Area hotels booked prior to event
Nearly every hotel in Jena is booked for Wednesday night, with most of those rooms occupied by those rallying for the "Jena Six."
But although Wednesday isn't usually one of their busiest days, most hotel managers said handling the influx of people will be nothing out of the ordinary.
"During the sports season we are always booked up," Quality Inn manager Bill Carr said. "This isn't really out of the ordinary."
He said about 90 percent of the hotel's 58 rooms are for those coming in for the rally in Jena. The economic impact on Alexandria, if any, will be small.
Effie Hall, front desk clerk at Days Inn, said nearly all of the hotel's rooms would be filled with rally-goers Wednesday night coming in from Washington, D.C., New York and Georgia.
"We're still getting calls asking for rooms even though we've been booked for weeks," she said. "I have heard that pretty much everything is booked here. I'm telling people to call Natchitoches or other places."
Hundreds of buses are expected to meet Thursday morning at the Rapides Parish Coliseum -- showing people want to stay in Alexandria instead of Monroe or other larger cities, Hall said.
Tomiko Monger is driving down from Memphis. She called Friday to book a hotel in Alexandria, but didn't have much luck and decided to stay at a bed and breakfast.
"It's important to come down for this because this could be anyone's child," Monger said of the six black students known as the Jena Six, who originally were charged with attempted murder in a Dec. 4 incident at Jena High School. "It's a great injustice.
"I don't think nothing should be done to these boys, because they shouldn't have been fighting. But being charged with the charges they have been charged with for as little of what was done isn't right," Monger said.
Bell, the first member of the Jena Six to face trial, was 16 when arrested. He and five other black students are accused of beating white student Justin Barker.
Medical records indicate Barker was left unconscious and bleeding with facial injuries. He was treated at a local emergency room for about three hours.
Charges of attempted murder have been reduced to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit that crime for four of the five teens charged as adults -- Bell, Robert Bailey Jr., Carwin Jones and Theo Shaw. Bryant Purvis has not yet been arraigned.
Jesse Ray Beard, who was 14 at the time of his arrest, is being tried in juvenile court, which isn't open to the public.
On June 28, Bell was convicted by an all-white jury of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit the same.
The court had summoned 150 people for the jury pool, but only 50 showed up -- none of whom were black, court officials said.
On Sept. 4, 28th Judicial District Court Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr. agreed with Bell's attorneys when they said Mauffray never had jurisdiction over the conspiracy charge and threw out that conviction. But he contended that he retained jurisdiction of the battery charge. The appeals court didn't agree.
The 3rd Circuit on Friday overturned Bell's felony conviction of aggravated second-degree battery, ruling that the "trial court erred in denying the defendant's motion" to vacate the conviction. The three-judge panel ruled that "jurisdiction remains exclusively in juvenile court" for that charge.
Many of those coming in for the rally have stressed that they plan to spend no money in Jena.
"I will not be spending one dime in Jena," Monger said. "I don't care how thirsty I get down there. I don't want the town to profit in any way from the people coming down for the rally."
Jena's Townsmen Inn has been booked for months, but a hotel employee who declined to give her name said only about five of the hotel's more than 50 rooms were available as the other rooms are booked for the workers doing renovation to the LaSalle Parish Detention Center.
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