Montez

In May 1969 the Los Angeles County Grand Jury handed down a six-count indictment charging petitioners with a variety of serious felonies. Each petitioner was named in at least one count. Eventually petitioners moved to quash the indictment on the ground that the grand jury had been, illegally constituted in that eligible grand jurors of a class to which, petitioners belong, namely, “Spanish-surnamed Mexican American citizens” had been systematically excluded from consideration for nomination to the grand jury. At the hearing it was stipulated that the court could consider the record made before another judge in another case, People v. Castro et al., in which a similar claim with respect to the 1968 grand jury had been made by the defendants in that case, some of whom are also petitioners in this proceeding. There is also some overlapping of legal representation. In People v. Castro the defendants had called 34 Los Angeles County Superior Court judges as witnesses to support their contention. Significantly at the time the motion in the case at bar was heard, the People had already argued in the prohibition proceeding in Castro that the defendants there had not called an…