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There is, of course, no defense for hanging nooses from trees. There is no excuse for students who beat one another out of hate. There is still much to be explained about why some students are vigorously prosecuted while others are not. All this poses a challenge for journalists, who have reported and repeated many popular myths in what has come to be known as the "Jena Six" case.

Think about how many times journalists have reported about the "white tree" or the "noose incident" directly connected to the December 2006 attack. It turns out that much of what you may know about this case is wrong.

The Associated Press ran a piece on some of the subtle complexities of the story:

• The so-called "white tree" at Jena High, often reported to be the domain of only white students, was nothing of the sort, according to teachers and school administrators; students of all races, they say, congregated under it at one time or another.

• Two nooses -- not three -- were found dangling from the tree. Beyond being offensive to blacks, the nooses were cut down because black and white students "were playing with them, pulling on them, jump-swinging from them, and putting their heads through them," according to a black teacher who witnessed the scene.

• There was no (direct) connection between the September noose incident and the December attack, according to Donald Washington, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department in western Louisiana, who investigated claims that these events might be race-related hate crimes.
  

• The three youths accused of hanging the nooses were not suspended for just three days -- they were isolated at an alternative school for about a month, and then given an in-school suspension for two weeks.

• The six-member jury that convicted Bell was, indeed, all white. However, only one in 10 people in LaSalle Parish is African American, and though black residents were selected randomly by computer and summoned for jury selection, none showed up.

• In July, the first to be tried, Mychal Bell, was convicted after two hours of deliberations by an all-white jury on reduced charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit it. It was widely reported that Bell, now 17, was an honor student with no prior criminal record. Although he had a high grade-point average, he was, in fact, on probation for at least two counts of battery and a count of criminal damage to property. In any event, his conviction was overturned because an appeals court ruled he should not have been tried as an adult.

This is the "Color of Change" Web site, which asserts the "facts" of a white tree to be true. The site also makes the case for why the local prosecutor acted unfairly when prosecuting the black students but not criminally charging white students who were also involved in fights.

What I do not understand (maybe those of you who have covered this story can clarify), is why the feds don't prosecute the noose incident and the fights (involving both sides) as federal crimes. Even if the state prosecutor says he has no state law that would make the hanging of a noose a crime, there is federal legislation that says:

Those who put up the nooses seem to have filled every criteria. There were more than two of them, and they clearly were meant to threaten, injure and oppress others. The oppression seemed to have to do with the black student's First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.

Some have suggested the noose incident would be a candidate for federal hate crimes, but as I read the federal crime law, passed in 1994, I saw that it requires the hate crime to be focused against an individual or an individual's property as opposed to a generic spewing of hate against a group of people.

Public Law #103-322A, a 1994 federal law, defines a hate crime as:

a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person.

Read more about what federal hate crimes say.

Here is Yahoo.com's constantly refreshed collection of Jena Six stories.

Click here for the Anti-Defamation League's interactive map, which links you to individual state anti-hate laws. Would the Jena noose incident have been considered a hate crime in your state?

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Getting Local on the New National Violent Crime Data

The FBI Violent Crime Statistics are just out. Once again, violent crime is up nationally.

Here are some links to help you get local:

• National Data
• Region
• State
• County Agency
• City Agency
• Universities and Colleges
• Cities and Counties Grouped by Size (population group)
• Metropolitian Statistical Areas

What NOT to Do with the New Crime Stats

Many of you, and maybe many of your city officials, will try to use the data to compare the safety of your town to others. But the FBI says you shouldn't. The comparisons, it says, won't stand up:

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The Arrival of Halo Day and Star Wars Wii

If you are wondering why your friends who love video gaming are not at work today, it may be because the long awaited Halo 3 went flying out of stores at midnight last night.

Click here to understand what Halo is all about. Halo lovers don't call it "Halo." They refer to the movie as "one" for Halo 1, "two" for Halo 2, and so on.

To see the video trailer, you have to type in your date of birth to prove that are old enough. It is, of course, a violent game. It would be interesting to see how easy it is for a young kids to buy the game.

First-person shooting games are wildly popular. The (Minneapolis) Star-Tribune says:


In other video gaming news, the long-awaited Wii video game, "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed," will be out in the spring.

 

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