Joe Horn
Houston, Texas — 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.”

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……[more]

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Here is my opinion (Posted 18 December 2007) — [ Joe Horn - A vigilante emboldened by the on-going "racist anti-immigrant" rhetoric ]