‘Jena Six’ teen freed

? A black teenager jailed in the racially combustible “Jena Six” case was released Thursday, hours after the prosecutor announced that he no longer would seek to try him as an adult.

Mychal Bell, 17, had spent nearly 10 months behind bars after he and five other black youths allegedly assaulted a white classmate last year at Jena High School in Louisiana.

The incident capped months of unrest in the small town, which began last September when white students hung nooses from an oak tree on the school campus, a day after a black freshman asked whether he could sit under it. The three white students who hung the nooses were given three days’ suspension, and white youths involved in racially charged fights off campus received minimal punishment.

LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters initially charged five of the six black teens with attempted murder and as adults – charges that would have put them in prison for up to 50 years. He later lowered the charges to aggravated battery, a felony that still could have locked them up for up to 15 years. Bell’s conviction was overturned earlier this month on the grounds he should have been tried as a juvenile – he was 16 at the time.