Incident in Jena,La.

[MuresanForMVP]

I did a search and couldn't find anything on this on 2p2, but it's all over the place on college campuses,facebook, etc. This link does a fair job of explaining at least what happened, but may be a little biased.

For cliff notes ill try to cover the most important bases: Jena, La. is a predominantly white town. At the local high school there's a tree that students sit under that is referred to as the "white tree" as it's understood to be a place where whites sit only.
-A black student asked if he could sit underneath the treet
-The next day three nooses were hung from the tree
-Black students held a nonviolent protest
-The DA came down and told them to cut it out and allegedly said "I can end your lives with a stroke of a pen"
-Fast forward to an incident where a white student was beaten up and put into the hospital by 6 of the local high school's black students.
-Said students were charged with a number of crimes the highest being second-degree attempted murder (later thrown out)
-Outrage re: the sentences

My interest is not bemoaning the ugliness of racism. This is a racially driven incident (though I find it interesting that these 6 are being turned into the victims after ganging up on one person) obviously, but I'm more interested in how the law views this incident. What would be an appropriate charge for the men who were 18 at the time of the incident? The minors? This has become particularly annoying to me after seeing the nonstop cheers of "Free the Jena 6!" I ask why they should be "freed"? They assaulted another student, and all the talk about the nooses,etc is just smoke and mirrors, and an effort to take the focus away from the crime committed. Yes, all the racism is sad and so forth but should that be an allowable excuse for 6 people ganging up on one person? And if the positions were flipped and if it was 6 white students on one black student how would the criminal justice system respond?