About 150 people, including a few white residents, jammed into tiny Antioch Baptist Church, taking all the space inside and spilling out onto the lawn.

Before the meeting, Sharpton and King met with Bell at the parish jail.

Two new defense attorneys for Bell Louis Scott and Carol Powell-Lexing said they planned a motion for a new trial, contending that Bell should have be tried as a juvenile and the trial should have been moved to another parish.

The attorneys also said they would ask for Bell's release on a reduced bond while he appeals his conviction.

Jena, a town of 3,000, is mostly white with about 350 black residents. Residents said race relations had been sensitive though not explosive until incidents began unfolding last fall at Jena High School.

The morning after a black student sat under a tree on campus where white students traditionally congregated, three nooses lynching symbols in the old South were hung in the tree. Students accused of placing them were suspended from the school for a short period, but tensions increased. Fights between black and white students were reported on and off campus.

Then on Dec. 4, the six black students were accused of jumping Justin Barker, 18, who is white, and beating and kicking him at the high school.

Barker was treated at a hospital emergency room and went to a school function the same night. Bell, a star football player who was being courted by UCLA and Louisiana State University, was found guilty by an all-white jury.

Trial dates for Robert Bailey Jr., Bryant Purvis, Carwin Jones and Theodore Shaw, all 18, and an unidentified juvenile have not been set.


- Associated Press