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There was a lot of distortion of the facts in the "Jena Six" case, the U.S. Attorney who reviewed the case said today at a Law Day luncheon in Shreveport.
U.S. Attorney Donald Washington, in a speech to the Shreveport Bar Association, called the situation in Jena "a convoluted mess." It was easy for people to give their opinions about what happened, Washington said, but it was the U.S. Justice Department's job to pursue the facts.
Washington said he believes there should not have been federal prosecution of the white students who hung nooses from at a tree at Jena High School.
There is no provable link between the nooses being hung by white students outside the LaSalle Parish school and the beating of a white student by black teens, Washington said. He said the events were probably symptoms of racial tensions but they were separate incidents that occurred three months apart.
"In Jena, there were distortions of several key facts," Washington told the lawyers. "The linking of the nooses to the school fight, for example, was not supported by fact."
Washington said the case came down to a school fight that happened because of a party the weekend before -- not the nooses hung in front of the school months before.
Six black teenagers were charged with beating a white classmate -- leading to complaints that the attempted murder charges were too severe for the extent of the victim's injuries and there was unequal justice, especially when no one was prosecuted for hanging the nooses. Those students were suspended from school.
The protests culminated with a demonstration by thousands of people who came to Jena last September to demonstrate about the way the cases were handled.
Washington has said that after the noose-hanging incident at the start of the school year, school went on routinely for months with no apparent lingering anger.
The incident wasn't prosecuted as a hate crime because it didn't meet the federal standards required for the teens to be certified as adults, prosecutors said, and no link was established to groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
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