White Jena Native Tells Tales of DA Misconduct and Jena Racism

September 17th, 2007

Part 1
First, if you’re not going to Jena on September 20th, Join the Virtual March.

I’ve apparently become a source on the Jena 6 case, as I’ve received calls and emails from both media and individuals around the country the last two weeks.

One of those calls came into my cell phone as a “restricted” block number. The women on the other end had quite a story to tell. I must note that I can’t independently verify her story, as I am a free lance writer living hundreds of miles away with no budget and no bureau offices. I am simply presenting the story as it was told to me.

She’s a middle aged Jena Louisiana native, who we’ll call Susan to protect her identity because she fears retribution from the Jena 6 case District attorney Reed Walters and Judge J.P Mauffray, Jr.

In 2004, Susan admittedly wrote a bad check for groceries, because as she tells it, her family was poor and they needed to eat. On the Monday before her hearing she called DA Reed Walters and told him she didn’t have transportation. She claims that he told her that her not to worry about it and that he would reschedule and get back to her. Apparently the rescheduling did not happen, and the sheriffs department was sent to pick her up later that week.

Upon booking she was told that she be home by tomorrow. It would be 35 days later before she would walk out of the county prison. Like the Jena 6 teenagers, she was hit with an outlandish bail for a failure to appear on bad check by the same judge, $300,000. Obviously, not even being able to afford groceries, she could not pay this enormous bail.

Susan describes the jail as a terrible environment. She claims that she was raped with hot curling iron, and after spending time in the infirmary; she was sent back to bloody bed. The jail would not even supply her with new bedding.

Louisiana prisons and jails are known for being some of the most harsh and draconian in the country. Angola State Penitentiary, the largest in the country, is notorious. It’s a former slave plantation and is named such because most of the slaves there were from Angola. Some would suggest that saying it “was” a slave plantation is an overstatement.

It is reported that there was wide spread abuse of Katrina evacuated inmates in the Jena Detention Center in 2005*.

Web searches only show articles on this issue from October 2005, suggestng there’s been no follow up on this issue. Maybe if someone would have stood up for those prisoners then, what is happening to Mychael Bell, Carwin Jones, Bryant Ray Purvis, Robert Bailey, Jason Hatcher andTheo Shawwouldn’t be happening to the Jena 6 now.

These revelations of Susan’s case might lead one to say then that the prosecutorial actions of Walters, and the legal system in Jena aren’t racist; beause they even treat white people this way. But Susan herself would heartily disagree.

She not only does not deny the racial component; in fact she says, a number of times, that the powers that be, and many of the people of LaSalle Parish are racist and hateful. I analyze that it is also evident, if we assume Susan’s assertions to be true, that the same egomania that fuels the need to suppress someone beneath ones self because of race; also fuels Reed Walters and J.P. Moffrays need to control and take advantage of anyone who is vulnerable.

This highlights what many social activists and commentators have noted for decades, all the way up through the Katrina matter; which is that racism and classism often go hand and hand. Martin L. King. Jr, in 1967 embarked on a poor peoples campaing to address issues of economic justice, and abuse of those without economic means.

As I’ve always contended, MLK was not killed simply based on trying to obtain equality for Black people; the powers that be, though they may not have liked it, could live with that. But that he was killed when he attempted to unite the working class and poor across racial lines for a populace movement that would effect the economics and position of the powers that be.

In Part II, more accusations will be revealed about racism and legal abuse in Jena, along with analysis of the social cancers that they reperesent.

*Here is another article on Jena prison abuse after Katrina.

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7 Responses to “White Jena Native Tells Tales of DA Misconduct and Jena Racism”

  1. LennieG on September 17th, 2007 7:58 pm | link

    Although I 100% believe that there is racism going on in Louisiana in general and in Jena
    in particular, I must say that I don’t believe for even a second that she was raped with
    a hot curling iron.

    The pain of that would have been excrutiating and would have left her unable to walk for DAYS. That’s the type of thing you call for police for—if not given attention in the jail.

    Being raped with a hot curling iron would cause permanent vaginal damage and she would needed medical care. And if something so unthinkable happened to her, why isn’t she screaming from the rooftops?

    I’d be leery of this woman.

  2. D. Yobachi Boswell on September 17th, 2007 8:28 pm | link

    I’m not sure the iron was on, she didn’t describe it in that way.

    As far as screaming from the roof tops; you’re speaking from your perspective not hers. She’s poor, without means, vulnerable and scared.

    You’ll hear more in the second part, but the types of people she fears are ones that she believes wouldn’t hestitate to either kill her or rail road her back into jail as before.

  3. D. Yobachi Boswell on September 17th, 2007 8:42 pm | link

    Let me add that, I wouldn’t be shocked if she was fudging on the details some, as most people do that when making their case; either in order to put their apponent in a worst light, or in order to make themselves look just as bad. I doubt she’s making it op all together, though.

    She knows too much that can be falsified, but as I’ve stated I’m not really in a position to falsify it myself. I’ll make the point in part two that I want to past this on to some investigative reporters who are in a position to do that; as to uncover these activities if true. But her statements to me fit in with everything else I know about Jena, and the activities that have been going on there.

  4. Mrs. Grapevine on September 18th, 2007 4:47 pm | link

    If it was a heated curling iron, that would be suspect, but if she meant a curling iron then I could almost believe it, why would they have a curling iron in prison, and who smuggled it into the prison? Maybe it was a guard.

    Anyway I digress, I’m not really sure if Ms. Susan is a credible witness. $300,000 is extremely excessive for a theft by check case, even for Jena, $5000 would be excessive for theft by check for some groceries. If she would have said her bi-racial children needed food, so she held up a bank, and used the check from the heist to feed her black children then I would believe her bail claims. Or if she used the check to get money to buy crack, and then sold it to a cop’s kid, I would believe her. But to pick on a random white woman for theft by check seems a bit out of reach, even for the Jena police. There must be a back story. Even Jena 6 have a back story, albeit not a fair one.

    I don’t want to persecute the victim too much, but I smell smoke.

  5. D. Yobachi Boswell on September 18th, 2007 5:12 pm | link

    Perhaps there is more to the back story. I don’t find any of it impossible considering what I know of prosecutorial and jail/prison abuse. Louisiana is particularly no stranger to such things. People often do this stuff because they can, they’ve always gotten away with it, and so they don’t bat an eye in doing it.

    Again though, after I write the second part with the allegations, I hope to find someone who may be able to check records. I’ve made contact with reportors that I’ll be meeting when I get down there, so maybe I can pass it on to them. I may even attempt to make information request from here.

    I don’t surmize I’ll be able to do much if any investigating doing the one organized day that I’m down there, but I’ll try if there’s an opportunity to.

  6. LennieG on September 19th, 2007 10:43 am | link

    Yobachi said, I’m not sure the iron was on, she didn’t describe it in that way.

    But Yobachi, you wrote it that way. Was it an error? Her is a direct quote:

    She claims that she was raped with hot curling iron, and after spending time in the infirmary; she was sent back to bloody bed. The jail would not even supply her with new bedding.

  7. LennieG on September 19th, 2007 10:46 am | link

    Also, Ms. Grapevine brings out a point I had not thought of. Curling irons are not allowed
    in jail. A woman could hang herself with the cord.

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  • Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.

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