[Peace] A First-Hand Account of the Jena 6 Case by Terry Davis, Investigator for Mychal Bell

[Brian Dolinar]

For anyone who missed the talk Friday night, here is a transcript.
There is also a nice photo of Terry at ucimc.org.


A First-Hand Account of the Jena 6 Case by Terry Davis, Investigator for
Mychal Bell

The following is a talk given by Terry Davis, investigator with the legal
defense team for Mychal Bell, one of the members of the Jena 6 on trial in
Louisiana. Davis was in Jena for three weeks and was present for the
historic march there on Sept. 20. She gave a talk in Champaign-Urbana on
October 12, 2007 at the Urban League.

What I want to do in talking with you tonight is to share with you the
particularly unique and gripping story of Jena. I don't think this story
became world famous by accident. There's something about it that just grabs
at the heart and I think that made it big, even though there are things like
what have been happening to the Jena six, unfortunately, way too much and in
way too many places.

I do work with the public defender's in Chicago. Working on death penalty
cases, I do what's called mitigation work, which is a form of investigation.
It's helping the defense attorney to prevent death sentence if possible. I
had some training and experience that I thought may be helpful for one or
any of the Jena 6 kids with their legal case. I passed the hat around among
my friends and raised, in fact, a very impressive amount of money, I was
quite amazed that people responded as generously as they did. So I had my
expenses covered and I hopped in my car and went to Jena.

I hooked up with the defense team of Mychal Bell, who is probably the most
famous of the Jena 6 because he's the one who went to trial first.

I read in the paper about this amazing series of incidents that took place
in Jena starting when a black student in the high school asked the principal
if the black kids were allowed to sit under the white tree, that is the tree
in the school yard where some of the white kids gathered. Historically no
black kids had sat there. He said they could. And this young man, Ken
Purvis, and a few of his friends, without any fanfare, just went one lunch
period and sat there. The next day when the students came to school there
were three nooses hanging in the very same tree.

It's Just a Prank

Everything you've heard, it may be true. But there is so much more that
makes it so much worse than you even know. For example, the kids that
usually sat there in the morning, I guess a lot of them instinctively pulled
back and didn't sit down, but somehow they knew they didn't want to sit
under those nooses. There were teachers standing around laughing in the
morning. One of the kids went and told the principal there's nooses in the
tree, and he said, "Oh, ha, ha, ha. It's just a prank." When the kids went
to their first period class, those nooses were still there. They did take
them down then. But it was a sign, I think, to the kids that it really
didn't matter.

People in the South, black and white, I think have much stronger sense of
history in a way than people in Illinois—for better and for worse. I don't
think there was anyone in that school yard that didn't know what the nooses
meant. To the black kids, a lot of whom I interviewed in the course of my
work, it was a horrible shock that their school mates wanted to say
something that violent and ugly to them.

You've probably heard how the principal initially wanted to expel the kids
who put up the nooses, and then the school board overrode his decision and
made it into a minor offense rather than a major offense. Then began a very
tense Fall. I don't think you can understand this case without picturing the
tension that existed among the kids from that point on. The day of the
nooses just about every black student in the high school, spontaneously,
they went at lunchtime and sat under the tree. I don't know if they thought
they were having a sit-in, but that was what they were doing anyway.

The response by the powers-that-be was immediate and they had a lock-down at
the school. They had a heavy police presence at the school, including dogs,
following this. The District Attorney, who wears at least two hats in Jena,
one of which is attorney for the school board, came to a school assembly of
the kids and looking right at the black kids he said, "I can take away your
life with the stroke of my pen." There is not one student who was in that
room who doesn't remember that like it's emblazoned on their mind.

The kids I talked to largely felt that their needs and concerns were being
overlooked completely. There were fights, there was tension, there was
race-baiting, name-calling going on during the Fall. After Thanksgiving
there was a series of incidents that culminated in the incident for which
the Jena 6 were arrested.

There was a situation in a convenience store where a young white man drew a
gun on some of the black kids. They took they gun and ran away. And the
black kids were arrested for stealing his gun. Were they supposed to hand it
back and say, "Now you can shoot me"? Nothing happened to the white guy, who
was an adult.

The other incident was when a young man and a couple of his friends who were
black football players at the high school were invited to a white party.
When they went they were jumped and beaten up. Nothing ever happened to the
people who beat them up.

The other thing, and I didn't know this until I got down there, there was a
huge fire at the high school before that weekend and the school was closed
for a few days. Much of the school was destroyed. They came to school the
following Monday, they had been off for the fire. Nobody knew who set the
fire and to this day nobody has been and nobody claims to know who set the
fire. The black kids were afraid they were going to be blamed for it. White
people are saying black people did it. Black people are saying white people
did it. All the kids were freaked out about the fire.

They didn't even know where their classes were going to be held. They show
up in the morning as usual, their group, the little band of black
kids—because there are not many in the school—and then the much larger
groups of white kids separately glaring at each other. It was a recipe for
disaster. Nothing was done. There were no social workers to get the kids to
feel better, they were just policing them.

Then at lunch time a white boy, Justin Barker, was punched on the side of
the face, he fell down, he may have been kicked a few times. The incident
last approximately nine or ten seconds, and that was then end of that.

Now, let me say, Jena High has its share of fights. Maybe you could say more
than its share. Usually what happens is you get two days in what they call
an alternative school, which is like a suspension and they go and learn how
to manage their anger. In this case, they charge them with felonies. They
charge six young men with attempted murder, or they reduce the charges to
aggravated battery and conspiracy.

The Trial of Mychal Bell

Before I came to Jena I read the transcript of the first of the Jena 6 to go
to trial, and he was my client Mychal Bell. It was a stunning experience
just to read the transcript. I doubt that all of you are lawyers, but I bet
even the youngest people here know that you're supposed to be impartial in
order to serve on a jury. We had potential jurors being questioned, "Do you
know anything about this case?" They would respond, "Only what I've read in
the papers." The papers in Jena had vitriolic attacks on the Jena 6 every
day—day in, day out—just wild attacks on these kids. This one woman juror
was asked, "Do you think you can be fair?" She said, "No, not really." She
was seated.

The jury was all white. There were several people who said they didn't know
if they could be fair and the Judge would say, "You can be fair can't you?"
The Judge was asked later, how did you know she could be fair. He said, "Oh,
by her body English."

The District Attorney, throughout, he would stumble over his words, he would
start a sentence and the Judge would finish it for him. There was sort of a
symbiotic relationship between the D.A. and the Judge, who had been working
together and handling case after case in a similar fashion, I have not
doubt, for years.

The Defense Attorney was a court-appointed lawyer who seemed to feel the
weight of the case enough that he didn't want to stick his neck out too far.
He didn't call a single witness.

I found out after reading the transcript that there was one teacher, and
only one teacher, who actually saw the beginning of the fight. The others
arrived seconds later, but they didn't see it start. Mychal Bell was accused
of throwing that first punch that knocked Justin out temporarily and caused
him to fall. And then he was kicked. But the punch, that was Mychal's
contribution to the situation, according to the prosecution. There was a
teacher who happened to be coming in front of where Justin was heading, so
he was able to see it uniquely well. He made a written statement which he
turned into the principal that very same day saying that he saw who threw
the punch. Guess what, it wasn't Mychal Bell, it was another kid. He was not
called as a witness. He had moved to another town. Nobody knew where he had
gone. I found that coach. He said it was somebody else and he said a lot of
other things that were very important. But he was never called as a witness,
even though his statement was in there before the trial.

The Judge made it very plain in his remarks to the jury that for a
conspiracy to exist nothing needs to be said. But he never did say what did
have to happen for there to be a conspiracy.

A simple battery—boom, I hit you—that's a misdemeanor. In order to make it a
felony it has to be aggravated, and aggravated means dangerous weapon.
What's a dangerous weapon? In this case, tennis shoes. That was the
dangerous weapon. Of course, Mychal, in punching, he did not have a shoe in
his hand, if he did punch at all, which as I said is open to considerable
doubt. That's where the conspiracy comes in, because he was going to knock
him down and other people were going to kick him.

He was found guilty and facing a sentence of up to 22 and a half years
because of the conspiracy charge added on to the aggravated battery. That
trial has now been vacated because they found it was not appropriate for him
to be tried as an adult. So it's going to go back to a juvenile court. The
other kids, with some variation, they are facing the same thing, only they
are a little older than Mychal so some of them are going to be in adult
court.

A lot of people don't realize these kids were leaders in the school. They
were all athletes, they were stars of the football team. Mychal was an
honors student and could have gone, and I'm hoping still will, go to the
college of his choice because he was that good a football player. And very
popular with black and white. He had a lot of friends, especially among his
teammates, black and white. He was somebody that was looked up to. Not only
in the school but in the whole community. And the other kids were too. The
whole legal machine came down on them very suddenly after the football
season was over, which a lot of people commented on.

Jena is very, very small. There's no movie theater. There's four stop
lights. Nowhere to eat. One motel. Within it the black community is very
small, maybe fifteen percent. This is a very isolated black community. With
no economic power, no political power. The black people have been
gerrymandered out of Jena so they can't even vote for Mayor because they are
just on the other side of the city line. There's very few jobs. There's no
black people in the library, in the city clerk's office. There's one black
person who works in the bank, but he works in a room where he cannot be
seen. In some ways it is a throw back to the years ago—but is it? Is this a
throw back to years ago, or is it that you don't see it unless it's pushed
right up against your face?

It's so hard on these families. They do not have resources. They have
lawyers are working pro bono, but they don't have any of the extra things
you need. When you've got kids, for example, who have been expelled from
school. The ones who have been released, they can't go to school, their
parents can't send them to a private academy. And they're just kind of
kicking around. They should be making the touch downs, instead they're
looking at it from the outside. It's just really tough. They don't have
computers, they don't have tutors. These kids need to be in school, and
their parents agree.

Rally in Jena

I just want to say a few words about the rally. I don't think anybody was
prepared when the rally took place. Busses came from, particularly from the
South, but all around the country. They came from South Carolina, they came
from Texas, they came from all over Louisiana. Bus after bus, after bus,
after bus. Lots of young people. It was just amazing. It was like a
pilgrimage.

The white people in Jena had been sure that the town was going to burn to
the ground when the rally took place. They were terrified for a week. They
could talk of nothing else. They closed the courthouse, they closed the
school for two days, they closed McDonald's. They huddled behind their
closed windows wondering what was going to happen.

The black people in Jena got out in their lawn chairs, they set up their
barbeque grills, they made up their own t-shirt. Every black resident of the
community under 30 was participating all day long in the march. And probably
most of the adults as well.

There were a lot of people who had signs that said, "I am the Jena 6."
Another slogan that was on a lot of them was, "Enough is enough." There was
a real feeling that the drive in this country to incarcerate young black
people has just got to be turned around. It's just a terrible blot on our
country. It's a misery for a whole generation. It's going to be more than a
generation.

But I really have the feeling that out of this is going to grow a new
generation of leadership. I really felt that there were young people who
were serious, really serious, and not going to let this drop. I sure hope
I'm right.
-- 
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com
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