Excerpts from:

James deAnda; judge helped Latinos be admitted to juries
By Dennis Hevesi
September 17, 2006

James deAnda, a retired federal judge who as a lawyer in the early
1950s had a leading role in a Supreme Court decision that prohibited
courts from keeping Mexican-Americans off juries, died September 7
at his summer home in Traverse City, Michigan.

Judge deAnda, who lived in Houston, was 81.

The cause of death was prostate cancer, said Michael Olivas, a law
professor at the University of Houston and a friend of the judge's.

On May 3, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in
Hernandez v. Texas that Latinos deserved the same constitutional
protections as other minorities. For some proponents of civil rights
for Latinos, the case ranks with the ruling two weeks later in Brown
v. Board of Education that barred segregation in public schools.

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