Mauffray's ruling Thursday night came just two weeks after he was forced to release Bell on $45,000 bond after the teenager had been jailed for more than nine months on the Dec. 4 charges. A Louisiana appellate court overturned Bell's aggravated battery conviction in that case on the grounds that Mauffray had improperly allowed the youth to be tried as an adult. The appellate court ordered the case back to juvenile court.
"This is judicial revenge," said Al Sharpton, one of the civil rights leaders who have taken up the Jena 6 case. "The judge was already defeated once by the appellate court, and now he's taking his frustrations out on Mychal Bell.
It was unclear why Mauffray decided to send Bell to jail on the prior charges. The judge has ordered all the proceedings in Bell's case to be closed and directed all the lawyers in the case not speak about it publicly.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Jena Judge Jails Mychal Bell Again
In a surprise ruling after a 6-hour closed hearing, the same judge who erroneously tried Mychal Bell as an adult has ordered him jailed again, this time for violating probation imposed for a prior juvenile conviction unrelated to the nooses in the Jena High School White Tree, except insofar as Mychal Bell was already a black kid in LaSalle Parish, Louisiana at the time. As reported in the Chicago Tribune:
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Mychal Bell's sentencing on multiple counts of battery and destruction of private property was postponed after he and five other black students known as the Jena Six were charged with beating a white student at Jena High School. Sentencing for the previous conviction went forward normally once an applelate court overturned Bell's conviction for aggravated assault in the Jena High School beating case. Bell will be retried as a juvenile in the Jena High School beating case and will likely face more time if convicted.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1024/p09s01-coop.html?page=3
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