Takeaway
In short, this case holds that equal protection forbids the systematic exclusion of qualified persons of Mexican descent from juries and is not limited to discrimination between white and Black citizens.
Pete Hernandez, a person of Mexican descent, was indicted for murder in Jackson County, Texas, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Before trial, Hernandez moved to quash both the indictment and the jury panel. He alleged that Jackson County systematically excluded qualified persons of Mexican descent from serving as jury commissioners, grand jurors, and petit jurors, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The trial court denied the motions before and during trial. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Hernandez’s conviction, rejecting his equal-protection challenge. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide the federal constitutional question.
Issue #1
Whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause protects persons of Mexican descent from discriminatory exclusion from jury service, even though they may be classified as white rather than Black under a purported two-class racial theory.
Holding
Yes. The Equal Protection Clause is not confined to discrimination between white and Black persons; it protects any distinct class that a community treats differently without a reasonable basis.
Reasoning
The Court rejected Texas’s argument that the Fourteenth Amendment recognizes only two relevant racial classes, white and Negro. Although many earlier jury-exclusion cases involved Black defendants, their principle was broader: a State may not deny equal protection by excluding a defendant’s class from jury service because of race, color, ancestry, or national origin.
Whether a group is a distinct class for equal-protection purposes is a factual question shaped by conditions in the particular community. Community prejudice is not fixed, and characteristics other than the traditional white-Black racial line may mark a group for unequal treatment requiring constitutional protection.
Hernandez proved that persons of Mexican descent were treated in Jackson County as a class apart from whites. Local officials and residents distinguished between “white” and “Mexican”; participation by Mexican-descent residents in business and civic groups was limited; Mexican-descent children had been assigned to segregated elementary schooling; a restaurant posted a “No Mexicans Served” sign; and courthouse facilities included a restroom marked “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aqui.” These facts established a distinct class subject to community discrimination.
Texas’s jury-selection statutes were neutral on their face, but facial neutrality did not end the inquiry. A jury-commission system can be administered discriminatorily, and exclusion of otherwise qualified persons solely because of ancestry or national origin violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
Issue #2
Whether Hernandez established unconstitutional systematic exclusion of persons of Mexican descent from Jackson County jury commissions, grand juries, and petit juries.
Holding
Yes. The long-standing total absence of qualified persons of Mexican descent from jury service established a prima facie case of discrimination, and the State’s generalized denials did not rebut it.
Reasoning
Under the rule of exclusion drawn from Norris v. Alabama, a defendant can make a prima facie case by showing that a distinct group makes up a substantial part of the community, that members of the group are qualified for jury service, and that none has served for an extended period. That evidentiary method applies to discrimination against any identifiable class, not only Black citizens.
Persons with Mexican or Latin-American surnames made up about 14 percent of Jackson County’s population and about 11 percent of its adult male population. The parties stipulated that some men of Mexican or Latin-American descent satisfied all qualifications for service as jury commissioners, grand jurors, and petit jurors.
Yet the State stipulated that no person with a Mexican or Latin-American name had served on a jury commission, grand jury, or petit jury in Jackson County during the preceding twenty-five years. The complete absence of the group among more than six thousand jurors called over that period could not plausibly be attributed to chance; the result itself indicated discrimination.
The testimony of five jury commissioners that they had not intentionally discriminated and had merely selected people they considered best qualified was insufficient. General assertions that officials performed their duties cannot overcome strong statistical and historical proof of a group’s total exclusion. The constitutional violation may be shown by the discriminatory result of the selection process even if no individual commissioner consciously intended to discriminate.
The Court emphasized that Hernandez was not entitled to proportional representation of Mexican-descent citizens on every jury, nor to insist that members of his group sit on his particular grand or petit jury. His constitutional right was to indictment and trial by juries selected from a pool that did not systematically exclude all qualified members of his class because of national origin or descent.