Manuel Reyes, 82; Conviction in Sleepy Lagoon murder case later overturned
Manuel Reyes, a defendant in the infamous 1942 Sleepy Lagoon murder case in which 12 young Mexican American men were unjustly convicted of the murder of a Mexican national and served nearly two years in prison before their convictions were reversed, has died. He was 82.
Reyes, the former owner of a South Los Angeles taco stand, died of cancer Feb. 5 in the Los Angeles home of his eldest son, Manuel, said Mario Reyes, his youngest son.
A Los Angeles native who dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and began helping his uncle on his garbage-collecting route, Reyeswas 17 when he was arrested in connection with the murder of Jose Diaz, a young farmworker who died Aug. 2, 1942, after being found brutally beaten and stabbed at a ranch in Montebello.
Reyes was among 24 young Mexican American men who were charged in the case, and the ensuing trial of 22 of them became one of the largest mass trials in American history.
"My dad just told me he was guilty by association because they were Hispanic," said Mario Reyes. "He said they just rounded up a bunch of Mexicans and let some go. He never went into details about anything that happened that night."
Some of the defendants, according to trial testimony, had been assaulted by a gang called the Downey Boys earlier in the night at a reservoir dubbed Sleepy Lagoon, after a popular song of the day.
When they and other young men from their 38th Street neighborhood later returned to the reservoir to retaliate, the Downey gang was gone. They then crashed a birthday party at the nearby ranch, where, according to testimony, some of the defendants demanded to know the whereabouts of the "men who had beaten them up."
After some of the 38th Street boys entered the house, a fight broke out.
After the intruders had departed, Diaz was found lying unconscious in the dirt outside the fence south of the house.
The trial, which raised constitutional issues and continues to be cited today when appeals are made on the basis of an unfair trial, has been called "one of the darkest chapters in Los Angeles court history."
While being held in Los Angeles County Jail, the 22 defendants were denied haircuts, and they were not allowed a change of clothes during the first month of the 13-weektrial.
When defense attorneys objected that the unkempt "boys looked like mobsters, like disreputable persons," Judge Charles W. Fricke ruled against the motion.
