Little-Known Case was Landmark for Hispanics

50 years ago, a Texan's trial helped bring Latinos equal treatment by law

He mostly picked cotton for a living, hung out in the local cantinas, sometimes got into bar fights and eventually was indicted for murder with malice.

But in paving the way for civil rights, his case, Hernandez v. Texas, was to Hispanics what Brown v. Board of Education was to blacks.

"This was a fundamental decision that established society could not treat Mexican-Americans in a different and discriminatory way," said University of Houston law professor Michael Olivas.

Fifty years later, thanks in part to the Supreme Court decision, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is poised to possibly join the high court. Houston Independent School District Superintendent Abe Saavedra is the first Hispanic to preside over the majority-Hispanic district. Two Hispanics sit on the Houston City Council and four represent Harris County in the Legislature.

Because of the precedent set in the case, Hispanics today are treated as a distinct group for the purposes of education, political redistricting and the divvying up of public contracts.

Both the Brown and Hernandez cases had immediate and far-reaching implications for blacks and Latinos, respectively. But the well-publicized Brown decision, issued 10 days later, far overshadowed Hernandez, in part because Pete Hernandez didn't garner the same public sympathy as Linda Brown, the schoolgirl who was the central figure in the desegregation case.

Hernandez attracted legal attention after killing a person in a bar fight.

There were witnesses, evidence and a solid case for the prosecution. But he was convicted by an all-white jury in a county and state where all-white juries were the rule.

In justifying an all-white jury, the state argued that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause covered only whites and blacks, and that Mexican-Americans were white.

But in making their case to higher courts, Mexican-American attorneys argued that in almost every way, Mexican-Americans in Texas were just as excluded and mistreated as blacks in the old South.

In a unanimous May 1954 decision, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that Mexican-Americans were a distinct group entitled to the same constitutional protections as other minorities.

Chief Justice Earl Warren ordered a new trial for Hernandez, condemning the Jackson County jury-selection process. Hernandez was again found guilty.

Half a century after the landmark decision, some believe the legal system is still unfair and discriminatory.

Although Hispanics make up a third of the county's population, a recent study by University of Houston-Downtown criminal justice instructor Larry Carson found that only 9 percent of grand jurors are Hispanic and most are nonvoting alternates.

The reason: Harris County, along with Travis and Tarrant counties, still selects grand jurors exclusively through commissioners picked by the presiding judge. So a judge picks a friend who picks another friend, as in mid-1900s Jackson County.

"I can't believe it's taken folks this long to figure out that the system is not working," said University of Houston law professor Sandra Guerra Thompson, who has been advocating for changes. "If there were a challenge to the grand jury system, it would be just like the old Hernandez case, where Hispanics are underrepresented because they were being systematically excluded."

Former U.S. District Judge James DeAnda, the second Hispanic to serve on the federal bench in the country and the first in Harris County, is the only one of the Hernandez legal team still living.

He recalled Jackson County 50 years ago, when Mexican-Americans could barely participate in the community, and restaurants displayed signs warning "No Mexicans Served."

He believes the criminal justice system remains biased, especially with the selection of grand jurors.

"The bottom line is that we don't seem to have the problem completely fixed yet," he said, "and it's time we did."