Defending the indefensible

It became clear to me this past week that race relations in this country are never more than a single incident away from falling to pieces.

To say that what happened in Jena, Louisiana, is a microcosm of the problem of racism is irresponsible.

It's not. It's just another case of misguided justice in the wildwood of rural America.

For those of you who know nothing of the saga that has unfolded in central Louisiana over the past year, here is the truncated version:

Jena, a small town of less than 5,000 people, is overwhelmingly white; and, like most cities in the Deep South, it has a sizeable minority of blacks that is, for lack of a better term, cordoned off in one part of town.

Late last year, when several black students at Jena High School decided they wanted to sit under a shade tree that was, ostensibly, for whites only (called the "white tree"), all hell broke loose in the town.

The following day, three whites students hung nooses from the tree and were subsequently compelled to serve in-school suspensions for a short period of time. (This, in spite of the fact that both the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office felt the incident rose to the level of a hate crime.)

Months later, a white student was attacked in the schoolyard by six black students. The student was badly beaten, but did not spend the night in the hospital.

Five of the students, inexplicably, were charged with attempted second-degree murder. The sixth was charged as a juvenile.

One of the six, Mychal Bell, was also a juvenile at the time of the incident (he was 16) and was tried as an adult.

Bell, whose record wasn't clean to begin with, never stood a chance:

--He faced an all white jury drawn from an all white pool.

--His court-appointed attorney failed to call a single witness, believing that the prosecution hadn't proven its case. (Something that could not have been evident considering the unanimous verdict the jury returned.)

--He had to answer to a zealous prosecutor who, from the outside looking in, did not fulfill his duty without respect to persons.

The trumped up charges against Bell and the others were eventually reduced to aggravated second-degree battery--a charge that requires the use of a "deadly weapon." Since no deadly weapon was involved, the district attorney was successful in convincing the all-white and (apparently) all-clueless jury that the accused's tennis shoes were deadly weapons.

Bell was convicted of the crime that carried a maximum punishment of 22 years in prison. Soon after, the conviction was overturned by the the Louisiana Court of Appeals. (The district attorney in Lasalle Parish is set to appeal the Appeals Court decision.)

The charges against the other four (sans the minor) are unaffected by the decision in Bell's case, as they were all over 17 at the time and, according to Louisiana law, technically adults.

What has happened in Jena is tragic on three fronts.

--The charges against these six individuals were CLEARLY trumped up and race DID play a role in their treatment. The white students that precipitated this conflict got a slap on the wrist. (This was not the only incident in the town that year that involved preferential treatment for whites, however.)

--The district attorney failed to seek justice for the young man who was beaten. Instead, he sought retribution; the punishment doesn't fit the crime.

--The district attorney's apparent double standard in the issuance of charges for whites and blacks convicted of the same crime puts people like me in a position to defend six young men who do not deserve it. They made a huge mistake, and deserve to be punished. Unfortunately they are now considered victims--and for good reason.

Racism does exist in this country, and this will never change. What has to change, however, is the way we react in this country to incidents like the one in Jena.

If I didn't know any better, I would think that this one incident in this tiny town in Lousiana actually set race relations back to the mid 50s.

Again, it didn't.

During these moments people seem all too eager to run to a side, blindly defending the indefensible.

The Jena Six committed a crime.

The district attorney is Jena is probably a racist.

I'm not going to waste any time defending the actions of either.