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On Friday Louisiana's appeals court abruptly vacated the felony conviction of a black teenager accused of beating a white student in a case fraught with racial tensions. 

With the prospect of a major national civil rights protest looming next week in the central Louisiana town of Jena Louisiana's 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, acting on an emergency defense appeal, reversed the aggravated second-degree battery conviction of Mychal Bell, 17, ruling that the youth had been tried improperly as an adult in a case that has raised allegations of unequal justice in the small, mostly white town.

This is surly a just outcome in an outrageous sequence of events that seem more likely to have occurred in 1957 than in 2007.

Last week, the judge who presided over Bell's trial in June, LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray, vacated a conspiracy conviction against the youth for the same reason, but inexplicably let the more serious battery conviction stand. Now the local district attorney, Reed Walters, must decide whether to re-file the entire case in juvenile court.

In a startling miscarriage of justice Bell has remained in jail since December, unable to post a $90,000 bond. His attorneys said they would go before Judge Mauffray on Monday and seek to have Bell released. The judge declined previous defense requests to reduce Bell's bond, citing several juvenile assault convictions on the teen's record.

Walters initially charged Bell and five other black teens, who have come to be called the "Jena 6," with attempted murder after the white student was beaten and knocked unconscious at Jena High School last December. The white student suffered cuts and bruises but was treated and released from a local hospital.

Walters later reduced the charges to aggravated second-degree battery, contending at Bell's trial -- the first case to go to court -- that the tennis shoes Bell was wearing constituted a dangerous weapon.

We have joined the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Congressional Black Caucus and Bell's pro bono attorneys in suggesting that Bell’s trial, heard by an all-white jury, was filled with irregularities, including a court-appointed public defender who called no witnesses on his behalf and a prosecution witness who was one of the white youths who hung the nooses at the high school.

Walters said in a statement Friday that he intended to appeal the reversal of Bell's conviction to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

The beating incident followed a series of white-on-black attacks in Jena in which the white assailants escaped serious charges. And it capped months of escalating racial tensions in the town set off after three white students hung nooses from a tree in the high school courtyard in what was perceived as a threat to blacks. School officials called the noose incident an "adolescent prank" and declined to expel the white students, outraging black students and their parents.

Nearly 200,000 people have signed petitions criticizing the prosecution of the black students and calling on Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to intervene in the case. Bus caravans headed toward Jena have been organized at scores of churches across the country, and organizers had predicted that more than 20,000 protesters might show up in the town of 3,000.

Now what will happen to the other five?

On Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama added his criticism of what he termed the "excessive charges" in the case. "When nooses are being hung in high schools in the 21st Century, it's a tragedy," Obama said. "It shows that we still have a lot of work to do as a nation to heal our racial tensions."

Is that it?

A white prosecutor gets who expresses clear animus toward the very citizens he is sworn to protect is allow to get away with it and not pay a price. How can this be in America in 2007?

A black youth is unfairly tried as an adult and convicted by an all white jury and no one is being asked to resign or apologize?

Is expressing our “outrage, surprise and disappointment” with the lack of progress on race in American the best we can muster? If so, no wonder these yahoos thought they could get away with “ruining the lives.” of these young black Americans.

For those who might assert that race shouldn't matter--read our earlier posts on this story--it started and continues to be about race. The question I have is how do we bring this to an acceptable resolution that holds everyone involved accountable for their actions?