Fallout in Houston From the Vigilante Case

The outrageous decision not to indict a Houston man who ignored repeated requests from a 911 operator not to shoot two men burglarizing his neighbor's home has forced a US Congresswoman to call for an inquiry into how they do business down there:

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has called for a congressional inquiry into the state's most populous county, saying recent events show that its legal system "has been tarnished." The Democrat primarily cited a recent Harris County grand jury decision not to indict a suburban homeowner who shot to death two men he suspected of burglarizing a neighbor's home.

"As far as many are concerned, justice was not rendered," said Jackson Lee, speaking at news conference Sunday. "There needs to be a question about how the case was presented. Was there no basis for this individual to be tried by a jury of his peers?"

Jackson Lee said her call for a federal inquiry also was spurred by a string of other controversial cases and scandals involving Harris County criminal justice agencies.

"With the many misgivings surrounding the Harris County legal system, it is fair to say that this local judicial system has been tarnished," Jackson Lee said. "It is time for all officials to be held accountable and true justice and democracy to be restored."

This is the story that Lee is referring to:

A Harris County grand jury on Monday ended the rancorous seven-month debate over Pasadena resident Joe Horn's decision to gun down two illegal immigrant burglars in his front yard, concluding the act was a justifiable use of deadly force and not murder.

The grand jury heard two weeks of testimony from witnesses, including Horn. They likely also heard his breathless 911 call, during which the increasingly frustrated retiree ignored a dispatcher's pleas to stay inside and out of harm's way. The Nov. 14 call ended with the sound of Horn racking a shell into his 12-gauge shotgun's chamber followed by three gunshots that killed Colombians Diego Ortiz, 30, and Hernando Riascos Torres, 38.

Each man was shot in the back. They had taken about $2,000 in the burglary.

Horn's defense hinged on his assertion that he fired out of fear for his life, making the shooting justifiable under Texas law. The law also permits the use of deadly force to protect property under some circumstances.

Having heard the 911 tape, I can tell you that there is no reason Horn should have been allowed to go free. He is the classic vigilante, confused, emotional and freaked out by the experience, not calm and collected. He is told, plainly and clearly, by the dispatcher to do nothing. He is told to put his gun down. He runs outside, yells, "move and you're dead!" at the men, and shoots both of them in the back. Moments later, the police arrive, and they almost certainly would have caught both of the men.

I hope the Congressional inquiry accomplishes something, because there is something wrong with our country--and it isn't guns. It's the idiots who get guns who don't know how to use guns or do what they're told.

Murdered in Police Custody

Are we still living in America?

The Maryland Medical Examiner's Office ruled the death of a teenager, who was in custody on murder charges in the death of a police officer, was a homicide.

Ronnie Lionel White, 19, of Laurel, died Sunday morning in his jail cell. He had been charged with first-degree murder in the death of 39-year-old Prince George's County police Cpl. Richard Findley. Police said White was the driver of a pickup truck that struck Findley on Friday.

Law enforcement sources said White died of either strangulation or asphyxiation. He had suffered two broken neck bones.

"The surrounding circumstances that we take a full and complete look and pull all the evidence together, and we'll make a decision at the end of that process," said Prince George's County State's Attorney Glenn Ivey.

Prince George's County jail spokeswoman Vicki Duncan said White was found unconscious in his cell about 10:30 a.m. Sunday. She said White was alone in his cell and there were no signs of trauma.

White was admitted to the jail at 12:24 a.m. Saturday and given a medical assessment before being placed in a cell.

Jail officials said he had been classified as a "high-profile offender" and was being housed alone in a maximum security cell. Guards checked on him every 30 minutes.

Guards had checked on White about 10:15 a.m. Sunday. At the time, he was sitting on the edge of his bunk and appeared alert, according to a press release.

When they returned at 10:30 a.m. with his lunch, corrections officers found White "sitting on the floor" of his jail cell, unresponsive, the release said.

I have no sympathy for cop killers. I do believe in the rule of law. And the rule of law lost.

--WS

Opportunist, thy name is Rudy

You know that reduction in violent crime in New York City that Rudy is always crowing about presiding over, as if he arrested every perp in New York personally?

Yeah, well, hold the phone. He was in the right place at the right time. The real reason that the crime rate plummeted was neurochemical, not the hoo-ah, head-crackin’ police state and “zero tolerance” policies that the authoritarians authoritarian instituted.

It turns out that the declining crime rates that Rudy is so fond of standing on are actually the result of (liberal) social and environmental policies enacted in the sixties and seventies that reduced lead exposure and lead poisoning in children.

Lead is a potent neurotoxin, and can have devastating effects on neural development even at low levels. There is a direct causal link between lead exposure and learning and developmental disabilities, decreases in I.Q., and behavior problems. It has also been adequately demonstrated that lead poisoning correlates with a lack of impulse control, and a lack of impulse control is a factor in many criminal acts.

Even tiny amounts can cause reduced IQ, reading and learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder and behavioral problems. As a result, childhood lead poisoning is associated with lower educational achievement, higher rates of high school drop-out and increased behavioral problems. In the long run, children who are lead poisoned may be less likely to be positive contributors to our communities. It is estimated that lead poisoning has tripled the number of children needing special education.

Now…back to Rudy and his chest and assertions that he enacted the policies that reduced crime in New York City. "I began with the city that was the crime capital of America," Giuliani, now a candidate for president, recently told Fox's Chris Wallace. "When I left, it was the safest large city in America. I reduced homicides by 67 percent. I reduced overall crime by 57 percent."

Well – crime did fall during the Giuliani era, but science says Rudy is claiming the entire pie as his when he really only deserves a sliver.

The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning.

The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives.

What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries.

"It is stunning how strong the association is," Nevin said in an interview. "Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead."

I have not been able to track down the original studies, but I want to see them, and I want to go so far as to write an Excel worksheet and look at the data in my own format. You see, this issue is right up my alley. I have spent my career straddling medicine and academia. I have volunteered many hours in public health clinics, and in that capacity, I have tested thousands of children for lead levels; and in academia I have done neural research.

What I know about the effects of lead on neural development, and what I have read so far about the studies, I am inclined to believe that Rick Nevin is right on. The obvious questions that were raised in my mind as I was reading the Post article, were answered.

Now we already know what I think of Rudy – that is to say that I have scraped more appealing things from the bottom of my shoe after a visit to the dog park. So I really find it quite delicious that he is claiming the credit for a phenomenon that is actually due to those liberal social programs of the past that he and his ilk have tried mightily to undo.