• We now have sent in as a committee over 70 personal letters to the District Attorney.
• Organizations throughout the pioneer valley are mobilizing to expand the communities efforts to get Justice for Jason and Justice for All!
• UMass Faculty are busy circulating a petition for Jason’s re-admittance to UMass assuming his innocence.
• UMass Students are continuing to build a force of the people to pressure the District Attorney to drop the charges against Jason Vassell.

Next up, the entire community will be holding an ALL COMMUNITY RALLY on November 19th! Please look out for details.

If you would like to continue to organize with the Justice for Jason Committee, join us for weekly organizing meetings: MONDAY’S at 7PM at 420 Student Union Building.

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(Originally published in the Daily Collegian at UMass Amherst)

Re: “A new look at ‘Justice for Jason”
By: David P. Hoose and Luke Ryan
Posted: 9/25/08

Dear Editor:

We are the lawyers for Jason Vassell. As lawyers, we are limited in what we can say about the evidence in a pending case by our rules of professional responsibility. However, those rules do permit us to protect our client in a situation like this where substantial, undue prejudice may result from recent pre-trial publicity.

The Daily Collegian’s column by Alana Goodman on Sept. 19 contains many distortions and inaccuracies. At a minimum, the following points need to be corrected:

First, Goodman describes Jason as 5-foot-10″ and 200 pounds. In actuality, Jason is 5-foot-9″ and weighed approximately 185 pounds at the time of the incident. It is clear from the video evidence that Bosse is at least as tall as Jason and that Bowes is substantially larger.

Second, two white female UMass students who were in Jason’s first-floor dorm room describe the incident as beginning when Bosse and Bowes were observed peering into Jason’s window at 4:30 a.m. When Jason pulled the shade down and told them to leave, they began to call him a “pussy,” “nigger,” “retard,” and “bitch” and eventually smashed the window. A third white female next door was awakened by the racist taunting.

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On Monday September 22, 2008, Malcolm Chu submitted, on behalf of the Committee for Justice for Jason, a response to an op-ed that was a most irresponsible and misleading, published, apparently, without reservation, by the Massachusetts Daily Collegian. Despite publishing an article which jeopardizes a current criminal trial, and the life of one of our community members, Jason Vassell, the Collegian did not find it possible to publish the following article without editorial intervention. Luckily, due to the support of a community member, we were able to purchase space in Monday’s issue to ensure that the community has accurate information on this case. Unfortunately, advertisements are not published on the collegian web site, nor accessible by internet search and therefore should be spread throughout the community by supporters.

Lastly, we encourage you to read Alana Goodman’s op-ed as well, to give proper context for this response.

An Honest Look at Justice For Jason

Author Note: After publishing what, I feel, was an inaccurate and misleading column, the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, according to policy, did not find it possible to publish this clarification in its present form, without editorial intervention. They were however, kind enough to allow us to purchase space so that the community can have accurate information on this case.

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Raffle and Benefit Silent Auction – We will be holding a silent auction to defray the cost of Jason’s defense.  The date and venue have not been finalized, but we are aiming for early November.  (Watch the website for further information.)  In the meantime, we are working hard to get the event organized.  There are several ways you can help our efforts:

1. We are soliciting donations of items to be auctioned.  If you can donate something, or if you are willing to approach someone else about donating, please let us know.  We hope to have a significant number of big-ticket items, but we’d like to offer a wide range of items so that anyone who attends will be able to afford something. 

Suggestions:

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This afternoon [7/24/08] before the hearing got started we gave the new prosecutor a letter detailing all the items we’ve received so far and all the items that we’ve yet received and to which we feel we are entitled.  (Both state and federal law requires a prosecutor to turn over any and all evidence to a defendant if it may prove at all helpful to the defendant’s case.)  We also asked the prosecutor to agree to drop the curfew that was originally imposed on Jason in February and amended in April.  After providing her with a letter from Jason’s employer, she agreed to do so.  Given the fact that she is new to the case, she asked that we continue the actual pre-trial hearing until 9/8, which we agreed to do.
 
Once the judge arrived we informed the judge of what we’d agreed to and we gave the agreements his blessing.
 
Between now and 9/8/08 the prosecutor will be working to find the items we’ve requested, and we’ll be working on preparing for the 9/8/08 hearing.  On that date, we’ll report to the court on the state of discovery (i.e. the process by which evidence to be used at trial is generated), and tell the court what pre-trial motions, if any, we plan to file.
 
Of course, the big news from today [7/24/08] is the turnout. The fact that Jason’s supporters managed to fill up the old courtroom [150+ people] will be the buzz in the courthouse for the next week.  Although it’s impossible to quantify the impact of such a turnout, I think it’s important to give you one example of how it matters.  Courts are busy places and an understandable goal of the judges and clerks is to move cases.  When you fill up the courtroom with supporters, judges and clerks not only take notice.  They literally have to stop, if only for a few seconds, when those supporters exit en masse at the conclusion of a hearing.  The message it sends to the court is, “this is not just another hearing because this is not just another case.” 
  

If you haven’t been following the case involving Jason Vassell and the uncharged assailants, here are a few stories recently published by the press after the arraignment on April 15th.  We strongly encourage you to attend the upcoming press conference to hear the facts and find out what we can all do to ensure that justice is carried out in the trial.http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/former_university_of_massachus.html?category=Crimehttp://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/former_university_of_massachus.html

Press Conference: Justice for Jason Vassell

Monday May 12, 2008, at 11 a.m.

Massachusetts Room, Mullins Center, UMass Amherst 

Open to the Public

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JUSTICE for JASON RALLY

WED March 12th, 12-1pm

Student Union Steps at UMass Amherst

On Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008, Jason Vassell, a twenty-three year old African American student at the University of Massachusetts, was arrested and charged with two counts of assault with intent to murder and two counts of aggravated assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. These charges stem from an altercation that Jason had with two white men, who were on campus for no legitimate purpose and provoked the confrontation by smashing Jason’s window and repeatedly referring to him as a “nigger.” Although Jason never left the dormitory, he was the only one charged at first. While one of the perpetrators, John Bowes, was recently charged with two hate crimes and disorderly conduct, the other white man, Jonathan Bosse, has not been charged as of yet.

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