Jena "Noose Boy" Gets 4 Months in Prison

[Mike Ellis]

It is always productive for the government and media to instruct us on the terms in which we are allowed to express ourselves. Helps us keep things straight.

1) Students hanging a noose from a tree at school = ethnic intimidation, hatred.

2) Six Black students beating one White boy into unconsciousness in an unrelated incident months later = reasonable reprisal for noose incident, no hatred involved.

3) 20,000+ Blacks converging on Jena to protest arrest of the 6 attackers, demanding that they not only be let go but that the completely unrelated noose-hangers from months ago be arrested, is NOT ethnic intimidation.

4) Teenage chucklehead tying nooses to bumper and cruising past 20,000 protesters is an actionable ethnic hatred punishable by prison - a Federal offense.

Munsen gets four months for noose incident | thetowntalk.com | The Town Talk

Munsen gets four months for noose incident
By Tom Bonnette • tbonnette@thetowntalk.com • August 16, 2008

Jeremiah Munsen, the 19-year-old Colfax man who made international headlines after using hangman's nooses last year to intimidate "Jena Six" marchers in Alexandria, was sentenced Friday to four months in federal prison.

Munsen had pleaded guilty in April to a misdemeanor federal hate crime of interrupting protesters' federal rights to travel for driving with the nooses draped from the back of a pickup truck.

The marchers were from Tennessee and were waiting in Alexandria on the night of Sept. 20 for buses to return home after having participated in a civil rights rally in Jena. More than 20,000 marchers converged on Central Louisiana on that date to protest the judicial treatment of six black Jena High School students charged in a December 2006 attack on a white classmate at the school.

Munsen sat stoic and erect Friday, and family members wiped away tears as U.S. District Judge Dee Drell read aloud the sentence.

Drell included asininity of youth and intoxication as mitigating factors warranting a reduced sentence for Munsen, who could have received a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Munsen had been drinking when he and a juvenile accomplice decided to fashion nooses from electrical extension cords, hang them from the truck and buzz past protesters.

"It's a shame that there is not a federal statute for terminal stupidity, because this was a stupid, stupid thing to do," Drell told Munsen as he handed down the sentence.

"My Country 'Tis of Thee" played softly on a piano over the court's sound system as counsel conferred with Drell at the bench to ask that Munsen be jailed close to home in a minimum-security facility.

Munsen must surrender to authorities on Sept. 15 for incarceration.

He will be placed on one-year supervised probation and five years' unsupervised probation after being released from prison. He also was ordered to perform 125 hours of community service.

"The point is to teach you how important it is to serve others and not to injure them. Maybe that will be some important teaching for you," Drell said.

In pleading to the lesser of the two charges he was indicted for in January, Munsen escaped facing a felony hate crime charge of conspiring to deprive the marchers of their civil rights by using a noose to intimidate the crowd.

Munsen had faced 11 years in prison if convicted of both charges.

A new state law went into effect Friday that made hanging a noose with the intent to intimidate a crime punishable by a fine of as much as $5,000 and as much as one year in prison.

Munsen declined Friday to speak on his behalf, but his sister, Paula Munsen, 27, testified.

Paula Munsen told the court her brother has been working and had enrolled in public school night classes to pursue a General Educational Development certificate.

Paula Munsen said her brother now lives with her in Pineville after being thrown out of his parents' Colfax home, where he had grown up and was home-schooled.

"Jeremiah came to stay with me when he took the plea bargain and my dad threw him out of the house," she said. "My dad said, 'If you take that, I'll throw you out of the house.'"

Munsen's court-appointed attorney, Billy Guin, said his client was hoping to walk away with probation but is satisfied with the outcome.

Guin said Munsen used the noose to protest what he thought was overblown publicity for the Jena Six and wasn't trying to incite a racial incident.

"I think he disagreed with all the publicity in the Jena Six situation," Guin said. "He didn't think it was a racial thing."