Former U.S. District Judge James deAnda, former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, died yesterday at the age of 81 at his summer home in Traverse City, Mich. after a short bout with prostrate cancer.
Judge deAnda was the last surviving member of a four-man legal team that handled the appeal in Hernandez v. Texas, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case that overturned an all-white jury’s murder conviction of a Texas man because Hispanics had been systematically excluded from the jury pool in the case. The Supreme Court ruled for the first time in Hernandez that Hispanics were a separate group deserving of the same Constitutional protections as other minorities.
Judge deAnda was a native Houstonian who graduated from Davis High School before obtaining an undergraduate degree from Texas A&M and a law degree from the University of Texas. He practiced law in Houston for almost 30 years before President Carter appointed him to the U.S. District Court bench in 1979, where he served with grace and wit until he resigned in 1992 to return to private practice. Judge deAnda continued to practice law ably until shortly before his death.
A funeral Mass will be celebrated for Judge deAnda at 11 a.m. Wednesday, September 13th at St. Michael’s Catholic Church on Sage Rd. near the Galleria.