One lesson is clear from Jena: Ignore the media at your peril. The military, prosecutors, Ken Starr, and many others have learned this lesson repeatedly. Talk to the media and they may distort what you say, but say nothing and you’ll get run over by opponents. CNN’s melodramatic focus on the “schoolyard fight” and the “wrong side of the tracks” in its special report on Jena, Louisiana added to the smokescreen set up by the defendants to distract us from what this case is really about: a brutal beatdown of a young man for “dissing” that had nothing to do with the infamous “noose incident” months earlier.
Prosecutor Reed Walters finally had something to say in today’s New York Times. Clearly, if he had been more forthright and persuasive earlier, his town might not have been inundated with pissed off protesters:
Conjure the image of schoolboys fighting: they exchange words, clench fists, throw punches, wrestle in the dirt until classmates or teachers pull them apart. Of course that would not be aggravated second-degree battery, which is what the attackers are now charged with. (Five of the defendants were originally charged with attempted second-degree murder.) But that’s not what happened at Jena High School.
The victim in this crime, who has been all but forgotten amid the focus on the defendants, was a young man named Justin Barker, who was not involved in the nooses incident three months earlier. According to all the credible evidence I am aware of, after lunch, he walked to his next class. As he passed through the gymnasium door to the outside, he was blindsided and knocked unconscious by a vicious blow to the head thrown by Mychal Bell. While lying on the ground unaware of what was happening to him, he was brutally kicked by at least six people.
Imagine you were walking down a city street, and someone leapt from behind a tree and hit you so hard that you fell to the sidewalk unconscious. Would you later describe that as a fight?
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The only thing that gets me is equating kicking with tennis shoes with “assault with a deadly weapon”.
I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t see how this is explainable as anything other than over-reach.
Some of the other altercations leading up to the event seem like they could be slightly mitigating (not the noose, but the party and the shotgun events), but who knows what actually happened in those instances.
None of those involved the victim. As for the shoes, Louisiana case law has interpreted “dangerous weapon” to include:
*an instrumentality used in a manner likely to cause death or great bodily injury (holding that a car can be a dangerous instrumentality)
*dousing a victim with rum (where a lighter was nearby)
*not limited to inherently dangerous items; dangerousness of an item is a jury determination
*pellet gun was a dangerous weapon
*stick dangerous weapon (based on location of attack on body – head – and size of stick)
* Rubber-soled tennis shoe which defendant was wearing when he kicked his victim constituted a “dangerous weapon” for purposes of committing aggravated battery; eyewitness testified that defendant kicked victim in head so forcefully that impact lifted victim’s body off ground and physician who operated on victim characterized victim’s attack as brutal — State v. Munoz 575 so2d 848
Plus, if we look in the news, there are numerous incidents of people stomped to death, such as
http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=133258&ran=197787
and
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/67534.html
Believe me, I’m not averse to believing that the prosecutor was acting in good faith or that a shoe is often considered a deadly weapon in a legal context. I just don’t feel there is any compelling evidence to believe either way from what I have read.
As far people being stomped to death, wouldn’t that mean that your fists or forehead, or any other body part, wouldn’t also be a deadly weapon, so long as it is possible to kill someone with it? And while there may be one directly analogous precedent, do you really think most prosecutors would consider it a deadly weapon?
Not standing alone, but I believe the aggravated battery was a lesser included offense of the attempted murder, which, if we want to get into semantics, appears more appropriate if we’re worried about splitting hairs on the weapon aspect of the case.
If a bat, a brass knuckle, a plate, a glass, a wall, a floor, a window, or plastic bag can be a deadly weapon, I don’t see why not a shoe depending on how it is used in context.
A shoe can be a deadly weapon when it is being worn by a human foot. In this case, it is obvious that the shoe and the human foot of the aggressor were both weapons directed at Justin Barker’s head.
Rapid, severe blows to another human beings head can cause loss of vision, loss of hearing, loss of speech – temporarily or permanently – at the least. At the worst death can result in at least two ways: 1) massive intracranial bleeding which if not relieved can kill the victim or leave them severely impaired for a lifetime, 2) dramatic injury to the spinal cord if the head is kicked hard enough; this of course, could be fatal.
Think people. Our brain is where our central nervous and autonomous nervous system is housed. Our conscious thoughts, sensory activities and the unconscious regulatory activitiy of the ANS over our internal organs all originate here. Our breathing rate, heart rate, etc., are all controlled from our brain.
An attack against a person’ head is an attack against the seat of their very life.
Repeated blows to an unprotected head can kill. The attempted murder charges are appropriate.
Not only is there almost no coverage in the corporate media of black violent crimes against white people, but in high profile cases, they proffer black criminals as ‘real victims’.
To illustrate the bias in the corporate media, imagine if the facts were reversed – if a gang of six white kids led by someone with four previous convictions for violent-crime had attacked a lone black student, kicking and stomping him into unconsciousness. As far as the corporate media are concerned, they would be interviewing the black victim on every TV talk show across the land, discussing his fear, his pain, his suffering. They would be interviewing his crying relatives and friends. They would not be voicing any fear that the white attackers would be treated too harshly, or that they would be treated at all. The attackers would not be celebrated in the dailies and across the TV networks.
If the black Jena attackers are not to be held racially accountable for beating a lone white cracker, then why are blacks so quick to cry ‘racism’ when a cabdriver of a different race bypasses them on a dark, rain-slickened city street at night?
One can only imagine the degree of black outrage had six white thugs beaten a lone black kid. Jena would doubtless have been looted and burned. Thing is, whites as a rule don’t attack with overwhelming numbers. They’ve far more principle than that. Only cowards run in packs, as we witnessed with Mychal Bell’s behavior.
Six black kids attack and lone white kid and then proceed to beat him unconscious. As the victim slumbers involuntarily, his attackers then continue to kick and beat him in the head. Meanwhile, liberals argue that the white kid must have said or done something to provoke his attack.
Liberals in America are in for a very rude awakening the day they’re run through with a Chinese bayonet, or their parents are incinerated aboard yet another airliner highjacked by Muslim extremists. Live and learn, liberals. It’s your choice, however stupid or insensate it may be.