had been a group of white kids delivering the beat-down, it would not have been charged that way. That’s the claim — and once the race card was played, a lot of folks bet reflexively.
I disagree that the story “collapsed dramatically.” It just ended. It got a third act and the curtain fell. Mychal Bell pled guilty to a lesser charge, which is what he’d wanted all along. The folks who roam the countryside looking for something to protest got to vent for a while, and then moved on. The folks in Jena who wanted to to get it over with can now go back to their normal lives. Happy ending all around.
Happy for you, perhaps, but not for me.
And not happy for others who may look for realistic reporting from media sourcs.
And not happy for other victims of thugs who wave a race card to make themselves appear to be the victims.
Unhappy for those who care about justice and the rule of law.
But....happy for you.
Sleep well, if you are lucky your cavalier attitude will not cause you or your family harm in the furure.
But, maybe not.
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