Jul
01
Getting away with murder in Texas
Labels:
criminal justice,
ethics,
news stories
On November 14, 2007, Joseph Horn called 911 and told the dispatcher he intended to go outside his home and kill two people. Before police could arrive, and despite the dispatcher imploring him to stay inside, he carried out his plan. He killed Hernando Riascos Torres and Diego Ortiz with shotgun blasts to the back.
Horn and his lawyer, Charles Lambright, have tried to mitigate Horn's actions with several other relevant facts. Torres and Ortiz were burglarizing Horn's neighbor's house when the call to authorities was placed. And after Horn went outside, they allegedly entered Horn's front yard. On the basis of these facts, two grand juries declined to indict him.
Not self-defense
The fact that Torres and Ortiz were on Horn's property when they were shot cannot alone justify a self-defense shooting. They would have to be there as part of a situation in which a reasonable person would feel his life was in immediate jeopardy. The fact that they were shot in the back seems to indicate that Horn's life was not in immediate jeopardy, at least to me (and I would like to think I am a reasonable person).
Even more damning is the indisputable fact that Horn went looking for trouble. He stated clearly that his intention was to kill the burglars. He also stated — many, many times — that the reason he was intervening was because he was "not gonna let 'em get away with it."
At one point before he went outside, Horn told the dispatcher he wanted to defend his own life. The problem with relying on this statement as evidence of a self-defense motive is that Horn put his life into far more danger by going outside.
According to the Houston Chronicle, Lambright had the audacity to say, "Just because he went outside doesn't mean he went outside with the idea of shooting them." This despite Horn's announcement to the 911 dispatcher, "I'm gonna kill 'em," and despite his hollering, "You're dead!" immediately before he fired the shotgun.
Defense of property
According to his own statements during the phone call, Horn's motivation was not defense of human life, but of property. (Someone else's property, no less.) The 911 dispatcher summed the ethics of this case up neatly while trying to dissuade Horn from his plan: "Property's not worth killing someone over."
I am flabbergasted that not just one, but two grand juries were able to overlook Horn's blatant crime. If Texas law allows these actions, then Texas lawmakers have a grave duty to correct those laws.
Further information
- ABC News story
- Houston Chronicle article from two days after the shooting, with audio of the 911 calls
Logging you in...Comments by IntenseDebate
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DP · 873 weeks ago
Anna · 873 weeks ago
criminal thinks he is is danger of getting caught. Many states have Castle Doctrine
laws that protect one's property,like Colorado's "Make My Day" law.
According to Wikipedia,each state has different laws and guidelines,but most
have certain conditions that apply to all or most. Check out www.Wikipedia.com
for more.
Ginkgo100 38p · 873 weeks ago
A Different Joe · 873 weeks ago
However, your details are a little bit skewed on the subject, a little exaggerated. His phone conversation beforehand didn't say he was going out to kill them, he said that the law allowed him to use lethal force to defend property. And saying that he said "you're dead" then shooting them is vastly exaggerating things, considering the two words before that were 'move and'. "Move and you're dead" creates an entirely different context.
You say that all he had to do was to stay inside and leave his neighbor's house undefended in order to avoid this ... but I say that sort of self-centered thinking is a problem, not a solution. We are not individuals, we are community. We do not just protect our home, we all protect each other's homes. I see little difference between thieves stealing from his house or from his neighbor's house.
I also disagree with the thought that the best solution is to just wait for police to take care of you. I agree that the police should be one's first response, and that one should never, ever interfere with police once they are on the scene - to do such a thing is to make an officer's already difficult job even harder. The only helpful thing a civilian can do for a police officer is to stay out of the way. However, I don't think that we should be completely uninvolved in the defense of our own communities.
According to the official reports, the immediate response of the thieves was not to freeze when a gun was pointed at them, but to run - one of them towards him, then suddenly turning and running towards the road as he was shot. A very different concept than just shooting them in the back. It's also important to note that it happened on his property - which also somewhat negates the whole concept that just staying inside might have been enough. The thieves had already taken it from his neighbor's property to his place.
It's easy to sit back and theorize on what you might have done differently, how you could have sit back and ignored your neighbor's house being robbed, while the thieves got away, and tell the truth, I probably would also have stayed in the house and not gotten involved. However, we don't know his situation. We don't know how often thieves might have plagued this neighborhood. It's hard to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
One man approaching two known criminals is a scary situation, and just the fact that they were shot in the back is not damning evidence. It makes absolutely zero sense to wait for them to be pointing weapons at you before pulling the trigger, when they outnumber you two to one, for the same reason that people taught to confront criminals are taught to fire killing shots, not wounding shots - because to do otherwise is to overly risk your own life.
Like I said to start, I don't see this as a justified killing, I think he did something wrong - but not so wrong as you're making it out to be. I'd suggest you not think of this as a man going out looking for trouble on someone else's property, and instead think of it as a community defending itself.
Ginkgo100 38p · 873 weeks ago
On the first statement, I think you are mistaken; at one point, he clearly said, "I'm gonna kill 'em." On the second part, I was mistaken; I mis-heard the tape. You're right, he did say "Move and you're dead," which changes the context.
"The only helpful thing a civilian can do for a police officer is to stay out of the way. However, I don't think that we should be completely uninvolved in the defense of our own communities."
Yes, we should be involved and community-oriented when it comes to crime, but we don't live in the Wild West anymore. In a suburban, thoroughly civilian neighborhood like Horn's, defending one's community really should not involve active gun-wielding, unless it is your own domicile or a human being that is threatened.
"It makes absolutely zero sense to wait for them to be pointing weapons at you before pulling the trigger"
I agree 100%. I think the moral and legal standard is that you have to wait until you reasonably feel your life is in danger, a point which may come before an opponent raises a weapon. But to me, it also makes zero sense to run outside at unknown and outnumbering opponents. Frankly, it's tactically stupid. He really put himself into a situation in which he was very likely to have to shoot, just because his tactics were so bad.
I believe that an ordinary person has NO duty to defend another person's property with his life. There's a difference between vigilance and vigilantism.