Mychal Bell Doesn't Deserve Anyone's Sympathy

Mychal Bell, the most well-known of the "Jena 6", has reached a plea agreement with prosecutors. He'll get an 18 month sentence to a juvenile facility and receive credit for time served. He will serve about 8 more months before being released.

Bell's attorneys said they agreed to the plea bargain to spare the former high school football star the danger of being convicted of more serious charges and also to win early release from juvenile custody.

In October, Mauffray sentenced Bell to 18 months in a juvenile facility for four prior juvenile convictions for battery and destruction of property. But under the terms of Monday's plea agreement, that time will be served concurrently with the new 18-month sentence for the Dec. 4 attack, and Bell will get credit for the nine months he spent in jail while awaiting trial. His attorneys said he could be released by June.

Mychal Bell is no hero, far from it. But liberals will have you believe that Bell is a hero because for once, he got an unfair shake from a criminal justice system he was already well familiar with. That's right, while liberals (like mice being led by Pied Pipers named Al and Jesse), marched up-and-down through Louisiana back in September for the now notorious "Jena 6", they righteously ignored that fact that Mychal Bell participated in the beat-down of a white teenager who had absolutely nothing the "noose hanging" incident that ignited the whole "Jena 6" celebre to begin with. A beatdown of an innocent victim that wasn't provoked by any sense of moral retribution, but pure anger and utter revenge. And for one of its participants, it wasn't the first time they were involved in a violent act. In fact, Mychal Bell was already on probation for a prior arrest even before he attacked Justin Barker. In addition, he had already violated his probation with three other arrests. Rumor has it that Bell beat an ex-girlfriend so badly once that her eye became dislocated from its socket (how ironic in that Barker was blinded in one eye for 3 weeks after he caught a Bell beatdown).

The fact is that since he was already a convicted felon, Mychal Bell deserved to be prosecuted and should've gotten a lengthy sentence for beating up Barker. As what's been lost in liberal outrage at Mychal Bell's original sentence is that Bell was already a young man prone to violence quickly heading down a road in which he'll either end up dead or in and out of jail for the rest of his life if he doesn't look in the mirror and take responsibility for his life. Indeed, while the Jena Six case has been both edgy and controversial, it has put a much-needed face on the troubling racial bias in the criminal justice system, particularly in the South. But Mychal Bell should not be its poster boy, because to do so sets a dangerous precedent in putting a man on a pedestal he has no interest in being on or deserve to be anywhere close to.