To follow up on Jonah’s post in the Corner, here’s a great article by Jason Whitlock on how the entire story got to the media in the first place. An excerpt:

Bean — the creator of Friends of Justice, an organization primarily dedicated to helping poor minorities victimized by our justice system — had warned prominent members of the Jena community as early as January that the town would be painted as racist by the national media if Walters didn’t back down. “I told them I was going to bring media attention to this situation, and it was likely the same thing would happen to them that happened to my little hometown,” Bean said by phone on Friday. “Tulia got a bad rap, a rap it probably didn’t deserve. But the media doesn’t do its job. It’s in the entertainment business.” “Tulia” refers to the case that made Bean and Friends of Justice a player in the world of American criminal justice. In the late 1990s, Bean exposed a corrupt cop in his hometown. More than a dozen drug convictions against minorities were overturned because of Bean’s work. Tulia was labeled as racist, and Bean became the person to call if you thought the police and/or a prosecutor were exploiting you. A lawyer in New Orleans put Bean and parents of the Jena Six in contact with each other in December. Within three months, Bean had researched Jena and the events surrounding the assault, and published a 5,400-word narrative titled “The Making of a Myth in Jena, Louisiana” and a 2,400-word, media-friendly narrative titled “Responding to the Crisis in Jena, Louisiana.” These two pro-defense narratives form the outline for most of the world’s understanding of the case. Bean connected the December assault on Justin Barker to the September noose hangings, to Reed Walters’ infamous “I can ruin your life with the stroke of a pen” statement at a hastily called school assembly, and to separate off-campus confrontations between Robert Bailey and white men on the Friday and Saturday before the attack on Barker. […] Bean said he first spoon-fed his narratives to Tom Mangold of the BBC because Mangold had worked with Bean on the Tulia drug cases. The BBC filmed a documentary on the Jena Six titled “Race Hate in Louisiana.” Bean said he then gave the Jena Six story to newspaper reporter Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune, which published a similar story on May 20. “I put it in the hands of people I knew would do a good job with the story,” Bean said. Bean also gave his story to a blogger, Jordan Flaherty, and a law professor, Bill Quigley. From all of these sources the story mushroomed and became fact.

The entire piece is well worth the read, but here’s one more quote that I thought should be highlighted:

People in Jena say the feud is over money. The families are handling the donations to the Jena Six defense fund. Robert Bailey recently posted and took down MySpace photos of himself and another Jena Six defendant with wads of $100 bills stuffed in their mouths and splashed across their bodies.

Bailey was recenlty invited to present at the B.E.T. awards. Felonies never paid so well I guess.

Here’s a second article on Mychal Bell, the defendant who was recently re-arrested an put in jail for probation violations. This article insinuates that the reason Bell was still in school after his numerous arrests was because he was the star of the H.S. football team.

Three months prior to that attack, Bell committed two violent crimes while on probation for a battery Christmas Day 2005, according to testimony. Later that same week, he led the Jena Giants to a shutout victory in a football game against the Buckeye Panthers. Bell was adjudicated — the juvenile equivalent to a conviction — of battery Sept. 2 and criminal damage to property Sept. 3, said Cynthia Bradford, LaSalle Parish deputy clerk.
A few days later, on Sept. 8, Bell rushed 12 times for 108 yards and scored three touchdowns — one of the best performances of the year for the standout athlete.
Mack Fowler, Jena High’s football coach at the time, said Friday he hadn’t heard about Bell’s specific criminal history.
Fowler said that at one point he had a policy in place more severe than the school’s when it came to students with discipline problems. But he said he discovered that while he was punishing his players, the school “wasn’t doing anything” to them.
Fowler said he decided then that he was going to do the same thing the school did — nothing.