Jena 6 prosecutor Reed Walters, under fire for his handling of the Jena 6 case, has written a defense of his actions in the New York Times today. He argues that his actions were consistent with the law of Louisiana and that the six Black youths should be charged under the law, which he is sworn to uphold.
Walters says that the placing of the noose on the tree, while abhorrent, did not break any law of the State of Louisiana. If that is true, then that is a problem that the legislature has to deal with and fix in the next legislative session.
There are those who say that Walters should have prosecuted the noose incident as a hate crime. But Walters explains why, under Louisiana law, that is not possible according to him:
A district attorney cannot take people to trial for acts not covered in the statutes. Imagine the trampling of individual rights that would occur if prosecutors were allowed to pursue every person whose behavior they disapproved of.
The "hate crime" the protesters wish me to prosecute does not exist as a stand-alone offense in Louisiana law. It’s not that our Legislature has turned a blind eye to crimes motivated by race or other personal characteristics, but it has addressed the problem in a way that does not cover what happened in Jena. The hate crime statute is used to enhance the sentences of defendants found guilty of specific crimes, like murder or rape, who chose their victims based on race, religion, sexual orientation or other factors.
But this raises a question -- are there federal hate crimes laws that would cover the incident in question? If that is the case, then the protestors have a point -- that he should have prosecuted them under federal hate crimes laws, but that he was derelict of duty in failing to do so. But if there are no federal hate crimes laws that would cover these issues, then maybe we should make that an issue in the next election or for the House and the Senate to pass such laws that would cover these incidents.
Next, Walters explains that the charges did not stem from a mere schoolyard fight, but from what he calls a case of attempted murder. The victim of the incident was a man named Justin Barker, who was not involved in the noose incident according to the prosecutor. As he was walking to his next class, he was knocked unconscious by Mychal Bell and then kicked around by the Jena Six. In other words, according to Walters, it was not a mere schoolyard fight, but it was much worse than merely boys being boys.
Walters said that the reason he charged Bell the way he did was because he had a prior criminal record, the fact that he was the instigator, and the fact of the severity of the case, which he says could have resulted in the death or serious injury of Barker.
Walters says that as prosecutor, he is bound to enforce the law as it is written now, not as it should be in a perfect world. But maybe that is not enough anymore. Let's suppose that he was simply doing his job. But that raises another question -- was he being proactive or reactive? And how can we proactively engage schools so that we can move beyond this sort of racial friction, if we find that he was not being proactive enough?
Maybe he was simply doing his job and following the law. But for some reason, something did not pass the smell test for the 10,000 or so demonstrators who came from all over the country to protest this incident. These things don't just happen. This means that we have a serious problem on our hands.