Sparks fly at Capitol Hill hearing on Jena 6

LaSalle Parish Judge J.P. Mauffray last week sent 17-year-old Mychal Bell back to jail for 18 months, saying Bell violated his probation for a previous conviction. The judge took this action even though an appeals court overturned Bell’s conviction as an adult by an all-white jury on aggravated battery charges and the district attorney declined to retry Bell as a juvenile. Bell had already spent 10 months in jail.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), one of several Congressional Black Caucus members to visit Jena, told the hearing, “As a parent, I am almost in tears. Mychal Bell is back in jail” and “nooses have now proliferated around the country.”

Glaring at two Justice Department attorneys sitting at the witness table, she thundered, “I want you to tell me why you didn’t engage. Why didn’t you intervene?” Many in the crowded hearing room stood and applauded.

The witnesses and several Democratic lawmakers on the committee charged that the Jena Six had the book thrown at them for allegedly attacking a white classmate, Justin Barker, a year ago, yet white students who earlier attacked Robert Bailey, an African American student, with fists and beer bottles, screaming racist epithets, received a brief suspension. Bailey is now one of the Jena Six defendants.

Read More