DA won’t contest ruling that sent ‘Jena 6’ case to court

The prosecutor in the “Jena 6” cases said Thursday he had decided not to challenge a ruling that sent 17-year-old Mychal Bell’s case to juvenile court.\nLaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters said he spoke with the beating victim and legal experts in the state before making the decision. He earlier had said he would appeal the state appeals court’s decision to set aside Bell’s second-degree battery conviction on the grounds that Bell should not have been tried as an adult.\nGov. Kathleen Blanco, with Martin Luther King III and the Rev. Al Sharpton at her side, had announced on Wednesday that she had asked Walters to reconsider pushing to keep the case in the adult system.\n“I want to thank him for this decision he has made,” Blanco said.\nBell, who remains behind bars, was one of six black Jena High School teens arrested after a December attack on a white student, Justin Barker. Five of the six initially were charged with attempted second-degree murder, though charges against four of them, including Bell, were later reduced. One teen has yet to be arraigned, another was handled as a juvenile and records are sealed.\nSharpton said he hopes bond will be set low enough to allow for Bell’s release, and he thanked Blanco for getting involved.\n“I want to congratulate her for showing leadership,” Sharpton said. “And I want to congratulate the district attorney for good judgment.”\nThe case brought more than 20,000 protesters to the central Louisiana town of Jena last week in a marched that harkened back to the demonstrations of the 1960s.\nCritics accuse local officials of prosecuting blacks more harshly than whites. They note that no charges were filed against three white teens suspended from the high school for allegedly hanging nooses in a tree on campus — an incident that was followed by fights between blacks and whites, including the attack on Barker.\nWalters condemned the noose incident, calling it “abhorrent and stupid” in a New York Times op-ed piece this week, but he said the act broke no Louisiana law. He said the U.S. attorney also could not find a federal crime on which the three students could be charged.\nIn the article, Walters defended the aggravated second-degree battery counts most of those charged in the attack on Barker now face. He said Barker was “blindsided,” knocked unconscious and kicked by at least six people, and would have faced “severe injury or death” had another student not intervened.