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Show ern California near Yuba City. He became a labor contractor, contract-or, helping his countrymen both legally and illegally here to find work in the many fields around Sutter County. The laborers did the jobs of "stoop" labor, jobs Anglos would not do ana for far less money. Corona brought his family from Mexico. He prospered and was known to growers as a reliable contractor. con-tractor. Then on May 20, 1971, his world fell apart. A man was found buried in an orchard near Yuba City. During the next two weeks twenty-four more bodies were found. They vere all older men, men who frequented fre-quented the skid-row area of Yuba City and it's sister city across the river, Marysville. Juan Corona was linked to three of the bodies by circumstantial evidence. He was arrested and brought to trial. He was subsequently convicted of all twenty-four murders and sentenced to life in prison. I remember Villasenor as a man who didn't much like Anglos even though he married one. His tale of the jury that convicted Corona does nothing to soften that image. It is more than a portrait of men trying to find the truth. It is an indictment of Anglo "types." There was Erine Phillips, the foreman, an example of a man who used his position to maneuver maneuv-er the jury during deliberations. deliberat-ions. His sidekick, Matt Johnson, who enforced his own brand of justice, is another example as is Rick Bremen, the youngest member mem-ber of the iurv--a liberal who J300K REVIEW by Ronald W. Burnett Editor's note: The Park City Public Library offers visitors "checking out 'privileges with a $10 deposit. The library also offers its courtesy courte-sy cart with books to exchange or borrow. Library hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Jury: The People Vs. Juan Corona by Victor Villasenor, Bantam Books - 1977. As I browsed through the Park City library a name reached out to me. A name that brought back memories, Victor Villasenor. He ; and 1 had shared a long afternoon in the summer of 1976. It was an afternoon filled with talk of movies, books and the experience of turning a book into a motion picture. He was at that moment turning his first novel into a film-a book I greatly admitted-MACHO. Villasenor was a passionate and very forceful man, one who had a great many opinions. Part of our conversation conver-sation that afternoon hit upon his new book Jury: The People vs. Jaun Corona. As we watched the sun set over the Pacific by his swimming pool, he tried to convince me that Juan Corona had been the victim of racism. I remember telling him that I had just returned from directing a motion picture in the area where Mr. Corona had allegedly committed his crimes and how, even after three years, I could feel the hate in the air. found himself cornered at every turn by the foreman and his friend. Naomi Underwood was the aging spinster who became the sole holdout against conviction, but for the wrong reasons. She wanted a petty victory over the mo people she hated most on tne jury, Bremen and Faye M. Blazek, an older well-educated wo-wan. wo-wan. Calvin Williams was the only black person on the jury and is portrayed as a silent "Uncle Tom" type -who just wanted to get along with dignity. Jury member Donald Kodgers is seen as a loud-mouthed executive-type executive-type who talked a lot but said little of importance. The remaining jury members were relegated to "walk- ' ons" in the drama. continued-page 17 Villasenor told me that I had not been there long enough to really , get the ' "feel ' for what happened. He also told me that since I was an Anglo I would never understand. I remember wondering if this man could have written an accurate account of what was a truly complicated case. Now, almost six years later, I picked up his book and was fascinated by his forceful portrait of the twelve men and women who decided the fate of another man who was following his American dream. The dream had a dark underside. Juan Corona had come, like so many of his countrymen, to the United States from poverty-stricken Mexico and settled in the gold rush country of North- continued from page 16 The petty abuses of power and small victories for truth are chronicled with the forceful eye of an eyewitness report. Mr. Villasenor was present at the trial and did extensive interviews with the jury members. His . recon- ' struction has the ring of truth colored with his vision of the Anglo world. As the jury argued back and forth for eight days inside--outside, Corona became the figurehead in a Mexican-American Mexican-American civil rights movement. move-ment. Villasenor doesn't let the leaders of that movement escape unscathed in his book. He details their exploitation ex-ploitation of the Corona children and family to gain attention to their cause. It is his conclusion that this cynical exploitation by people peo-ple who should have known better was a major cause of Corona's conviction. In the end no one found the truth. The jury had heard the television ana radio accounts of the trail even after they were ordered not to do so by Judge Richard Patton. Yet, when the judge was notified . of the violation by defense attorney Richard Hawk, Judge Patton denied the motion for a new trial citing - the expense to taxpayers.. One member of the jury even " admitted making up her mind by reading an account of-the crimes in a mystery magazine. The experience left most of the jury members not wanting want-ing to ever serve on a jury again. Some of them were sickened by what happened in the jury room. Yet, in the end, they all voted guilty. Why? Villasenor says it was because they had no choice. They were not Mexican. None of them spoke Spanish or had any contact with the Mexican-American culture in the area. The entire experience exper-ience of the migrant field worker was outside their realm of existence. The jury was not a jury of Juan Cornoa's peers. They were, however, the only jury that could be musterea in Sutter County at that time. The book is a look behind the scenes of American justice. It is a look into the dark underside of the American psyche by a man who has lived both within the Anglo culture and outside of it. I, for one, regret that it took me six years to read his book. It was, howevera continuation of that conversation Villasenor Villase-nor and I had on that long summer afternoon. If I had read his book before that afternoon perhaps our conversation wouldn't have been such a traumatic experience. As I was leaving that day, Victor told me, ''you have to understand." Now, six years later, I believe I do, at least I understand better than I. did then. |