Reed Walters, the prosecutor under fire in the Jena 6 case, has an Op-Ed in the NYTimes - Justice in Jena. It appears he has taken a "just following orders" approach.
In the final analysis, I am bound to enforce the laws of Louisiana as they exist today, not as they might in someone’s vision of a perfect world.
There are many problems with this whole case, but for me it comes down to this. You can't decide to enforce the law when you want. Something should have been done about the noose on the tree. No one, including students, has a 1st Amendment right to incite violence or riots. That's what a noose is meant to do. Something should have been done about the contentious interactions between white & black students that followed the noose incident, which went too far on both sides. Is it true that a black student was a victim of assault by whites prior to the Jena 6 incident? Why did he wait to do something once blacks assaulted a white student? And why would you decide that a school fight constituted attempted murder?
In the final analysis, I am bound to enforce the laws of Louisiana as they exist today, not as they might in someone’s vision of a perfect world.
There are many problems with this whole case, but for me it comes down to this. You can't decide to enforce the law when you want. Something should have been done about the noose on the tree. No one, including students, has a 1st Amendment right to incite violence or riots. That's what a noose is meant to do. Something should have been done about the contentious interactions between white & black students that followed the noose incident, which went too far on both sides. Is it true that a black student was a victim of assault by whites prior to the Jena 6 incident? Why did he wait to do something once blacks assaulted a white student? And why would you decide that a school fight constituted attempted murder?
