Remembering Hernandez v. Texas (State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting 2024)

Episode Notes

Transcript

Rocky Dhir:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the State Bar of Texas podcast. We are recording live from our state bar annual meeting in Dallas, Texas. This is your host, Rocky Dhir. I’ve got three guests with me, but first I want to ask you something. When I say the word Hernandez v Texas, do you know what that is? You might not a lot of folks. Well, this is the 70th anniversary of that case, Hernandez versus Texas. And this year’s annual meeting, we’re going to be talking about some Hispanic issues and joining us, we’ve got three experts on this field. They’re going to tell us about this case, this groundbreaking case. First I’ve got Chief Justice Dori Contreras. Did I say that? You, oh yeah. Look, this is what I’m trying to do. Yeah, yeah. Indians representing, that’s what I’m talking about. Alright. And then we got Justice Gina M. Benavides

That’s correct. That’s what I’m talking right there. You’re doing good. Rocky. Yeah. Oh, oh, now and then to round it out, we got Chris Pineda, but Chris, no judge. No Justice. You’re just Chris. Judge I Not soon though. Soon. Hopefully soon. That’s coming. Okay. Alright. Maybe we’ll have him back here when he is got, and then we’ll have all you guys back and be like, ha, I’m at the table now and then I’ll be the one without the title. So look, this is the 70th anniversary of Hernandez v Texas. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know much about this case either. Never heard about it until just a short time ago.

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

You’re not alone.

Rocky Dhir:

Okay, so look, I know it’s a civil rights case, and from what I read about it, it was the first and only Mexican-American Civil Rights case heard and decided by the US Supreme Court. So let’s set the stage a little bit. All centers around Edna, Texas. What happened in Edna, Texas that brings us to this landmark decision?

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

Well, this significant case arose out of Edna in 1951 was actually a murder that occurred then. But what was going on in Edna at the time, it’s important, is that the people that were living there were direct descendants of families that had lived in the area when it was Mexico. So before it became part of the United States in 1845. And although Mexican Americans were later classified as white pursuant to the Treaty of Guadalupe Algo in 1848, they were not treated as whites. So many people in that area lost their lands. Mexicans were thought of as lazy as shiftless. They were called dirty Mexicans, greasers, wetbacks. It was very difficult in those years, widespread segregation in the schools. There was lots of poverty. Education opportunities were minimal. Part of the evidence in this case that we’ll be talking about is that the Mexican children were actually forced go to a separate school under the guise that they needed to be taught English before they could go to the white school. Interesting. So it was a tough time there in Edna for Mexican Americans.

Rocky Dhir:

Now this all centers around Peter Hernandez and who was he and what was he originally convicted of?

Christopher D. Pineda:

Sure. And I can talk about that. The underlying facts in the case involved two men. Actually this is a classic Texas case because of AMO bar fight.

Rocky Dhir:

Oh, okay. Now you got my attention.

Christopher D. Pineda:

Okay, here we go. The dispute was between Pete Hernandez and Joe Espinosa, both agricultural workers, cotton pickers in Edna Jackson County, Texas. In 1951, by most accounts, Joyce Espinoza was a tenant farmer who was speaking to France, his coworkers at Edna. At some point they started making fun of another worker, Pete Hernandez, making fun of his leg, specifically something about his leg. He either had a disability or an injury, but Pete Hernandez did not take kindly to the insult or the jokes, whatever it was. And so enraged by all accounts, Hernandez went back home, retrieved his gun, returned to theBar, and in the presence of witnesses, Pete Hernandez shot and killed Joe ESP Espinoza. Okay. So there really was no question about Pete Hernandez’s guilt.

Rocky Dhir:

Okay. Now it looks like the legal team representing Pete Hernandez played an important role in protecting the civil rights aspect of this. So let’s talk more about these lawyers. We have Gus Garcia, Carlos Kadina, John Herrera, and James Denda. They each had kind of an impressive resume. Let’s talk about who they were and what the civil rights issue was.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

So what is very impressive about these four gentlemen, besides what I’ll tell you about their background, is that Hernandez’s First Estate of Texas is not only the first issue that arose to the US Supreme Court on Mexican-American civil rights, but they were represented by four Mexican-American lawyers. The first to argue at the US Supreme

Rocky Dhir:

Court. Oh, was that right? Yes.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

Okay. So not only was the underlying facts case crucial, it was also on all Hispanic first team at the US Supreme Court arguing. So they were a quite impressive team. They were Gus Carlos and John Dinda were all from UT Law School. They Herrera was from South Texas law. They all were about the same age. Some a little younger than others, but they were all many first top of their classes. Excellent. And then they all went into the military, especially Gus Garcia and served in the military. And then they came out and they were realizing that the Mexican-Americans were not being treated the same here. They had served their country and were handling many of the cases of the veterans, such as the Macario Garcia case, which was also a discrimination case. And so they were working separately but together to get the issue in front of the US Supreme Court about Mexican-Americans being excluded from the jury in the state of Texas.

Rocky Dhir:

So it’s kind of like Batson v Kentucky in the sense of who’s on your jury,

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

Right? Correct. It was systematic exclusion of Mexican-Americans from juries and petted juries.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

The stipulated evidence from the state of Texas is that no Mexican-American had served on a jury for 25 years.

Rocky Dhir:

So let’s maybe talk then again about the underlying case. Before we get to the Supreme Court. Let’s talk about what this trial was like and to what extent I guess that raised a civil rights issue. Sure,

Christopher D. Pineda:

I can talk about that, please. So as I mentioned, there really was no question about Pete Hernandez’s guilt. The issue was it exposed a larger widespread problem, a problem that was happening in probably at least 70 counties. And that was the systematic exclusion of Mexican-American jurors from service Mexican-Americans from jury service. Right? So this is just, although Peter Hernandez’s guilt was clear, it was the vehicle to bring this civil rights issue to the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

And so the matter actually was handled pretrial before the murder trial. This issue was raised based on what’s called a motion to quash the indictment.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

So testimony of the tax assessor, the court county clerk, all of them of how they picked these jurors to serve from the list, which was basically white men picking white men. Because remember, women still didn’t have the right to serve on jurors either at that time.

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

So the issue had actually been raised in a few cases beforehand, but the courts dismissed it because at first they’d say, well, Mexican Americans aren’t qualified to serve because they’re not intelligent enough or that sort of thing. Then they shifted to, this was now into the forties to say, well, Mexican-Americans are white and the jury is white, so there’s no discrimination. So there’s no discrimination. And at that time they recognized only two classes, white and negro.

Rocky Dhir:

If I could play devil’s advocate for a second, I can imagine the other side is arguing if we know Pete Hernandez is guilty, Chris, like you said, why does it matter who’s on his jury? We know he’s guilty, he’s going to be found guilty. What was the civil rights issue? Was it centering on Pete Hernandez’s, right, to have a jury of his peers that includes Mexican Americans? Or was it about the rights of Mexican Americans to serve on juries?

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

Well, it’s about equal protection under the 14th Amendment. And yes, that it’s not necessarily to have Mexican Americans serve on the jury, but to be at least given the opportunity to serve.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

So it is the protection of having those of your peers to serve on. So it’s a due process. It doesn’t have really anything to do with the murder case. But the process of getting there, the murder occurred and within hours, a grand jury had an indicted him, an all white grand jury had indicted people.

Rocky Dhir:

No. So this really goes not just to the jury at trial. This goes really more to the grand jury. Yes. What we’re talking about

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

Also grand jurors. Yes. Grand jury and petite jurors and the jury. So it was a whole jury system of which was a violation as found by the US Supreme Court of the 14th Amendment.

Rocky Dhir:

Okay. Okay. This is getting really fascinating. Okay. It’s It’s very interesting. Now I’m getting into this. Okay. At first I was like, okay, this sounds interesting. Now I’m fascinated. So let’s talk about these lawyers, this dream team of four gentlemen representing him. How did this case get to them? Why were they interested in this murder case in Texas? What was the process?

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

John Rera and Dianaa had actually handled a couple of other cases before this one raising the same issue. But they were unsuccessful for the reasons that I just said. In Texas, the Court of Criminal Appeals said No, Mexicans are white, and so there’s no discrimination. And Gus Garcia gets hired by the mother of Peter Hernandez to represent him in the murder case. And Gus Garcia knows Johna. These guys all know each other because they’re all very, they’re activists at the time. So sees the opportunity to raise the issue again and brings Johna in and Jeana brings DEA with him. And so they actually handle the trial, including this pretrial hearing. And then on appeal they bring in ena.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

So the issue also is a lot of these men were involved in many of the new civil rights cases, which were in organizations like lulac, which was created at that time, the American GI Forum that was created. And so they were all very involved in those organizations, which was important because those are the organizations that provided the funding to be able to take these cases. That

Rocky Dhir:

Was going to be my question. How in the world is a migrant worker affording all these hotshot lawyers?

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

No, these lawyers weren’t being paid. No, this was pro bono because they knew this issue was so important that they sacrificed their time to do this.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

And then they had to raise money to pay filing fees, printing costs,

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

Travel,

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

Travel. They all stayed in one hotel room in Washington DC They couldn’t afford more than one.

Rocky Dhir:

This is incredible.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

And they did it all by Pachangas and chicken dinners that they sold and people giving them money. Individuals, individuals giving them money for the

Rocky Dhir:

Uninitiated. What is a pachanga? It’s a

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

Pachanga. You’re in Texas. It’s a party. Oh, it’s a party. It’s a dad’s party. And you pay for the cover charge and the cover charge goes to the cause.

Rocky Dhir:

Oh dang. I need to throw one of these just to pay for college for my kid. Like, alright, it’s an India pachanga, I dunno what we’ll call it. We’ll come up with a name. This is cool.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

Well, what do you call your parties?

Rocky Dhir:

Oh man, we call them parties party.

Really? Yeah. That’s pretty much what Indian people know. But we are going to party. It’s just how it is. It may be an English word, but we’ve made it ours. We’ve taken it over, we colonized the English word. You can have it. That’s absolutely, look, this is how it is. So look, let’s talk about January, 1954, right? So the case is now before the Supreme Court. And the primary question to be answered it seems is, is it a denial of the 14th Amendment equal protection clause to try a defendant of a particular race or ethnicity before a jury where all the persons of his race or ancestry have because of that race or ethnicity been excluded by the state? I think Justice Contreras, you had mentioned this earlier, what did the Supreme Court do? How did they treat this question?

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

Well, if I may, I’m sorry. Go ahead. If I may, there is no audio of this oral argument because audios were not taken at that time. And unfortunately for reasons that we’re unable to ascertain, there’s no record of the oral argument. So the only record we have is of newspaper reporters that were in the building at the time of the oral argument. And there was actually only one that was there from the beginning. It actually started early. And so most of the news got there late. Interesting and missed the beginning of oral argument, including Ana’s opening statement. And so all we have is these snippets that are in newspaper articles. But it was very interesting to hear the Supreme Court justices ask about, well, what do we call them? Are they really American citizens? Do they even speak English? And even justice Fearless Frankfurt says, well, don’t they call ’em greasers? Wow. Down. That’s a US Supreme Court justice of which Gus Garcia who did the oral argument and was very aggressive, said, your Honor, my people have been in Texas for a hundred years before Sam Houston came. As a matter of fact, he’s the Tennessee Wetback

Rocky Dhir:

Went back. Really? He says this in court. Okay, he

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

Does say that in court. And so he was very aggressive to put forward that these were people that lived there long before it was America basically.

Christopher D. Pineda:

If I could add too, I mean Mexican Americans had been second class citizens going back to when Texas separated from Mexico. There were Mexican Americans still here for whom they didn’t cross the border. The border crossed them.

Rocky Dhir:

As I’m thinking about everything you guys have talked about in the 15 minutes we’ve been together, I understand at the time it was a first for many Mexican Americans to have a case like this before the US Supreme Court. Why bring this up now? It’s 70 years later. Why is it still important for us to study it? What impact does it have on the way our legal landscape is today? And I’m not saying that to challenge it’s, it’s one of those where it seems like Mexican Americans have equal rights. I don’t hear these terms being bandied about in courts anymore. Why is it important and what do we need to learn about it for the practice of law in the future? Well,

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

First of all, history is important of course. And as we talked about, I guess before we begin the podcast, so many people don’t even know about this case. And so we took this project on to commemorate these lawyers, first of all to recognize the decision in its 70th anniversary. And so that people do recognize where we came from and the battles that were fought in order to be able to have the privileges that we have. And yes, we have come a long way, but we still have a ways to go and we can learn from history.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

And I think that also the basis of this opinion that we weren’t two classes, we weren’t white and negro in the United States, but that you can be discriminated against if you are treated a class apart. That’s the word that the US Supreme Court uses. So whether it applies to Mexican-Americans or any other group that are treated differently, then that can be discrimination. It just isn’t white and black anymore. You can bring it forward to any type of ethnical, cultural, religious, sexual orientation now. And the same principles that are set out in Hernandez versus State of Texas applies to those cases. It was the first one that recognizes class apart as being the basis of discrimination.

Chief Justice Dori Contreras:

In fact, the decision led to knocking down barriers in the employment area and the housing area and the school area. I mean, it had a significant

Christopher D. Pineda:

Impact. And I would just add too, it was not a foregone conclusion that this would happen. I mean, you had veterans coming back from World War ii, decided that they were not going to take second class citizenship anymore. They were educated, they were lawyers. There were examples about what was happening in California. Organizations were now forming to provide the funding that they would need. And so the court had just changed. Earl Warren had just been appointed the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court two weeks after the Hernandez decision came, the Brown v Board of of Education decision. So all these things had to come together and including this legal team for this to happen. So it is important to take a moment like this to go back and look at the primary sources and tell those stories again, especially to young people.

Rocky Dhir:

I’m going to ask what might, and this will be our final question for the day, but I want to ask what might be a controversial question, maybe an uncomfortable question, but why do you think Hernandez v Texas has been largely, I guess, for lack of a better word, ignored? Why are we citing it more than cases like Brown V Board or others that have come up since? Why is this case kind of put to the back burner in a sense, in legal citations?

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

Well, I don’t think it’s controversial. I think that the Brown versus Board of Education was such a huge case that it stole the show.

Rocky Dhir:

Okay.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

It stole the show from Hernandez.

Rocky Dhir:

It’s a scene stealer. It

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

Was a scene sealer, so it didn’t get the recognition, nor has it gotten the recognition that it should. And so we would like that. Everybody know Herandez versus state of Texas just as much as they know Brown versus a Board of education.

Rocky Dhir:

Yep. Very well. That is unfortunately all the time we have for this installment of the State Bar of Texas podcast. I want to thank our guests. Thank you, all three of you for joining us today.

Justice Gina M. Benavides:

Thank you for having us.

Rocky Dhir:

Absolutely. Fascinating topic. And also, I want to thank you the listeners for tuning in. If you like what you heard, please rate and review us. An Apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify, Amazon music, or just pick your favorite podcasting app. Until next time, I’m Rocky Dhir, your host. Thanks for listening.

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