Hero of struggle for minority justice

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 11, 1996 by Moises Sandoval

The cause of justice became poorer with the recent death of Ruben Sandoval, civil rights lawyer from San Antonio.

Although we were not related, our paths crossed from time to time and he shared the details of his latest struggle against unjustified police violence. When I met him in the 1970s, he showed me his files on several cases. In Dallas, 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez had been shot dead as he sat handcuffed in a police car while the officer held a revolver to his head and spun the cylinder repeatedly in an exercise intended to elicit information about the burglary of a few dollars from a service station.

In Ector County, a 27-year-old unemployed laborer, Larry Lozano, had been beaten to death in jail by law enforcement officers. And in Castroville, Texas, a small town 50 miles southwest of San Antonio, the town marshal had arrested and then killed a 27-year-old construction worker, Richard Morales.

In recent years, Sandoval waged a long campaign in behalf of victims of a vigilante policeman who was himself killed by another officer in San Antonio in 1986. After the vigilante's death, city officials confirmed, according to the Associated Press, that he had been involved in at least three murders. With Sandoval pleading their case, 20 plaintiffs won a $1.6 million judgment in a federal civil rights suit against the estate of the vigilante.

It is difficult to convict a policeman who assaults or kills a minority person without justification while acting "under cover of law," -- meaning while on duty l t takes tremendous courage on the part of those who accuse him. Prosecutors and judges tend to blame the victims, assuming that they were violating the law and therefore deserved what they got. On the rare occasion when those cases go to trial, juries are afraid to jeopardize the war against crime by voting to convict.

Underlying the violence and the virtual impunity afforded those who commit it is the view that the lives of minority persons are worth less than those of the majority. As a result, police violence and abuse against minorities is a serious problem. In a long ago conversation, Sandoval said: "It is not Tom Jones who is beaten to death at the county jail in Odessa; it happens to be Larry Lozano. It is not John White who gets blown away with a shotgun in El Paso; it is a boy by the name of Johnny Vasquez."

Sandoval was a big man -- his adversaries called him "the big enchilada" -- who loved broccoli and started a restaurant named Tenochtitlan (the fabled capital of the Aztecs).

Born in a poor barrio of El Paso, the son of parents who saw little value in a college education, he disappointed them by going to college and then to law school. He once said they kept telling him: "Why don't you settle down. The others have their families and their houses." Influenced by the Chicano movement, he decided early in his career that he had to fight for his people.

He became special legal adviser to the League of United Latin American Citizens and that led him to civil rights work. His commitment was total: He participated in demonstrations, spoke at fund-raising events and lobbied for federal prosecutions when local authorities did nothing.

Small problems often begin the chain of events that lead to an unjustified police homicide. Lozano skidded off the road and damaged a fence, then fought with officers who baited him. In Houston, Jose Campos Torres talked back to officers who arrested him for being drunk and disorderly. After a severe beating he was thrown into a bayou and drowned. Morales was arrested on expired warrants after he contracted to deliver some cows and failed to do so because he had to go to the hospital.

"Back in 1969 and '70, to be able to convict a policeman for any kind of abuse of authority was almost a dream," Sandoval said. "You might have all the statistics, a thousand witnesses, all the case factors and circumstances on your side. Yet, you couldn't get a jury to see beyond that badge and uniform."

For him, the Morales case was a breakthrough and probably his greatest triumph. Morales was roused out of bed by town marshal Frank Hayes about 10 p.m. Sept. 14, 1975. Handcuffed and placed in a police car, he was driven to a lonely country dirt road. In a field out of sight from any farm houses, he was shot to death with a shotgun. The next day Hayes' wife and her sister drove 400 miles to East Texas with the body in the trunk of the car. They buried it in a shallow grave on a relative's farm. But a rookie policeman who knew about the killing talked. Charged with capital murder, Hayes was convicted only of aggravated assault and sentenced to 10 years, which made him eligible for parole in 18 months. His wife pleaded no contest to "tampering with physical evidence" and was fined $49.50.

The verdict outraged Sandoval, who demanded that federal authorities file civil rights charges. He and several other Hispanic leaders called a news conference that drew 400 people. Bishop Patrick Flores, then an auxiliary of the San Antonio archdiocese, joined M.C. Gonzales, national president of the 100,000-member League of United Latin American Citizens, and state Sen. Joe Bernal on a committee that soon raised $26,000. Flores warned Mexican Americans that the fate of the Morales family could be theirs too if they did not protest the state court verdicts. He led a delegation to Washington to discuss the case with Assistant Attorney General J. Stanley Pottinger.