Mychal Bell, the All-State football star at the center of the Jena Six brouhaha, was today sentenced to jail for 18 months for his four previous convictions. See, stomping an unconscious kid wasn't part of his various probation deals that had allowed him to stay out of juvenile hall and on the football field for Jena H.S. in 2006:

'Jena 6' Teen Mychal Bell Back in Jail

The Associated Press

JENA, La. — A teenager at the center of a civil rights controversy was back in jail Thursday after a judge decided the fight that put him in the national spotlight violated terms of his probation for a previous conviction, his attorney said.

Mychal Bell, who along with five other black teenagers is accused of beating a white classmate, had gone to juvenile court Thursday expecting another routine hearing, said Carol Powell Lexing, one of Bell's attorneys.

Instead, after a six-hour hearing, state District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. sentenced him to 18 months in jail on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, Lexing said.

He had been hit with those charges before the Dec. 4 attack on classmate Justin Barker. Details on the previous charges, which were handled in juvenile court, were unclear.

We know that in one of those earlier "adjudications" (juvenile justicese for "convictions") the 5'-10", 185 pound fullback /middle linebacker (100 yards rushing and 12 tackles per game as a junior) who was being recruited by mighty LSU, was found guilty of punching a 17 year old girl in the face.

Is anybody other than the original small town reporter Abbey Brown and sportswriter Jason Whitlock ever going to realize that this isn't a story about poor oppressed sharecroppers getting lynched, it's a story about football stars who were coddled for years, until they finally went too far, because small towns in the South are crazy about high school football?