State v. Villafane

The defendant was indicted for the crime of first-degree murder by an eighteen-member grand jury on December 6, 1971. On December 10, 1971, the defendant entered a plea of not guilty to the murder indictment and on February 29, 1972, filed in one pleading a combined plea in abatement and motion to quash. The defendant’s primary claim in the plea in abatement and motion to quash was that the grand jury which indicted him was illegally impaneled, in that a systematic exclusion of persons of the same racial, ancestral or cultural background as that of the defendant, who is of Puerto Bican…