Nation: End of the Rope

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Seeking justice in Houston

Shortly before midnight last May 5, an Army veteran named Joe Campos Torres, 23, was arrested for shouting insults and threatening customers at the Club 21, located in a Mexican-American community on Houston's east side. Wearing Army fatigues and combat boots, Torres appeared drunk but apparently healthy when police officers took him away. A few hours later, when the police brought him to jail, he was so badly bruised that duty officers refused to book him. They told the arresting officers to take Torres to Ben Taub General Hospital for treatment. Instead, six policemen drove him one mile to an area known as "the Hole," behind a large warehouse facing the muddy Buffalo Bayou that winds through the city. There, according to subsequent testimony, they pushed Torres off a 20-ft. dock into the bayou. His body was discovered two days later, floating in 15ft. of water.

Two of the policemen, Terry Denson, 27, and Stephen Orlando, 22, were prosecuted at a trial that was moved from Houston to the small town of Huntsville. They were convicted last Oct. 7, but only of negligent homicide. Each got a suspended sentence of one year and a $2,000 fine.

After that light sentence, the U.S. Attorney for Houston, J.A. ("Tony") Canales, himself a Mexican American, brought federal charges against Denson, Orlando and a third policeman, Joseph Janish, 24, on charges of conspiracy and violating Torres' civil rights. He acted under a new Justice Department policy inaugurated by Attorney General Griffin Bell that allows federal trials for defendants previously tried at the state level when this is necessary "to vindicate broader principles."

Last month the second trial, too, ended in conviction, but again the sentence was mild: one year in prison for the civil rights violation plus a ten-year suspended sentence for conspiracy. Said U.S. District Judge Ross N. Sterling, a former law partner of ex-Governor John Connally: "A long period of confinement would have little impact on the Houston police department, where I believe the heart of the trouble lies."

That explanation hardly satisfied Houston's outraged Mexican Americans, who staged a protest march through downtown Houston. "I think our community is at the end of its rope," cried State Representative Ben Reyes. Similarly angered by the second light verdict, Prosecutor Canales last week obtained Bell's personal approval and then filed a rare legal challenge to Judge Sterling's sentence, demanding prison terms of ten years. Argued the Justice Department: "The U.S. has grave concern that the imposition of probation in this case will cause citizens of all races and backgrounds to believe that the sentence was a result of continuing inequality of treatment accorded to minorities."