HISPANIC GROUPS WANT ANOTHER GRAND JURY TO LOOK AT OREGON SLAYING

Officials of two Hispanic law groups and the League of United Latin American
Citizens called Friday for District Attorney John B. Holmes Jr. to conduct a
second grand jury investigation into the shooting death of Pedro Oregon
Navarro.

They said the first jury's failure to indict the six Houston officers
involved on felony charges was a whitewash and that Holmes should recommend
indictments to another panel.

Oregon was shot 12 times in July when the six officers raided his apartment
looking for drugs.

One was indicted on charges of misdemeanor criminal trespassing.

The other five were nobilled.

Holmes has said he never asks grand jurors to indict police officers
involved in shootings but leaves that decision to them.

He has also said he does not intend to present the case to another panel.

"My complaints are with the way it was presented to the grand jury," LULAC
national president Rick Dovalina said. "The key is for the district attorney
to make a recommendation."

Antonio Balderas Jr., president of the Mexican American Bar Association
(MABA) of Houston, said that if one officer committed criminal trespass,
everything that happened afterward was illegal. At the very least, he said,
there should have been an indictment for criminal negligent homicide.

Balderas also said that if the public does not know all the evidence -- as
Holmes has said -- and that evidence should be made public.

Joel Salazar, vice president of the bar association, said that when a case
is presented to a grand jury without the district attorney's recommendation,
the jury does not regard the case as seriously as it should.

Salazar also said Holmes has taken cases to grand juries a second time and
presented state District Judge Lupe Salinas' case to four panels before
getting an indictment for a minor election-law violation in 1994.

Salinas was defeated for re-election, but the case was ultimately thrown out
of court.

Elizabeth Bohorquez, president-elect of the Hispanic Bar Association, said
the Oregon case should concern all Houstonians because it affects everyone's
right to privacy and freedom from illegal search and seizure.

Dovalina said he went to Washington on Thursday and met with key Department
of Justice officials, including William Lang Lee and Richard Holder, who
will review the case when the FBI investigation is complete.

He said he was assured the department and FBI are taking the matter
seriously, but the officials could not say how long the investigation will
take.

Dovalina said 30 or 40 national cases of police brutality are under
investigation, and LULAC plans to see that the Oregon case does not get
lost.

Frank Alvarez, an MABA member, said Holmes is lying when he says the penal
code forbids resistance to a police officer even when the officer is acting
illegally.

The code specifically allows a person to defend himself when an officer uses
unreasonable force, Alvarez said, and six officers bursting into an
apartment, guns blazing, is unreasonable force.

The officers said they fired after they believed Oregon had shot at them. It
was later learned he had not fired his gun, and no drugs were found in his
apartment.

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst