Where’s the Outrage?

I was looking for this last night. I knew that the Jena, La. DA held a press conference. So, I went to the Alexandria newspaper and looking and searched. It is poorly organized like many Gannett papers.  I wasn’t able to find his press conference. Today, a link was posted on the NYT blog to the TownTalk paper.

I’m sorry I feel that the DA was tired of taking the heat for being a racist.  So, he is trying to spin his way out of trouble.

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Here is DA Reed Walter’s statement:

Good afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to begin by introducing Justin Barker. Justin is the young man who is the victim in this case. With all the focus on the defendants, many people seem to have forgotten that there was a victim. The injury that was done to him and the serious threat to his survival has become less than a footnote. But when you’re talking about justice and a criminal proceeding, you can not forget the victim, and I will not.

Next, I must tell you that in Louisiana criminal proceedings a criminal defendant is protected against a prosecutor’s saying things outside of court to prejudice the case. So, no matter how much I would like to say, and no matter what you ask me, there are likely to be certain areas that I simply can’t go into. These are rules that are properly established to preserve a defendant’s presumption of innocence, and I must live by them. Nevertheless, I do want to set the record straight on a few things that the news media seem not to understand and to answer your questions as best as I can.

This case has been portrayed by the news media as being about race. The fact that it takes place in a small southern town lends itself to that portrayal. But this case is not and has never been about race. It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and about holding people accountable for their actions. That’s what it is about.

Some specific aspects of the case seem not to be well understood. Let me begin with the incident involving the hanging of three nooses on the high school tree. This was an awful act. It was not a prank but a vicious and crude statement by some people I truly wish I could have prosecuted. I searched the Louisiana statutes for an offense that fit that act, but it is simply not there.

It has been suggested that I charge the perpetrators of that noose hanging with a “hate crime.” But in Louisiana law, a “hate crime” exists primarily as a sentencing enhancement to other crimes that have been proven. … Similarly, the U.S. attorney searched the federal statutes for a crime with which to charge these people, but he, too, had to accept the fact as I did that there was none that could be proved.

But again, I cannot overemphasize what a villainous act I believe this was. The people who did it should be ashamed of themselves and mortified at the havoc that they have unleashed on this community.

As to the incident in which Justin Barker was blind-sided with no chance to defend himself, this has been frequently characterized as a “schoolyard fight.” This was no “schoolyard fight.” To call it that creates sort of a boys-will-be-boys image that is not correct.

All the evidence was that Justin walked out of the gymnasium door, he was punched in the head by Mychal Bell and rendered unconscious. As he lay on the ground, unaware of even what was happening, he was kicked repeatedly and brutally by several people. Only the intervention of an uninvolved student prevented him from suffering even more serious injury or even death. Please, ladies and gentlemen, do not forget that there was a real victim in this incident. And to continue to refer to this as a “schoolyard fight” is to intentionally mislead the public.

The last point I want to make is that in all of the telling of this story, a direct linkage is made between the incident of those nooses and this attack on Justin Barker. When this case was brought to me, during our investigation and during the trial, there was no such linkage ever suggested. The notion that there was an unbroken series of events that began with the hanging of the nooses and culminated in the attack at the school was never presented. This compact story line has only been suggested after the fact.

Finally, concerning my decision whether to take this case to the Louisiana Supreme Court. I have not yet decided. The Third Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling only came down last Friday, and I have not had time to carefully review that opinion, review the facts and review the law. I wish I could tell you what I will do right now, but as I stand here today, I simply do not know the answer to that question.

Tags: Civil Rights, Race //