On September 19, for the first time since the story first broke 10 months ago, MSNBC's Hardball addressed the case of the so-called Jena Six -- a group of six black high school students in Jena, Louisiana, arrested in December 2006 and charged with the attempted murder of a white student following a schoolyard fight, charges that were later reduced to battery and conspiracy. The fight followed weeks of racially charged incidents -- including the hanging of nooses in a tree at the school, fights, protests, and arson -- which have sparked ongoing civil rights protests over the charges and allegations of vastly disparate treatment of the black and white students involved in the various incidents. However, despite Hardball's previous lack of coverage and a major recent development in the controversy -- an appellate court's dismissal on September 14 of a battery conviction against one of the Jena Six -- host Chris Matthews' treatment of the Jena Six incident was limited to Rev. Jesse Jackson's reported comment that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) was “acting like he's white” in his response to the Jena Six matter. Matthews offered only a brief explanation of the facts surrounding the Jena Six, instead focusing the discussion on Jackson and Obama saying: “Jackson doesn't like the fact, apparently, that the Illinois senator isn't down in Jena, Louisiana, with him and Al Sharpton protesting the arrest of several black juveniles for attempted murder.”

In contrast to his brusque treatment of the Jena Six case, Matthews opened his September 19 show with a nearly 14-minute report on the recent arrest of former football player O.J. Simpson in Las Vegas. The September 17 and 18 editions of Hardball also featured lengthy reports on Simpson's arrest.

Furthermore, the September 20 edition of Hardball featured no coverage of the Jena Six despite a rally in Jena that day in which more than 10,000 people were reported to have traveled from across the country to attend protests over the treatment of the six black students.

As The New York Times reported on September 19, the series of events that led to the arrest of the Jena Six began in September 2006, when a black student at Jena High School sat under what was known as the “White Tree” -- named so “because of the kind of people who typically sat beneath its shade” -- and "[t]hree nooses quickly appeared on the tree a day after the black student sat under it." The Washington Post reported on August 4:

A few weeks after the nooses were discovered in September, an arsonist torched a wing of Jena High School. Race fights roiled the town for days, culminating in a schoolyard brawl that led the LaSalle Parish district attorney to charge six black teenagers with attempted murder for beating up a white teenager who suffered no life-threatening injuries.

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The white teenager who was beaten, Justin Barker, 17, was knocked out but walked out of a hospital after two hours of treatment for a concussion and an eye that was swollen shut. He attended a ring ceremony later that night.

District Attorney Reed Walters said in December that his decision to prosecute the black teenagers to the full extent of the law had nothing to do with race. He would not comment further on the case while it is pending. But black residents in Jena said issues of race permeate their town, 230 miles northwest of New Orleans.

Several other racially charged incidents preceded the fight, including one in which one of the accused reportedly wrestled an unloaded shotgun away from a white student who was brandishing it at him. The black student ended up being charged with theft of a firearm, while the white student was not charged at all. According to a July 30 report on NPR.org:

The day after the nooses were hung, they reportedly organized a silent protest under the tree.

The school called an assembly and summoned the police and the district attorney. Black students sat on one side, whites on the other. District Attorney Reed Walters warned the students he could be their friend or their worst enemy. He lifted his fountain pen and said, “With one stroke of my pen, I can make your life disappear.”

That evening, black students told their parents that the DA was looking right at them. Walters denies that. Billy Fowler, a member of the school board, doesn't believe it, either.

“He said some pretty strong things,” says Fowler, “but I don't think he was directing it to anyone in particular. I think he just wanted people to calm it down.”

But things didn't calm down. Some whites felt triumphant; some blacks were resentful. Fights began to break out at the high school. But that year, the football team was having an unusually good season and the black athletes were a major reason why. So while there were fights throughout the fall, nobody wanted to take any action that would hurt the team.

When the season was over, so was the truce. On Nov. 30, somebody burned down Jena High. Whites thought blacks were responsible, blacks thought the opposite.

Charges and Public Outrage

The next night, 16-year-old Robert Bailey and a few black friends tried to enter a party attended mostly by whites. When Bailey got inside, he was attacked and beaten. The next day, tensions escalated at a local convenience store. Bailey exchanged words with a white student who had been at the party. The white boy ran back to his truck and pulled out a pistol grip shotgun. Bailey ran after him and wrestled him for the gun.

After some scuffling, Bailey and his friends took the gun away and brought it home. Bailey was eventually charged with theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace. The white student who pulled the weapon was not charged at all.

As the September 19 Times noted, the attempted murder charges drew outcry from civil rights groups, who claimed the charges were excessive and racially motivated. According to the Times, “the charges of attempted murder have been scaled back to offenses like aggravated battery and conspiracy,” but civil rights advocates maintained that the scaled-back charges are still disproportionate to the offense, and organized a September 20 demonstration “against what they say is the unfair treatment of the black students.”

On September 4, 17-year-old Mychal Bell, the only one of the Jena Six to actually be tried and convicted -- on charges of battery and conspiracy -- had his conspiracy conviction thrown out by Judge J.P. Mauffray, who ruled that a juvenile cannot be charged with conspiracy as an adult. Mauffray, however, upheld the battery conviction, rejecting arguments that a juvenile can not be tried as an adult for battery. The Associated Press reported on September 5:

A judge has thrown out one of the two charges against the first black student tried for beating up a white student at Jena High School, saying juveniles cannot be charged with conspiracy in adult court.

But Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr. rejected arguments that, for the same reason, he should throw out the aggravated second-degree battery charge on which Mychal Bell also was convicted.

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Murder and attempted murder are charges on which a juvenile can be tried as an adult, but aggravated battery is not, defense attorney Bob Noel argued.

He said LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters used “bait-and-switch” tactics to try Bell as an adult. Bell was indicted on a charge of attempted murder, but Walters changed to the battery charge before trial, as he did Tuesday with the charges against two more students, Carwin Jones and Theo Shaw.

But Mauffray agreed with Walters that, once a case against a juvenile is in adult court, reducing the charge did not automatically return the case to juvenile court.

Walters quoted state law: “The court exercising criminal jurisdiction shall retain jurisdiction over the child's case, even though he pleads guilty to or is convicted of a lesser included offense.”

On September 14, a Louisiana state appeals court overturned Mauffray's ruling and threw out the battery conviction, finding that juveniles cannot, in fact, legally be tried as adults for battery in Louisiana. The Washington Post reported on September 15:

A Louisiana appeals court yesterday overturned the aggravated-battery conviction of a black high school student who was found guilty of attacking a white classmate after a racial incident that raised tensions in their small town.

The state's 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that Mychal Bell, 17, should not have been tried as an adult by LaSalle Parish District Attorney J. Reed Walters, and that the trial judge erred in allowing Bell to be tried as an adult on charges of aggravated second-degree battery. Under Louisiana law, teenagers can be tried as adults for certain violent crimes but not battery, the court said.

Matthews covered the Jena Six controversy on September 19 after a September 18 article in the newspaper The State (Columbia, South Carolina) reported that Jackson, after a speech at a college there, claimed that Obama was " 'acting like he's white' in what Jackson said has been a tepid response to six black juveniles' arrest on attempted-murder charges in Jena, La." The State later updated the story on September 19, reporting that “Jackson said he did not recall making the 'acting like he's white' comment about Obama, stressing he only wanted to point out the candidates had not seized on an opportunity to highlight the disproportionate criminal punishments black youths too often face.”

The Obama campaign issued a statement on the Jena Six on September 10 which read, in part: “When nooses are being hung in high schools in the 21st century, it's a tragedy. It shows that we still have a lot of work to do as a nation to heal our racial tensions. This isn't just Jena's problem; it's America's problem.” In the statement, Obama called “on the District Attorney to drop the excessive charges brought in this case.” The Obama campaign issued another statement on September 14, after the Louisiana appeals court threw out Bell's battery conviction:

I am pleased that the Louisiana state appeals court recognized that the aggravated battery charge brought in this case was inappropriate. I hope that today's decision will lead the prosecutor to reconsider the excessive charges brought against all the teenagers in this case. And I hope that the judicial process will move deliberately to ensure that all of the defendants will receive a fair trial and equal justice under the law.

From the September 19 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: Time now for the politics out there. Jesse Jackson, who has been low-key of late, reverted to the old firebrand yesterday, saying that his candidate, Barack Obama, is -- quote -- “acting like he's white.” Jackson doesn't like the fact, apparently, that the Illinois senator isn't down in Jena, Louisiana, with him and Al Sharpton protesting the arrest of several black juveniles for attempted murder.