Six Judges and a West Texas Murder. The Trial of Leon Cardenas Martinez, Jr. 16+

📗 LEÓN CÁRDENAS MARTÍNEZ, JR., TRIAL. On May 11, 1914, León Cárdenas Martínez, Jr., was executed for the murder of Emma Brown in Pecos, Texas, despite a Texas law preventing the execution of minors. The case was associated with one of the most prolonged efforts to save a Tejano, and for more than three years such organizations as the Mexican Protective Association of San Antonio and the Partido Liberal Mexicano as well as the Mexican government provided aid to the Martínez family in appealing the boy’s sentence. Martínez’s sentence and hanging ultimately acted as a catalyst for mutual aid societies (sociedades mutualistas) to address the issue of lynching and unusual punishment of Mexican people across the Southwest.On July 23, 1911, León Cárdenas Martínez was arrested in Saragosa in Reeves County by two officers from the Reeves County sheriff’s office, who were investigating the murder of Emma Brown, a white school teacher. According to an account given by his father, León Cárdenas Martínez, Sr, immediately after his son’s arrest, Martínez Jr. was taken to the location of Emma Brown’s murder and forced at gunpoint to confess or be lynched by local ranchers. Additionally, on the night of the arrest, Reeves County Sheriff Pink A. Harbert and a number of other men forced Martínez Sr., the proprietor of a local butcher shop, to leave his shop and also vacate his home with his family and leave town by way of the desert.Over the next five days Martínez Jr. was kept in prisons in Pec...