Cheryl's Life

This makes me so happy

(CNN) -- A Louisiana appeals court Friday vacated the remaining conviction of a teenager accused in a violent, racially charged incident in Jena, Louisiana, his attorney said.

Mychal Bell's defense team will be filing a motion to get him out of prison.

Bob Noel said the 3rd District Court of Appeals in Lake Charles threw out the conviction for second degree battery against Mychal Bell, saying the charges should have been brought in juvenile court.

The future of the case against Bell is up to the district attorney, who must decide whether to refile the charges in juvenile court, Noel said.

Bell, who is now 17, was 16 at the time of the fight in December 2006.

Earlier this month, a district court judge vacated a conviction for conspiracy to commit second degree battery, saying that charge should have been brought in juvenile court.

He left standing the second degree battery conviction, however.

Bell's defense team would be filing a motion to get him out of prison, where he has been since his arrest in December, Noel said.

A sentencing hearing that had been scheduled for September 20 is now off, he said.

The Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton had been planning to join a rally in support of Bell on that date, The Associated Press reported.

Bell and five other members of what has become known as the "Jena 6" were initially charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit attempted murder in connection with the December 4 beating of a white student.

Charges against Bell were reduced, as were charges against Carwin Jones and Theodore Shaw, who have not yet come to trial.

Robert Bailey, Bryant Purvis and an unidentified juvenile remain charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Racial tensions had simmered at Jena High School and in the small town for the first three months of the 2006 school year after a black student asked the vice principal if he and some friends could sit under an oak tree where white students typically congregated.

Told by the vice principal they could sit wherever they pleased, the student and his pals plopped down under the sprawling branches of the shade tree in the campus courtyard.

The next day, students arrived at school to find three nooses hanging from those branches.

"I seen them hanging. I'm thinking the KKK, you know, were hanging nooses. They want to hang somebody. Real nooses, the ones you see on TV, are the kind of nooses they were," Bailey, 17, one of the Jena 6, told the syndicated radio show "Democracy Now!" in July.

The school's principal recommended expulsion for those behind the nooses, according to The Town Talk newspaper in nearby Alexandria. Instead, a school district committee suspended three white students for three days for hanging the nooses, the newspaper reported, a gesture written off as a "prank."

"Toilet paper, that's a prank, you know what I'm saying?" Bailey told the radio show. "Nooses hanging there -- nooses ain't no prank."

The district attorney was summoned to address the student body. Off-campus fights were reported. On November 30, someone torched the school's main academic building. The arson remains unsolved, but many suspect it was linked to the discord.

Four days after the arson, several students jumped a white classmate, Justin Barker, knocking him unconscious while stomping and kicking him. The charges against the Jena 6 resulted from that incident.

Parents of the Jena 6 said they heard Barker was hurling racial epithets. Barker's parents said he did nothing to provoke the beating.

Barker was taken to a hospital with injuries to both eyes and ears, as well as cuts. His right eye had blood clots, said his mother, Kelli Barker. He was treated and released that day.

Bail for the Jena 6 was set at between $70,000 and $138,000. All but Bell posted bond. The judge had refused to lower his $90,000 bail, citing Bell's criminal record, which includes four juvenile offenses -- two simple battery charges among them.

posted by CherylRenee @ 9:12 PM