Jena 6 Case Raises Questions of Bias in US Justice
ATLANTA — Witnesses described the schoolyard fight in rural Jena, La., as short but violent, as six black teens beat a white classmate unconscious. Instead of being expelled, five of the six young men - who’ve become known as the “Jena 6″ - were charged with attempted murder.
Although those charges were later reduced for all but one defendant, thousands of protesters flocked to the small town Thursday to march and call attention to what they say is a biased justice system that treats minorities more harshly than it does whites.
There’s evidence to back them up. Despite a narrowing of the racial gap in the past decade, the average black juvenile remains far more likely to be arrested and convicted than his white counterpart. But researchers are divided on whether race or other factors, such as poverty, are the driving factor.
With the case inspiring smaller protests elsewhere in the nation, it has become a cause célèbre for everyone from college students to Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton, who have all weighed in on behalf of the black men.
The issue of biased justice, especially for young African-Americans, has been a longstanding complaint in the African-American community. And while disparities are less blatant than they were in the era of civil rights marches, they can still touch off mass protest, as Thursday’s march showed.
The level of bias in the system is a another matter, however.
“Do we have a criminal justice system that mistreats people on the basis of race? No,” says Kenneth Nunn, a University of Florida law professor who specializes in issues of race in the courts. “The principle is not the issue, but the practical application [of law] is where you see the problems.”
Nationally, black youths are significantly more likely to be tried as adults than are white youths, according to a January report from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. The same report states that while black youths make up 16 percent of the general adolescent population, they make up 38 percent of the approximately 100,000 youths being held in local and state detention facilities.
The irony, some say, is that mass outpouring of support in cases like the Jena 6 may, in fact, obscure the real issues, where many criminal-defense lawyers can point to examples of prosecutorial zeal when dealing with black defendants.
“The public at large basically thinks that these cases are aberrations, and that’s one reason why so much attention is paid to them,” says Professor Nunn. “It’s the idea that it’s the redneck sheriff doing this and not the way we sort of stack the odds against black criminal defendants. We can point to a few bad apples, say, ‘See, it’s them,’ and the rest of us feel great because we’re demonstrating how we disagree with racism.”
There has been some improvement for black juveniles. In the late 1980s, they were six times more likely to be arrested for a violent crime than whites were, according to a report last year by the US Justice Department. By 2003, they were four times as likely as whites.
While researchers agree that racial bias remains, other factors, such as poverty, also play a role, they say. In one study, sociology professor Robert Sampson said that “social forces that concentrate race with poverty” dictate judicial outcomes more than inherent prejudices by police and prosecutors.
Not everyone believes the case of the Jena 6 is so cut and dried either. It is not about race, but about finding justice for an innocent victim, said Reed Walters, the local parish prosecutor, at a press conference Wednesday. “With all the emphasis on the defendant, the injury done to [the victim] and the serious threat to his existence has become a footnote.”
In Jena, racial tensions ratcheted up a year ago when white students hung up nooses after black students asked the principal for permission to sit under a tree where whites traditionally congregated. Black parents demanded the perpetrators be expelled; the students were suspended for three days, instead.
Mr. Walters, the white prosecutor, says the students who hung the nooses could not be prosecuted because there was no law against it. But, he added, “The people that did it should be ashamed of what they unleashed on this town.”
In December, the six black teens beat a white student unconscious, although the victim attended a school event that night. One of the teens, a juvenile at the time, was charged as an adult and convicted of battery, a lesser charge. A groundswell of protests on talk radio and the Internet led to the organizing of a protest in Jena to coincide with his sentencing. When an appeals court dismissed the verdict, saying the teen should not have been tried as an adult, the protesters decided to march anyway.
On Thursday morning, buses from St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere were lined up for miles on Highway 49 into Jena. The crowd chanted “Free the Jena 6″ as the Rev. Al Sharpton arrived at the local courthouse with family members of the jailed teens. Campus activists at schools like Duke, Howard University, and the University of Georgia were planning events to show their support, and rock singer David Bowie pitched in with a $10,000 check for the defense. Musicians including Nick Cannon, Jagged Edge, and Hurricane Chris have banded together for an “empowerment concert” planned for Sept. 29 in Birmingham, Ala.
The case touched a nerve deep within the black community, says Leonard Steinhorn, professor of communication at American University in Washington, D.C. “There’s a sense that parts of the judicial system still remain anchored in the bigoted attitudes of old and that a black person can’t get fair or true justice.”
And that runs so counter to American ideals that, even though minorities have made great strides since the civil rights era, it causes a reaction, he adds. “You can’t get any more basic than equal justice under the law.”
Changes, experts say, do come once a sense of unfairness has convinced enough Americans that change is needed.
“The problem in the criminal justice system is the problem generally with the law: You always have great leaps forward and tiny steps backward,” says Nunn.
© 2007 The Christian Science Monitor
What is wrong with this country? The Jena 6 is a perfect example of the continued racial bias in the country. What is even more stunning is that people in the US honestly believe that there is no more racism. How can people sit inside a little bubble and not wake up. There can be no denying the fact that racism still exists because it says right in this article that black youths are still 4 times as likely to be arrested then whites. There is a problem in a country that proudly proclaims that we are “The Land of the Free” when we readily admit that someone is four times more likely to be arrested then someone else simply because of the color of there skin. This country needs to realize that injustice happens everyday and every citizen has the duty to try and do something about this so that when you say I Live in the Land of the Free you can say it with pride knowing that you truly do.
Prison is the newest variation on an old theme–slavery. Millions of people are owned, body and soul, by the prison-industrial complex. Hopefully, one day people will look on prison as being as inherently evil an institution as slavery.
Today’s DemocracyNow show has a lot of coverage of the situation in Jena:
CIO
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/21/158211
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Know Justice, Know Peace!
No Justice, No Peace!
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“Without sharing there can be no justice;
without justice there can be no peace;
without peace there can be no future…
Man must change or die. There is no other course.”
Maitreya, the World Teacher
“The public at large basically thinks that these cases are aberrations, and that’s one reason why so much attention is paid to them,” says Professor Nunn
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Depends on which part of the public you ask.. If you are aware of reality, then you would already know that this case is an extreme example of second-class justice, but it’s definitely not a solitary moment in history. No one knows the names or faces or stories of the thousands all over America who are ‘over prosecuted’, railroaded, and otherwise denied ‘blind justice’ when their cases come up.
Should the black students have beaten up the white student? Well the vigilante in me says yes, but maybe a more effective tactic (and one that might have kept these harrassed kids out of jail) would have been to not be threatened by the noose, and simply and calmly sit under the tree on the following day, and the day after that, and the day after that until the ‘white shade tree’ became just ‘a shade tree’.
Questions of justice! Where have you been living? The totally innocent tree got cut down.
Every case I see is a who do you know and how much justice can you afford situation.
I think Twister22 is of the old school. Who among us, Black, White, Conservative, Liberal has what it takes to be slow and deliberative? What you have suggested would require a leadership of the elders. They are largely gone today. Did our leaders of today, Hannity, Powell take this on? Those who might have done so are mostly dead or otherwise occupied with other pressing oppression issues.
What you want, and what I think is also needed, has given way to in-your-face confrontation or rutterless responses. Our real leaders are gone.
“The difference between Black and White in the United States: Jena 6 vs. a White family of 6″
http://www.chycho.com/?q=black_and_white
What is happening with the Jena 6 is reminding us all about the times when Slavery was the Law and Lynching Blacks the norm in the United States of America.
An “all-white jury, promptly convicted” a black teenager “of aggravated second degree assault, battery and conspiracy,” for beating a white kid. This high school student is now awaiting “sentencing which may put the teenager in prison for the next 22 years.” Five of the remaining black kids are awaiting their day in court.
What is happening to these children is appalling on its own, but it becomes unbearable when you compare it to how whites are treated in the United States of America as compared to non-whites.
When these children were arrested their bails were set between $70,000 and $138,000. Since most of these families come from poor neighborhoods, none of the parents could afford the price set for their children, hence the kids spent months in jail.
Now compare this incident with one that took place in West Virginia last week. Six white family members held a young black woman, who “had been stabbed four times”, for one week. They forced her to “eat rat and dog feces and drink from the toilet.” “Deputies say the woman was also doused with hot water while being sexually assaulted.” “One of those arrested, Karen Burton, is (also) accused of cutting the woman’s ankle with a knife.”
This incident is straight out of a horror movie. “Deputies found the 23-year-old victim Saturday after going to the home in Big Creek, about 35 miles southwest of Charleston, to investigate an anonymous tip. One of the suspects, Frankie Brewster, was sitting on the front porch and told deputies she was alone, but moments later the victim limped toward the door, her arms outstretched, saying, ‘Help me,’ the sheriff’s department said in a news release.”
One would have to believe that all those involved in raping, beating, stabbing and brutalizing this 23-year black woman would be considered extremely violent criminals and put in jail without bail. But unfortunately this is the United States of America. “All six were held Monday in lieu of $100,000 bond each.”
The difference between Black and White in the United States is this: If you are a black teenager and beat a white teenager, you will be charged with attempted murder and your bail set at anywhere between $70,000 and $138,000. But if you are white and decide to do the most horrendous acts imaginable to a young black woman over a one-week period, your bail will be set at $100,000.
Welcome to the United States of America.
Nothing new here just a new location. The sad thing is that it is not only racism, but class.What this government has managed to do is pit one poor class against another, knowing that it would devide us and make it possible to defeat progressives.
And he is still denied bail as of Friday afternoon!
I agree that the prosecution was extreme. But there needs to be some consequence for six boys beating one unconscious. My son went to a high school where a group of black boys was beating up white boys. My son talked himself out of a beating when they had mistaken him for somebody else. Two other boys had to be airlifted to shock trauma that year. My son finally wouldn’t go to school and had to withdraw. I knew of other cases where the kids quit because of fear and harassment. Not all was racial. Some was sexual. The adults set the stage for this.
In response to grappa.
Nothing new here just a new location. The sad thing is that it is not only racism, but class. What this government has managed to do is pit one poor class against another, knowing that it would divide us and make it possible to defeat progressives.
The truth is that the sense of privilege that comes from being white leads to many of us to choose race over class when it comes to progress and justice for us all.
There will come a day when we realize we can’t run away from injustice, greed, or the belief that were somehow better than those who appear different from us.
I hope we stop running and blaming others in time for survival of ourselves and this planet.
“But researchers are divided on whether race or other factors, such as poverty, are the driving factor.”
Just how “other” is poverty? Inherent in mentioning “poverty” is a tacit allegation that blacks COMMIT more crimes. It has been demonstrated in studies of drug use, arrest and sentencing that this is NOT the “driving factor.”
Other factors that merit mention include differential legislating, policing, prosecuting and sentencing. The hidden benefit of black disenfranchisement is the elephant in the living room. Browse the sentencing project [dot] org for some revealing stats.
Visualize a black street dealer standing on a corner exchanging paper bags for money with a succession of college-age white kids who drive up to his location. He is under surveillance and ultimately arrested and charged with trafficking.
How many times does the surveillance team tip off their brethren that a car believed to contain cocaine is travelling north out of the neighbourhood? Both the black seller and the white buyers are committing a crime here. Crimes: 25 white to one black. Arrests?
I feel that the nooses hanging from the tree acted as the catalyst for this entire situation. The fact that the white students who were responsible for hanging the nooses were only suspended for three days helped intensify the anger and hostility of the black students. It is not fair that these 6 young men beat up a fellow classmate, but it is even more unethical that one of the black students is being charged with attempt to murder. Personally, if he was trying to kill him, he did a crappy job-the white student went to a school function that night. As a country, we need to re-evaluate our judicial system and even more importantly, think about the phrase “all men are created equal.”
I am anything but racist; but this is a matter of six thugs beating one boy into unconsciousness, and continuing to kick and stamp on him after he’d lost consciousness. They could have killed him. The mayor of my town is black; so is the chief of police; so are majorities among police officers and the city council. Still, vastly more blacks than whites and vastly more males than females get arrested. Juries are almost invariably majority black; yet they convict more black males than any other group. Yes, poverty is an issue, as are education, class, and the cohesiveness of families. This is not at heart an issue of race. It was a very poor example of racism to make a cause celebre. Sadly, better examples exist.