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Five of the six black high school students charged with attempted murder in 2006 for allegedly beating a white classmate pleaded no contest... The men agreed to plea deals that settled lawsuits filed against them by Justin Barker and his family the year after the December 4, 2006.... Parents of the Jena Six say they heard Barker was hurling racial epithets, but Barker's parents insist he did nothing to provoke the beating. At the hearing, attorneys representing the five men read a statement expressing sympathy to the Barkers and acknowledging that Justin Barker did not use a racial slur. They...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Five of six black teens accused of beating a white high school classmate in a case that led to the biggest civil rights protest in decades will plead guilty in a deal expected to be finalized this week, Louisiana court officials involved with the case told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The six students were initially charged with attempted murder in the 2006 attack on Justin Barker and became known as the "Jena Six," after the town where the beating took place. Charges against Carwin Jones, Jesse Ray Beard, Robert Bailey Jr., Bryant Purvis and Theo...

MONROE, La. – A teen convicted in the "Jena Six" beating case shot himself in the chest and was taken to the hospital Monday, days after his arrest on a shoplifting charge, police said. Mychal Bell's wound isn't life threatening, said Monroe Police Sgt. Cassandra Wooten. The 18-year-old used a .22-caliber firearm in the shooting around 7:40 p.m., she said.

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An attorney for Mychal Bell claims Bell's father attacked her Wednesday after a hearing with the Louisiana High School Athletic Association.Carol Powell Lexing of Monroe, an indigent defense attorney, filed a report with Baton Rouge police stating that Marcus Jones spat in her face and pushed her down in an elevator after the LHSAA denied Bell an extra year of athletic eligibility.Bell, one of the “Jena Six” defendants accused of beating up a fellow high school student, sought to regain the year of eligibility he lost while awaiting trial. Bell was convicted of second-degree battery, a conviction that was later...

“(S)ome Americans do not understand why the sight of a noose causes such a visceral reaction,” declared President Bush to the White House gathering for Black History Month. As the Washington Post rushed to remind us, President Bush was “responding to news coverage of such episodes as the ‘Jena Six.’” But if history is about truth, not myth, that news coverage deserves another look, before the Jena Six enter the history books alongside Emmett Till and “the Scottsboro Boys.” By now, most folks know the media story. White students at Jena High in Louisiana hung nooses on a tree to...

WASHINGTON — It was November 2006 when Senator Barack Obama first gathered friends and advisers at a Washington law firm to brainstorm about what it would take for him to win the presidency. Those who attended the meeting said the mix of excitement and trepidation at times felt asphyxiating, as the group weighed the challenges of such a long shot. Would Mr. Obama be able to raise enough money? What kind of toll would a campaign take on him and... --snip-- Aides said Mr. Obama’s campaign was unaware of the magnitude of the tensions brewing in Jena, La., over charges...

A Hebron High School student said a member of the "Jena Six" choked him and then pushed his head into a bench, bruising his eye, according to an arrest warrant affidavit released by Denton County on Thursday. Bryant Purvis, 19, was charged with assault and released from Denton County Jail early Thursday morning after posting $1,000 bond.

A defendant in the Louisiana "Jena Six" case was arrested after allegedly slamming a student's head into a bench at his new school in Texas, police said. The defendant, Bryant R. Purvis, 19, was arrested on a charge of assault causing bodily injury Wednesday after an altercation at Hebron High School. It began because Purvis believed a student had flattened his tires, Sgt. John Singleton said. Purvis was released from jail Thursday morning. According to a police report, the student felt Purvis come behind him and "grab his neck with one hand and begin to choke him." Purvis then said,...

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We have had a fairly mixed year. Both good stories and bad were bountiful, and sometimes good and bad news came together to neutralize mega-stories. Take Pakistan, where Pervez Musharraf’s lifting of both his military uniform and his country’s State of Emergency was closely followed by the untimely assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Nobody quite knows what the net effect of these events will be.

New Orleans, LA (AHN) - A black teenager whose case fueled one of the biggest civil rights protests in the U.S. is expected to enter a guilty to a misdemeanor on Monday. If Mychal Bell, 17, enters a misdemeanor please, he will avoid a second trial for aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy for his role in attacking Justin Barker, a white student from Jena High School. Barker was unconscious, but survived the attack. Although he was treated in the emergency room for several hours, he managed to attend a school event on the same evening a year ago. Bell's first...

JENA, La. - A judge ruled Wednesday that the public and the news media should have full access to all legal proceedings involving Mychal Bell, one of the teenage defendants in the racially-charged Jena 6 case in Louisiana, whose prosecution had been shrouded in secrecy on orders of the trial judge. Ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Chicago Tribune and joined by a coalition of major U.S. media companies, Rapides Parish District Judge Thomas Yeager ordered that Bell's upcoming criminal trial, as well as any pre-trial hearings, must be open to the press and the public. Yeager also ordered...

JENA La. A state district judge filed papers Thursday indicating that he would open to the public the upcoming juvenile trial of one of the six black teenagers charged with beating a white classmate. But District Judge J.P. Mauffray, in the court filing, also argued he was not required to open the juvenile proceedings and asked that a lawsuit, filed by several news media to do so, be dismissed. Mauffray is the presiding judge over Mychal Bell's case but disqualified himself from hearing the news media's request because he was named as a defendant in the litigation. The Associated Press...

By now, almost everyone in America has heard of Jena, La., because they've all heard the story of the "Jena 6." White students hanging nooses barely punished, a schoolyard fight, excessive punishment for the six black attackers, racist local officials, public outrage and protests – the outside media made sure everyone knew the basics. There's just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing...

"Oh, oh, oh Jena, take your nooses down."Let's see who accuses me of misinterpreting this.... Initially five of the "Jena Six" teens were charged with attempted 2nd degree murder, to be tried as adults by an all-white jury.As we've covered this "all-white jury" thing here, it's plainly obvious that Mr. Mellencamp is starved for relevance and attention. He clearly hasn't kept up on the facts of this case, but when it comes to the entertainment royalty, facts are for some gopher to look up if necessary. This appears to be a lame song and a lame attempt to interject himself...

JENA, La. | Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and talk-show hosts certainly feasted on the racial unrest in this tiny central Louisiana town. But it would be unfair to claim they threw the match that ignited the Jena Six case into a global blaze of hostility and misinformation. That distinction belongs to Alan Bean, a 54-year-old white, self-proclaimed Baptist minister from Tulia, Texas. “Do I know him?” was LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters’ sarcastic and dismissive response when I asked about Bean during a 45-minute interview. “People are reluctant to say it,” said Craig Franklin, editor of the Jena Times,...

On the September 28th Democracy Now! broadcast, hostess Amy Goodman led off the program's headlines with... Black Teen Jailed in Jena Six Case Freed on Bail In Jena, Louisiana, the seventeen year old Mychal Bell -- one of the Jena Six -- has been released on bail after ten months in prison. Bell and five other African American high school students were arrested last year for beating a white student during a schoolyard fight. The fight occurred after white students hung three nooses in a tree in the schoolyard. An all-white jury convicted Bell of aggravated second-degree battery.

*** I do not question the sincerity or motivation of the 10,000 or more protesters who descended on Jena last week, after riding hundreds of miles on buses. But long before reaching our town of 3,000 people, they had decided that a miscarriage of justice was taking place here. Their anger at me was summed up by a woman who said, “If you can figure out how to make a schoolyard fight into an attempted murder charge, I’m sure you can figure out how to make stringing nooses into a hate crime.” That could be a compelling statement to someone...

As thousands of people rallied in Jena, La., for six black youths charged with assaulting a white classmate, the FBI was monitoring a neo-Nazi activist in Roanoke who posted their names and addresses on a Web site that proclaimed: "Lynch the Jena 6." William A. White also listed some of the defendants' telephone numbers, urging his readers to "Get in touch, and let them know justice is coming."[snip].......[snip] An FBI official said the agency is aware of White's posting. "The FBI reviews information provided for possible violations under our jurisdiction, and would seek a prosecutive opinion at the appropriate time,"...