JENA, La. — A judge ruled Wednesday that the public and the news media should have full access to all legal proceedings involving Mychal Bell, one of the teenage defendants in the racially charged Jena 6 case in Louisiana, whose prosecution had been shrouded in secrecy on orders of the trial judge.
Ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Chicago Tribune and joined by a coalition of major U.S. media companies, Rapides Parish District Judge Thom as Yeager ordered that Bell’s upcoming criminal trial, set to start Dec. 6, as well as any pre-trial hearings, must be open to the press and the public.
Yeager also ordered that the court record and transcripts of any closed proceedings held so far be made available to the news media, and that attorneys for Bell be released from the trial judge’s gag order directing them not to speak about the case.
Yeager’s ruling was a rebuke to LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray, who had ordered that all the proceedings in Bell’s case should be closed because the youth, who is now 17, is being tried as a juvenile for his alleged part in the beating of a white student at Jena High School last December.
Bell is charged with aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy, two of the charges that qualify to be heard in open court under state law, Yeager ruled.
Bell and five other black teenagers face trial for the beating of a white student, Justin Barker, who was attacked and briefly knocked unconscious.
That incident capped months of violent racial tensions in Jena set off after a black student asked school administrators for permission to sit beneath a shade tree in the high school courtyard traditionally used only by whites. The next day, three white students hung nooses from the tree, which later resulted in the alleged assault.
