A Louisiana state district judge has disqualified himself from deciding a request from the news media to open the new trial of Mychal Bell, of Jena Six infamy, to the public.
A new judge will decide whether or not to give the news media permission to “The news organizations are seeking permission to attend new hearings in Bell’s case, to review transcripts of previous hearings and other court records, and to lift a gag order against participants in the case.”
The non-journalist in me says the whole thing screams “terrible idea!” The cynical journalist side is morbidly curious. Still, considering the publicity nightmare this case has been, I strongly doubt any judge is going to be inclined to give journalists more access to the case.
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That racist prosecutor Reed Walters let Mychal Bell walk out on four felonies with four probations. If that DA had had any respect for blacks he would have locked up Bell with the first felony, a black-on-black crime. Instead, Bell went on to commit three more crimes against the black community. Reed Walters is too liberal and too racist to continue to serve Jena.
These hearings cannot be allowed to go on in secret!!Are you nuts, Stereohyped?!! There have been so many judicial wrongdoings that the public absolutely needs to have an eye on the proceedings! That’s the only saving grace of our unequal judicial system. Why do you think the court wants Bell’s hearings kept secret?! Where do you live? Soviet Russia?! Oy vay.
Uh, I’m generally not a fan of blowing children’s ish up in public but I think these people are shady enough for the benefits to outweigh the costs.
dsf, if you think every juvenile offender should be thrown in with criminals (and thus eliminating any chance of rehabilitation), then people like you need to come up with ways to relieve overly crowded prisons that doesn’t involve freeing rapists and child molesters who go out and victimize more people.
The part of me that doesn’t want the case open to the media doesn’t want to for the sake of Mychal Bell and the rest of the Jena Six. The prosecution isn’t the only side that has something to lose if the entire world is inside the courtroom. Also, it’s not this totally out of the ordinary thing for a very high profile trial to be closed to the media.
In rare circumstances, having juvenile proceedings open to public scrutiny can be to the youth’s advantage. I am quite sure that’s what is going on here, and that the media knows it. So it’s not a wild chase for unchecked media access.
Check out this case re: open proceedings in Louisiana: State ex rel. D.W., 865 So.2d 45 (La. 2004), available at this link: In that case, the defense attorney successfully argued that the case should be open to the public.
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