Grand Jury Clears Texan in the Killing...

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    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/us/01texas.html?_r=1&oref= slogin

 Grand Jury Clears Texan in the Killing of 2 Burglars

HOUSTON — A grand jury on Monday refused to indict a 62-year-old man who fatally shot two burglars last November as they fled his neighbor’s house.

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Joe Horn

In a case that raised questions of ethnic bias, self-defense and property rights, the jury rejected charges against the man, Joe Horn, who is white. Both victims were illegal immigrants from Colombia.

“Joe is not some wild cowboy,” Mr. Horn’s lawyer, Charles T. Lambright, said at a news conference on Monday. “He was put in a place where he didn’t have any other choice.”

But others reacted angrily to the decision. “There is not a snowflake’s chance in hell that an African-American man could do what Joe Horn did and get away with it,” said Quanell X, a local black activist. “The message that Harris County sent to the entire world is that Houston, Tex., is God’s city. There is no longer a need for the criminal justice system, police, judge or jury. You can be all of that on your own.”

Mr. Horn, a retired computer manager who testified before the grand jury, called 911 on Nov. 14, saying two men were burglarizing his neighbor’s house in Pasadena, a Houston suburb. He described the men as black.

“I’m not going to let them get away with it,” he told the emergency operator. “I’m going to shoot.” He added, “I’m going to kill them.”

The operator repeatedly told Mr. Horn not to shoot, and the police had just arrived at the scene when Mr. Horn fired three blasts of 00 buckshot from his 12-gauge, striking the men in their backs.

The men — Hernando Riascos Torres, 38, and Diego Ortiz, 30 — ran short distances before collapsing and dying, leaving behind a tire iron used to break a window and a pillowcase holding jewelry and about $2,000 from the neighbors.

Many questions went unanswered, including the events that transpired before Mr. Horn told the operator, “I had no choice,” adding, “Man, they came running in my yard.”

The Texas Penal Code allows the use of deadly force if the “actor reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary.” Deadly force can also be used to protect property when “the other is fleeing immediately after committing burglary.”

One lawyer, while endorsing the grand jury’s decision, raised questions about the process.

“I wonder if Joe Horn were black if he would be free tonight or in the Harris County Jail,” said the lawyer, Joseph Gutheinz Jr., of the National Republican Lawyers Association. “It’s a sea of white faces that doesn’t look anything like the county,” Mr. Gutheinz said.

In a news release, District Attorney Kenneth Magidson of Harris County said the grand jury had “conducted a thorough review of the evidence and testimony” and noted that every case involving deadly force “stands or falls on its own particular facts.”