Let's be clear about this. The three nooses are not just symbols, or reminders of America's racist past. Nooses (and burning crosses) are death threats. It's possible that the white high school students who hung these nooses do not know this, but I think the vast most people in the deep south know what exactly what they were saying.

The writer would charge a youth with making a death threat based on a generic equation. Such crimes must be proven, not presumed.

Well, all crimes must be proven, not presumed. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know even if death threats can result in legal charges. But I do know these are death threats, and so do you.

I am a lawyer and can tell you that death threats (in my jurisdiction "terroristic threats") can be charged as serious crimes. I was not aware that the man who was beaten participated in putting up the nooses. The time between the putting up of the nooses and the beat down would be significant. How much time separated them?

Although connected by the enflamed emotions of the place, these two events are not, in my mind, connected in terms of culpability. The persons hanging the nooses should have been properly punished, and the persons beating up the other boy should likewise be properly punished. I do not know the circumstances of the beating enough to make any meaningful comment on the severity of the crime. I've heard two distinct versions, one saying it was a "schoolyard brawl," and the other a "vicious beating." I'm glad to hear that death threats can been charged as serious crimes. Perhaps the seriousness of these threats will become evident to the school administators in Jena.