Lawmakers Seek Answers in "Jena Six" Case

By Darryl Fears
The Washington Post

Tuesday 16 October 2007

Under a barrage of questions from members of the House Judiciary Committee, a federal prosecutor said today that the hanging of nooses at a high school in Jena, La. constituted a hate crime, but that charges were not brought because the students allegedly responsible were juveniles.

The explanation by Donald Washington, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, came early in a hearing that was at times emotionally charged. It was the first Congressional session to address year-long racial tension in the rural town that led to fistfights and other inter-racial confrontations, the prosecution of six black high school students in the beating of a white student and a large civil rights march on the defendants behalf.

Washington, who is black, was questioned sharply by black committee members about why he did not intervene as racial strife in the small town grew after the nooses, an historic symbol of racial lynchings, were hung in a tree outside the high school, and why he did not engage the white prosecutor who charged the black juveniles as adults.

One student, Mychal Bell, was convicted on battery charges by an all-white jury and faced up to 22 years in prison. A state appeals court reversed the decision, ruling that Bell should not have been tried in an adult court. Bell was released from prison after nine months but was recently incarcerated again for a probation violation.

The white students who hung the nooses were suspended and forced to attend disciplinary courses. Jena High School's principal, who is white, sought to expel them, but he was overruled by the school superintendent, who is also white and called the nooses a schoolboy prank.

Thousands of people marched in Jena last month to protest what they called the overzealous prosecution of the six black students, who at one point were charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

A number of other nooses have been found, creating high-profile incidents around the country, in the weeks after the Jena protest made headlines.

Washington told the committee he could not stop the LaSalle Parish district attorney, Reed Walters, from proceeding with the charges because the federal government's authority in the case is limited. "I want to assure this committee that the Department of Justice was engaged," he said.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) did not accept that response. "I want you to tell me why you, the first black Western U.S. district attorney, did not do more, and I want to know what you're going to do to get Mychal Bell out of jail!"

"I did intervene," Washington said. "I will tell you that just like you were offended (by the charges), I was offended."

Washington said for the first time publicly that the department is gathering evidence to determine whether there are racial disparities in Louisiana's judicial system and in its application of justice.

The crowded hearing, chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), was attended by prominent black civil rights activists including Martin Luther King III, Dick Gregory and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who testified along with Harvard University professor Charles Ogletree.

"There is a cancer in Jena, and we're treating it with aspirin and good wishes and hope," Ogletree said. "When any public official tells a child that a noose is a prank, a practical joke ... they are not addressing the underlying issue."

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