Grand Jury no bills man who shot burglars

NY Times:

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.

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.”

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X is misinformed. Before the Horn case a black man living in a mostly white neighborhood west of Houston also apprehended burglars who were wise enough to stop when he confronted them with a shot gun telling them if they moved they were dead. There were no charges brought against the him either. Trying to make a racial issue out of the case is what X does, but it does not mean he should be considered an authority.