Joe Carter has an excellent post on the Jena 6, the six young thugs who beat a boy senseless and whose charges were protested by thousands of demonstrators from all over the country.
More than 40 witnesses saw Mychal Bell (age 16), Robert Bailey, Jr. (17), Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Theo Shaw (17), and Jesse Ray Beard (14) viciously attack Justin Barker (17).
According to the witness statements, several people claim to have seen Bell punch Barker from behind, instantly knocking him to the concrete walkway. Witnesses say the other students then stomped on Barker, kicking him in the face and head as he was on the ground.
(This, by the way, is the event that Colbert King, the despicable columnist for the Washington Post, referred to as a "schoolyard fight.")
So the facts of the situation are that one cowardly thug sucker-punches a kid from behind and then joins with five other cowards in stomping the unconscious body. For this crime the "Free the Jena Six" crowd believes the proper punishment is....nothing.
But wait, it gets better.
Much of the outcry has come because Mychal Bell, the main cowardly thug, was tried as an adult. But let's examine why this was considered by the prosecution.
On Christmas Day 2005 Bell punched a 17-year-old girl in the face. (Yes, this cowardly thug not only sucker-punches boys from behind, he punches girls from the front too.) For this action Bell was charged with battery and put on probation until his 18th birthday. Nine months later he was charged with criminal damage to property. Two months after that, Bell was charged again with battery and again with criminal damage to property.
He was convicted of two of these charges in early September 2006. A few days later Bell was leading the Jena Giants to a shutout victory in a football game against the Buckeye Panthers. (You see, in the South, you can punch a girl in the face, destroy property, and, as long as you're a star athlete, you'll usually get off with a slap on the wrist.)
So one of the reasons that Bell was being tried as an adult after assaulting Barker was that he was already on probation for four previous violent crimes.
This vicious assault was dismissed by columnist Leonard Pitts as merely a case of "six American children [sic] with dark skin ... charged with attempted murder after jumping a pale child whose injuries amounted to a black eye and a concussion." This is ludicrous. The boy was knocked unconscious and had medical bills, according to his lawyer, of over $14,000. I wonder what Pitts would have said about the attack if it had been his child knocked unconscious by six white thugs.
Read the rest of Carter's post and weep for the lost hope of color-blind justice in America.
RLC