Thursday, April 3, 2008

Do The Wrong Thing

Levon Jones, a student from Georgia visiting New Orleans for a flag football tournament, was killed in December 2004 by a group of 'bouncers' outside the unpopular Bourbon street bar Razzoo's. He died of asphyxiation as he was being held face down in the street by 4 of said 'bouncers' for 10-15 minutes while 'police' 'arrived' to arrest him.

The fight started for not adhering to the 'dress code' for when a member of the flag football group was barred from entering Razzoo's. As it is well known that the only mandate of such 'dress codes' is skin color, the flag football clique took issue with Razzoo's casually dressed patronage and continued barring of members that were dressed according to the unposted 'code'. Quoting from the Times Pic:

The club's doormen told Jones and another friend that their "black a - -" wasn't welcome at Razzoo, [a witness] said in the second day of testimony. Jones and a friend, Anthony Williams, "stepped up," chests out after each was told to "get his black a - -" away, Austin said. But neither man struck a bouncer until Jones was shoved backward, she said.

"He was being pursued, pushed by the bouncers," said Tom Schueller, who owns a real estate company in Tampa, Fla. "He got slammed down face-first on the sidewalk. One of the bouncers put his knee in the middle of his back. One was choking him. He was restrained by six to seven hundred pounds of bouncers . . . he was gasping."

"The bouncers killed that man," Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard told TV news outlets. His office ruled the death a homicide caused by asphyxia that arose after "excessive physical force."

The first of the bouncers being tried for simply manslaughter, Arthur Irons, was just acquitted. The jury only had to find that Irons had committed a misdemeanor, such as false imprisonment or battery. A misdemeanor that leads to death is manslaughter. However, after an hour of deliberation/free lunch, the jury found nothing wrong with the 'bouncers' behavior. How was this verdict really reached? By claiming jury pool contamination and getting the trial moved to Lake Charles, land of 13/14 white juries. Because, as we all know, there just aren't enough bigots in New Orleans.

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