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Defense counsel asked the following questions of one witness:
Q: Whether or not you
think Mr. San Miguel was cocky -- I mean, cocky is
just a state of mind,
right?
A: It's an attitude, I believe.
Q: Right. A lot of young
people display that as sort of a defensive
mechanism to hide anxiety
or fear, don't they?
A: Uh-huh.
Q: You've experienced
that with this man and many other young people,
haven't you?
A: Yes.
Q: It's particularly true
in the Mexican-American people, that they don't
like to display or openly
display fear or trepidation; isn't that true?
A: I couldn't answer that.
Q. That's -- that's the term "macho". Isn't that what that's all about?
A: If that's the word you would like to use, I guess so.
Of another witness, defense
counsel asked the following serious of
questions:
Q: Jessy — the bottom
line is, Jessy was a small kid who was not
particularly handsome
or popular, but who wouldn't take anything off of
bigger kids and would
defend himself. That's the truth of the matter; isn't
it?
A: I don't know.
Q: Jessy never beat up anybody smaller than him, did he?
A: No.
Q: In fact, most of the
people that he had problems with were larger than
him, weren't they?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Jessy had a certain macho mentality about him, didn't he?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: That he had -- had
his own pride and he was not going to let people
larger than him, richer
than him or more popular than him run him down or
put him down; wouldn't
you say that was his attitude?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Would you say that
his macho mentality is a very commonplace thing in the
Mexican-American community
among the men, Mexican- American men, whom you've
known?
A: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
Q: It's something that's just part of the culture, isn't it?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: And it is something
that a smaller man will display more openly than a
larger man, isn't it?
A: Yes, sir.
..........
Q: Do you find that that's
also part of the Mexican-American culture, that
the men act very protective
of their perceived female companions or their
relationships? In other
words, they're pushy and macho about their
relationships with the
women?
A: I would suppose so.
I'm not schooled in the Mexican-American culture.
| Adam Alvarez, a high school friend,
testified for the State about numerous
fights involving Mr. San Miguel when they was in high school together. Mr. Alvarez agreed that the fights he testified about were "fair fights," and he agreed with defense counsel's characterization that "there was nothing really unusual or out of line about the amount of fighting that Jessy did, except for the fact that Jessy just didn't let people push him around or make him look like a chicken." Having essentially neutralized the seriousness of the evidence against his client, counsel nonetheless pressed ahead with his racial stereotype: |
Q: Wasn't that the typical situation?
A: That's what I said.
Q: A couple of guys, just
jawing at each other, trying to see who was the
more macho of the two,
right?
A: Right
Q: Being macho and not
letting people push you around is kind of -- is part
of the Mexican-American
culture, isn't it?
A: Yeah.
Q: That's why most young
Mexican-American start at 15 growing a little
mustache, right?
A: Right.
Q: You wouldn't shave your mustache off, would you?
A: No.
Q: For any amount of money?
A: No
Q: Why not?
A: Why not?
Q: Yeah.
A: I'm just not used to looking that way.
Q: It's a cultural thing,
isn't it? It's a thing you take pride in. It's a
sign of manhood, isn't
it?
A: Oh, yeah.
Q: Okay. If someone were
just to say -- well, come up to you and say, 'Adam,
I think you'd look better
without that mustache. You ought to shave it,' you
wouldn't even consider
it would you?
A: No.
Q: Tell the folks on the
jury here, what does it mean when a young man he's
macho -- a young Mexican-American
man, what does macho mean?
A: What does macho mean?
Q: Uh-huh.
A: Beats me.
Q: Pardon?
A: Beats me.
Q: You don't know what it means?
A: Macho.
Q: I mean, to you macho means --
A: Tough.
Q: Macho means I'm not afraid of people?
A: Tough.
Q: I'll stand up for my rights?
A: Right.
Q: Isn't that right? I'm a stand-up guy?
A: Yes.
Q: That's all it means, isn't it?
A: Yeah.
Q: Is it also part of
the Mexican-American culture among young men in their
late teens or early 20_s
to take care of their women?
A: Yes.
Q: A young Mexican-American
man does not let anyone insult or belittle his
woman, does he?
A: No.
Q: If that happens, it's time to start fighting, right?
A: Yeah.
Q: That's an immediate fight?
A: Right.
Q: Or if you imagine that
someone's trying to take your woman away from you,
that's also a good reason
for an immediate fight, isn't it?
A: Right.
Q: That's not Jessy and
you. That's most all young Mexican-American men,
isn't it?
A: Yeah.
Q: That's just life, isn't it?
A: Yeah.
| By injecting these stereotypes into
the trial as an explanation for Mr. San
Miguel's aggressive behavior and combative attitude, defense counsel encouraged the jury to conclude that Mr. San Miguel had a propensity for violence because of his ethnicity. Instead of humanizing Mr. San Miguel and individualizing his experiences in a way that would evoke understanding and compassion for the extraordinary pain he suffered as an abused child, this stereotyping of him by his own lawyer amounted to a virtual concession of the future dangerousness special issue and fit in perfectly with the anti-Mexican theme the prosecutor had already established in his argument to the jury. |
Argument by Prosecutor:
That commercial that Taco Bell has,
that on the border stuff, I want you
think about that on the border. This
is the line. I want you to think about
the border. On this side of the border
is all the law abiding citizens. On
this side of the border is those that
cross that border sometimes and commit
crimes.
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