25 minute read
Roy Barrera, Sr.
Among His Souvenirs: Part I
By Steve Peirce
Photos by Martha Istueta
Roy Barrera, Sr. stands at the top of the stairs in front of his office door to greet me for the first time. He’s wearing a suit, having been in court earlier that morning. Now ninety-three, he’s been practicing law since 1951, and he’s kept thousands of items of meticulously organized memorabilia of his storied life, which he is prepared to present, as if this legendary trial lawyer is about to make the ultimate closing argument. There are several jumbo-sized scrapbooks filled with newspaper and magazine clippings in chronological order, dating back to his high school days. There are photographs of family, friends, and colleagues, many of which are of professional quality taken by Roy’s late brother Gilbert, an award-winning newspaper photographer. There are striking photographs of horrific crime scenes from his criminal trials, too. And there are thick three-ring binders of congratulatory and thank-you letters from clients, judges, co-counsel and opposing counsel, politicians, clergy, academics, and friends of all stripes. His office walls display plaques, honors, awards, and souvenirs, each one with a story behind it.
He has the the cadence of a skilled raconteur, and one can’t help but notice he’s missing his left-hand ring finger. As he slowly begins to leaf through his scrapbooks and photos, providing his voiceover, I feel like I’ve walked into a Ken Burns documentary, and I’m overwhelmed. There were so, so many tales told, and here are some of the best.
The Fateful Finger
“My paternal grandfather was a Chilean Indian who immigrated to the U.S. through Mexico after his marriage to my paternal grandmother in Monterrey,” Roy says. “He used to tell me that the mind has absolute control over the body, so that if it’s too hot or too cold, you can ignore it, or if you’re thirsty or hungry, you can just turn it off in your mind. He also said that the world isn’t going to give you anything; you have to go out and get it.
“My dad had a third-grade education. He worked hard, seven days a week. He worked in carpentry and mechanics, sold Singer sewing machines, and he later sold insurance. And years later, he worked as a grand jury bailiff and then an investigator for District Attorney Ted Butler. My mother was a great inspiration to me. She was the one who encouraged me to go to law school,” he says, his voice breaking.
Roy grew up in the middle West Side of San Antonio. His first job was at six years old, delivering pamphlets door to door. In junior high and high school, he worked for various shopkeepers, riding his bike from one shop to the other, often late into the night. The family took a stint in Seguin in 1935, where Roy’s dad took an insurance sales route. There, Roy attended Juan Seguin Elementary, which was a segregated all-Mexican school. Young Roy led the de-segregation of the local movie theater, politely refusing to sit in the Mexicans-only section several times, until the theater finally relented and left him and his friends alone. At the time, there were no Mexican Boy Scout troops in Seguin. So, Roy’s dad formed a Boy Scout troop for the group. Roy eventually made Eagle Scout in San Antonio Troop 52, led by attorney Scout Master James Tafolla, Jr.
The family later moved back to San Antonio, where Roy enrolled in what is now Fox Tech High School. “I was born Raul Ramiro Barrera, but my dad always called me Roy. I was sick on registration day, and I really wanted to sign up for the auto mechanics class before it filled up, so I asked my dad to register for me. He registered me as Roy, so I became Roy after that,” Roy explained.
In high school, Roy played clarinet in the band, and he was captain of the ROTC and captain of the rifle team, which took second place in a national shooting competition. Upon graduation, he immediately enlisted in the Army to serve in World War II. The high school transferred his records to the Army, so he remained Roy in the Army.
He was shipped to the Philippines. He had not been there long when the bombs were dropped on Japan, ending the war. He then served in a unit that searched out Japanese soldiers hidden in Korea, as well as Japanese civilians, to tell them the war was over and protect them from irate Koreans.
Roy Barrera, Sr.
While they were repatriating the Japanese back to Japan, the Army pulled Roy’s records and found that he played the clarinet. Despite Roy’s protestations that he didn’t remember how to play the clarinet, he was placed in the Army band. The band traveled around Korea playing parades and other events. One of the songs Roy learned in Korea was Arirang, which he is fond of singing.
Roy liked to ride on the top of the instrument truck because it rode in the front and was less dusty than the truck with the band members. One day, the truck hit a rut in the road and flipped into a rice paddy, sending Roy flying. His high school ring caught the edge of the truck, severely mangling his ring finger on his left hand. By the time they got him to the hospital in a bi-wing open Piper Cub airplane, the finger was so damaged that it had to be amputated, or else gangrene would spread. The missing finger made it impossible for him to play the clarinet, but the show must go on, so Roy learned the trumpet.
The missing finger kept Roy from re-upping for the Korean War, so he returned to San Antonio to pursue his dream of becoming an auto mechanic. He was twenty at the time. He put down a deposit on a garage and was ready to go into business. Before the deal closed, Roy’s mother, seeing something in her son that perhaps he didn’t, thought he would make a good lawyer, like Alonzo Perales, a local civil rights leader, and encouraged young Roy to use his G.I. Bill to go to law school instead. Roy took his mother’s advice and immediately handled his first case: getting out of the garage contract. Roy pointed out to the garage owner that he was a minor and not eligible to enter into the contract and negotiated a return of half his deposit. He enrolled at St. Mary’s University to begin his formal legal education. Mother Barrera’s piece of advice was the seed of what would become a family legal dynasty, with Roy’s sons Roy, Jr. and Bobby, and grandkids Roy Barrera, III, Mark Joseph Barrera, Marissa Barrera Morales, Robert Erasmo Arellano, and Monica Ramirez Khirallah all becoming lawyers. Two of Roy’s nephews, Gilbert Barrera, Jr. and the late Steve Barrera, sons of Roy’s two brothers, also became lawyers.
At the time, a bachelor’s degree was not required to enter law school, but certain undergraduate pre-law courses were required. The pre-law courses were taught at the St. Mary’s University main campus “up on the hill” on the West Side, while the law school was downtown. Back then, St. Mary’s was too far out of town for bus service, but Roy had a 1930 Dodge Roadster. He offered classmates rides to St. Mary’s for ten cents each way. His riding buddies included future federal Judge Hipolito “Hippo” Garcia, who graduated with him, and who baptized his daughter, Carmen Alice. They even made identical bar exam scores (yes, Roy’s kept those records). To this day, Roy refers to Hippo as “my compadre.”
Roy married Carmen Zendejas in 1948 while he was in law school, and they would remain married until her passing in 2015. Their first daughter, Yolanda, was born while Roy was on the fire escape outside Carmen’s hospital room window at Santa Rosa hospital (he was studying for finals). His grades slipped, and he was put on scholastic probation. To make matters worse, Roy’s G.I. Bill money was about to run out, and he didn’t have the funds to keep going to school. The Veterans’ Administration stepped in and pointed out that his missing finger made him a disabled vet. As such, Roy was eligible for additional funds to finish school, but only if he could pass a psychological test to see if he had an aptitude for the law. According to the tester, Roy scored the highest anyone had ever made on the test. “I supplied the answers I figured they wanted, rather than the usual and customary responses,” Roy said. So Roy graduated from St. Mary’s law school in 1951. (They couldn’t afford college for Carmen, but years later, in her fifties, Carmen enrolled as a St. Mary’s student along with her kids, Carmen Alice and Bobby.)
Roy shows me a picture of the 1930 roadster, which he still has. In the Fifties, he would take the roadster to the West Side to make drug buys as part of his work for the District Attorney’s office. He and Carmen drove the roadster to Muzquiz, Coahuila, for a family medical emergency in 1949, and to San Fernando Cathedral in 1998 to renew their vows for their fiftieth wedding anniversary.
The Young Prosecutor
Roy was hired by the District Attorney’s office out of law school, the same day that his future law partner, Anthony Nicholas, was also hired there. Roy was first an investigator, then he was put on the complaint desk. Restless, he wanted to see courtroom action, and he remembered his grandfather’s words to go get what you want. He approached Pat Maloney, who was the chief felony prosecutor, about getting trial work. Maloney told Roy that if he would go back to being an investigator, Maloney and Roy would try felony cases that Roy investigated. So Roy became a felony investigator and later became an assistant DA.
The early DA years were the days of un-air conditioned, smoke-filled courtrooms, and the advent of women being allowed to serve on Bexar County juries. Roy made minor headlines for helping wrestle a crazed criminal defendant out of the courtroom, saving a man from jumping out of the courthouse window, deleting lewd scenes from a locally shown Swedish movie, dealing with local “pachuco” gang wars, trying narcotics cases, busting one-ball gambling operations, and prosecuting back-alley abortionists. Roy also began a side gig as a boxing ring announcer, which he continued to do for decades. (He shows me his 1991 Regional Golden Gloves chairman jacket, which still fits nicely. He also announced at Kelly Air Force Base twice for the Preliminary Olympics.)
As an investigator, he would sometimes take Hippo Garcia, who then worked for the clerk’s office, on nightly patrol. On one patrol, Roy arrested a drug dealer on a street corner and put the dealer in the front seat. Roy told Hippo, who was in the back seat, to use “the gun” if he tried anything. But (unbeknownst to the dealer) there was no gun, and Roy’s compadre thought he was crazy for suggesting it.
During a rape trial, a subpoenaed witness didn’t show up. As an investigator, Roy was told to go get the witness, a married woman. When he arrived at the woman’s home, her husband, brandishing a knife, informed Roy that she would not be going with him to court and to “get the hell out of his home.” Roy recalls, “I told him that I had a gun in the car, and that I was going to go out to the car and wait, and that if she wasn’t in the car in five minutes, I would come back in with my gun. She came out to the car. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have called for back-up. I didn’t use my brain because I had a gun. I never took a gun on an investigation again.”
But it’s the high-profile criminal trials, and a failed attempt at extortion on a young assistant DA named Barrera, that stand out during the DA years.
The “Honest” Cop
In 1953, Korean War veteran O.R. Graves was a burly San Antonio police officer in his mid-twenties. In October of 1952, he had been dubbed by the newspapers as the “honest cop” for his taping of a police lieutenant willing to accept a bribe from an East Side man named Leroy Armstrong. Graves took the tape to the Express-News, not to his police superiors, but the tape quality was so poor that the bribed officer was never indicted.
On the night of February 23, 1953, Graves arrived at the Spot, an East Side bar formerly owned by Armstrong. He was accompanied by two vice officers, Myron Hubble and James Seibrecht. Graves had a suspicion that the Spot was the center of illegal liquor sales. At the Spot, he took J.C. Caldwell, a Black man who worked for Armstrong, to the back office and ordered him to open the safe, thinking there was liquor inside. Caldwell, seated in a swivel chair, said it was Armstrong’s safe, and he didn’t know the combination. Graves turned his back to Caldwell and removed some bullets from his pistol. In the presence of the vice cops, Graves then placed the pistol next to Caldwell’s left temple, and began squeezing the trigger, to scare Caldwell into “remembering” the combination. After a couple of clicks, the gun fired. Caldwell died immediately, remaining slumped in the chair. Graves allegedly exclaimed, “My God, what have I done!” The three cops then concocted a story. One of the vice cops had a knife, called a Dallas Special, that he had seized on a job earlier in the evening. They placed the knife on the floor, under Caldwell’s hand, and agreed that Graves would say that Caldwell had tried to cut Graves with the knife, so Graves acted in selfdefense. The three issued routine reports consistent with this story (with the vice cops stating that they were out in the hall and not in the room), and the Justice of the Peace summarily issued a finding of justifiable homicide. The police department’s investigation was similarly weak, and the city council rejected the complaints from prominent Blacks and likewise found Graves acted in self-defense.
Enter Roy Barrera, Assistant DA, then twenty-six years old. On February 25, Roy prevailed upon DA Austin Anderson to open up an investigation immediately, so that the DA’s office would be ahead of the uproar in the Black community, which would surely come. Roy led the investigation. He first sought more detailed statements from the vice cops and Graves. They refused to talk. On March 1, he took the knife to the Department of Public Safety lab in Austin to look for remnants of any materials from Caldwell’s coat pocket on the knife. There were none. Searching the police records, he found the man who had a knife seized from him by the vice cop earlier that evening. He took the man to the DPS office in Austin and presented a lineup of Dallas Special knives. The man identified his knife as the same one found at the Spot.
Roy viewed Caldwell’s body at the morgue. Caldwell’s corpse had a bruised left eye, which somehow was previously unnoticed by the medical examiner. The medical examiner said that dead bodies don’t bruise, and that the eye was struck by blunt force while Caldwell was alive. Roy asked the medical examiner if the bruise could have been caused by the bullet's impact, but the medical examiner said, “No.” Witnesses from the Spot came forward to say that Caldwell did not have a black eye before the cops arrived, and that the vice cops were indeed in the room when the shooting occurred. Graves was arrested on March 6. By now, the vice cops were feeling the heat. Unknown to Roy, the vice cops were granted immunity by the judge at the request of the DA’s chief investigator to make a full sworn statement, which they did on March 8, this time telling the truth about their witnessing a bizarre game of Russian Roulette and the fact that they staged the crime scene to look like self-defense. With nowhere to turn, Graves fessed up, but claimed that the thing was just a terrible accident because he did not think there were any bullets in the gun.
The grand jury returned an indictment against Graves of murder with malice. Roy’s work was praised by local Black leaders, and the case was mentioned by Thurgood Marshall, then a civil rights attorney, in a speech he gave in San Antonio. But Graves alleged that all the Bexar County media attention justified a change of venue, and the Court ordered venue transferred to Jourdanton for the trial. The trial audience was full of members of the Black community, and the jury was all white, mostly local farmers and small businessmen. James Onion and Roy Barrera handled the prosecution. The prosecution was caught by surprise when the medical examiner who examined Caldwell’s corpse changed his testimony to say that Caldwell’s black eye might have been caused by the bullet rather than by blunt force. Given Graves’ position that the shooting was an accident, and that he had simply been negligent in what he did, the prosecution obtained an additional instruction of the lesserincluded offense of negligent homicide. In the end, after a mere thirtyminute deliberation, the Jourdanton jury found Graves not guilty.
The Tender Trap
In this story, we have withheld some names, since the other players involved are dead and the case never went to trial (Roy himself has no problem naming names, though).
As an up-and-coming prosecutor in the Fifties, Roy angered some people in the criminal defense bar. In order to be the best, Roy thought, he needed to beat the best. Two of the best criminal defense lawyers that he severely tested and often beat weren’t happy about that. They hatched a plan to bring down the young Assistant DA. In 1956, Ann Miller (fraudulent identity), a shapely femme fatale, arrived at the DA’s office to see Roy. She told him that they had met at a campaign rally, and she needed help on a child support matter. Roy, not remembering ever meeting her, gave her a reference. Ann flirtatiously offered to take Roy out for a drink some time, then she left. Roy’s office confidant was Anthony Nicholas, his future law partner. “I told Nick, ‘I don’t know her, and this looks like a set-up.’ About two, three weeks later, she calls, saying, how about our drink?” Roy said. Nick cautioned Roy to leave it alone. But Roy had to find out what was going on and who was behind it. So they went on their first “date,” where Roy picked her up at an agreed location on the street, and they drove to an East Side bar of Roy’s choosing, so he could get a head start on who might be following him. He told the bartender and bar owner (whom he knew) to keep an eye on him and the girl so the bartender could testify later if necessary. “She brought a bottle of tequila, but I don’t drink,” Roy said. “After about fifteen minutes, she gets up to make a phone call and returns, saying she needs to leave to take care of her child. As it turns out, the original plan was to set me up for drunk driving, but that was called off because I wasn’t drinking.” She calls again for a second date. Again, Roy chose the location, this time Rex’s Drive-In on Loop 410, a dark café where Roy sat facing the door. Roy recalls, “I told the bartender to watch the door for me and my conduct with the girl, to serve as my witness. Ann gets up to make a phone call; same story, to check on her child. Actually, she was calling her accomplice, a pimp named Ed. As we walked into the parking lot, she put her arm around me. As it turned out, the pimp had been waiting for us in the parking lot to snap the picture of our embrace. But moments before, the parking lot attendant had seen the pimp with the camera and had chased him off.” The third date was to be in a motel room. When they arrived, she turned the TV on loud, then used the phone, and immediately said she had to leave. This time, it seems that her accomplices weren’t able to follow her to the room. The plot wasn’t working out so well for this bunch. And Roy was still trying to figure out who they were. The next and final date was to be at the Lackland Motel. Ann insisted on the Lackland Motel, which she said was suggested by Ed (the pimp), so it was the only place she would go. Roy researched the city records and found that the owner of the Lackland Motel was an ex-detective who left the department with a bad reputation. “I figured that the room was going to be wired. I still didn’t know who was behind the scheme, or if the motel owner had something against me,” Roy said. The day before the last date, a man who owned a men’s shop downtown approached his friend, DA Hubert Green, with this bombshell: Ed the pimp, who always dressed in fancy clothes, came into the shop wanting to buy some blue jeans and a work shirt. The pimp volunteered to one of the clerks that he needed the clothes because he had a job to do; they were going to hide in the grass and catch an Assistant DA in a trap with a woman. So an office meeting was called with the Assistant DAs, warning them about Ed the pimp and that someone’s “got a red-hot date and you’re gonna get yourself in trouble.” Whereupon Roy said in jest, “There goes my red-hot date for tonight!” Guffaws ensued. Roy suspected the two defense attorneys who disliked him were involved, because one of them associated with Ed. He also suspected that a certain DA investigator was involved because Roy had gotten crosswise with him over the investigator’s secret surveillance of one of Roy's colleagues. Uncertain whether to go through with it, Roy picked up Ann for the last date. It was a cold night. Roy told her he first wanted to stop at a café for some hot chocolate (and he also wanted his unseen enemies to suffer in the cold). At the café, Roy confronted Ann that he knew about Ed the pimp and the plot and who else was involved, and that she was in big trouble. She admitted she knew the pimp but denied the rest. And that was the end of the date, which lasted about two hours.
The next day Roy told DA Hubert Green what had happened and whom he suspected. The DA’s office ultimately tracked down Ann, and she gave a statement about the whole thing: a conspiracy involving the defense lawyers, Ed the pimp, the investigator, Ann, and her husband; how the earlier traps were botched, and that the group was set up with cameras and tape recorders at the Lackland Motel, lying in wait for Roy. Green wanted Roy to file a complaint with the grand jury, but he refused and wanted to handle it his own way. Roy went to Ed the pimp. “I told him I had nothing against him, but that folks on the West Side weren’t too happy about this, so if some morning he woke up with a shiv in his back, I wanted him to know that I had nothing to do with it.” Ed immediately moved to Houston, prevailing upon one of the defense attorneys to send him a monthly support check. Then Roy made it known around the courthouse who had tried to ruin him. In a bizarre turn, one of the defense attorneys (who denied being involved) tried to cover it up. He invited Roy to his house, and told Roy that he would tell him everything, but only if Roy (a Catholic) took an oath of silence in the presence of a priest. They even called the priest, but Roy changed his mind and called it off. He knew enough. Roy said, “I never filed a complaint, and Hubert Green accused me of going on a ‘Mexican Vendetta.’” Roy was satisfied that karma would one day come around. In Roy’s mind, it did. The defense attorneys ultimately suffered debilitating diseases and died friendless. And no, Carmen didn’t know about any of this until it was over.
Tragedia Alvaro Alcorta
In 1955, Alvaro Alcorta was a mechanic in his mid-thirties working at Kelly Field. He was separated from his young wife and the mother of his children, twenty-two-year-old Herlinda. Herlinda worked as a waitress and was staying with her mother. Alcorta had complained that Herlinda was not staying home and not taking care of the kids. He boldly went to the cafe where Herlinda worked with three bar maids and informed them that he intended to kill Herlinda and escape to Mexico. Alcorta quit his job and packed his bags. Then he waited for Herlinda outside of her mother’s house. After midnight, a car pulled up, driven by a young man, Natividad Castilleja (18), with Herlinda inside. Alcorta rushed the car with a knife and began stabbing Herlinda. Castilleja briefly tried to defend her but ran away. Alcorta took Castilleja’s car out to Atascosa County with Herlinda’s body inside, dumped her in a creek bed, then headed toward Mexico. She was found dead by two fishermen the next afternoon, with thirty-two stab wounds in her body. Alcorta returned to Texas to pick up his last Kelly Field paycheck and was arrested by the authorities and charged with murder with malice. Roy was given the case to prosecute, and he sought the death penalty for Alcorta. Somewhere during the process, Roy interviewed Castilleja, who gave a written statement that he had had intercourse with Herlinda three or four times, although at first he had denied it. The statement was placed in the case file, and it did not surface during the trial. Alcorta’s defense was that he was in a heat of passion (he had seen them kissing), which would make the case for a lesser charge of murder without malice, which carried a five-year maximum sentence. Alcorta had never mentioned sexual activity by Herlinda while testifying at trial. On the stand, Alcorta said that he did not intend to kill Herlinda. On cross, Roy asked him, “What did you intend to do when you stabbed her thirty-two times?” Alcorta denied that he stabbed her that many times, which resulted in the photograph of Herlinda’s corpse being introduced into evidence. “I was a little concerned about the introduction of the photos, because that could have been viewed as too prejudicial and possibly grounds for reversal,” Roy said. But that wouldn’t be the biggest problem. Castilleja took the stand and testified that he and Herlinda were not in love, and that they had no dates. Castilleja was not asked, and did not volunteer, about the sexual intercourse. The jury found Alcorta guilty and gave him the death penalty. Alcorta appealed, based on the introduction of the gruesome photos, but the Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction.
In 1957, while Alcorta awaited his execution, a prison priest found the Castilleja statement and contacted attorney Fred Semaan, who stepped in for Alcorta and sought a review from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, arguing that the conviction should be overturned because of the new evidence of the Castilleja statement. The Board denied Alcorta’s appeal. Then the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Alcorta’s writ of habeas corpus application based on the Castilleja statement and again sustained the conviction and denied relief. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. By this time, Roy was no longer with the DA’s office and was in private practice, but Roy handled the argument for the State before the Supreme Court, at the request of DA Hubert Green. The Supreme Court reversed Alcorta’s conviction, holding that the Castilleja statement should have been disclosed. Roy contended there (and still contends) that the Supreme Court got it wrong. “The issue was the state of mind of the defendant, whether he had reason to be in a heat of passion,” Roy says. “Whether Castilleja had previous sex with Herlinda was irrelevant because Alcorta didn’t know it. It could not give him a motive today that he didn’t have yesterday. He couldn’t be heard to say, ‘I killed her yesterday because I found out today that she had an affair.’” Alcorta, still aided by Fred Semaan, was charged again and ultimately given a thirty-year sentence in Corpus Christi on a guilty plea.
Clipping courtesy of Roy Barrera, Sr.
The case inspired two corridos: Tragedia Alvaro Alcorta, by Los Caminantes, and El Corrido de Alcorta, by famed accordionist Santiago Jimenez, Sr. Both are on YouTube. Not to be outdone, Roy himself wrote a poem about the case, from Herlinda’s point of view.
Roy Barrera, Sr.
Photographed for San Antonio Lawyer by Martha Istueta
This is the first of a two-part series. Next Issue: Roy enters private practice with Nicholas & Barrera, serves as Texas Secretary of State, and becomes an iconic Texas criminal defense attorney.
Post-Script. The author would like to thank the whole Nicholas & Barrera office, the Barrera family, and especially Roy Barrera for the hospitality, the time, and the amazing stories.
Steve A. Peirce practices business bankruptcy law in the San Antonio office of Norton Rose Fulbright. He can be reached at 210.270-7179 or steve.peirce@ nortonrosefulbright.com.
