AP Success - AP US History: Hernandez v. Texas and Expansion of Civil Rights

The petitioner, Pete Hernandez, was indicted for the murder of one Joe Espinosa by a grand jury in Jackson County, Texas... He alleged that persons of Mexican descent were systematically excluded from service as jury commissioners, grand jurors, and petit jurors... The petitioner asserted that exclusion of this class deprived him, as a member of the class, of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution… In numerous decisions, this Court has held that it is a denial of the equal protection of the laws to try a defendant of a particular race or color under an indictment issued by a grand jury, or before a petit jury, from which all persons of his race or color have, solely because of that race or color, been excluded by the State... The State of Texas would have us hold that there are only two classes–white and Negro–within the contemplation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decisions of this Court do not support that view... The Fourteenth Amendment is not directed solely against discrimination due to a “two-class theory”–that is, based upon differences between “white” and Negro… The exclusion of otherwise eligible persons from jury service solely because of their ancestry or national origin is discrimination prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment.