The fact that the student who got his ass whooped was looking for an ass-whooping goes without saying. But justice being done does not mean, and has never meant locking up a kid for 100 years for making a mistake! Then wonder why so many of our tax dollars are being sunk into the Prison Industrial Complex hell on earth we are so quick to ship little 16 year olds who kicked a kid once in a fight. I’m not even sure I would want any tax dollars to go to getting this “victim” justice at all. It should have been resolved within the school, with some suspensions or perhaps, if these kids records were riddled with offenses, removing the kids to an alternative school.

Assault and Battery, even Aggravated Assault sure.

There are mitigating circumstances; which could affect sentencing, but the actual charges are attempted murder.

It’s disproportionate, esp. as previous events (like the incident with a gun) were ignored/papered over.

So it’s disporportionate, twice.

(p.s. By the time I get to the bottom of an entry and comments, I’ve timed out the catchpa, which is frustrating).

It does us no good to descend to level of our opponents. It just portrays us as hypocrits.

Why should the beating of anyone be tolerated, regardless of reason?

It seems to me that the running commentary from many on the left is that because the Jena 6 were black, and because the victim of their assault was white, and because whites in Jena are evil racists, therefore, the beating wasn’t their fault.

Am I missing something here?

I keep remembering a rather long thread we had about a year ago, about bullies, our school days, and how we responded.

Time after time, story after story, the only thing that ever made a difference, in most cases, was for the perps to have fear put in them. Mostly, the bullying victim snapped, and attacked, at least momentarily, enough for the bullies never to want to see that happen again. One other person had seen the bullies find fear when they’d knocked their victim downstairs, only to see a group of teachers at the bottom of the stairs glaring up at them.

Which leads me to think there was only 2 ways the violence against the blacks would stop escalating. Like the kids who found the teachers spotting them nearly red-handed, the racists would have sat on their hate if they had been stopped by authority when the trouble started. Since no one in authority would help the black kids, though, showing they would fight back was about the only option left.

I’d need a West Virginian to tell us, but I don’t think they have the kind of hate-crimes statute that we have in California where it can be used to tack a few extra years onto your sentence.

Mnemosyne, the WV hate crimes statute can be used two ways — as a separate charge that carries a maximum 10 year sentence or as an aggravating circumstance at sentencing for other crimes. So, even though the prosecutor hasn’t charged them with hate crimes, the question of whether the crime was motivated by racial bias will most likely come up at sentencing and could increase their sentences. Of course, if they’re convicted of kidnapping, they could get life sentences anyway.

And the prosecutor has not said that he’s ruled out filing hate crime charges, so as you say, it is possible that he’s keeping them in his back pocket, though as cynical as I can be about the justice system, I don’t really have any doubt that these people are going to get what they deserve.

This may explain why they feel threatened.