Identifying perps as illegal immigrants (updated)

By Thomas Lifson

It is almost an iron law of the MSM that the race and immigration status of criminals will not be identified if they are members of racial minorities or not in the country legally. Sometimes this aversion is almost comic, as when the subject of a manhunt's race is not included in a description alerting the public.

It would seem the self-appointed guardians of race relations consider America so racist that mere mention of a miscreant's race or flouting of immigration laws would trigger race riots.

But Adam B. Ellick of the New York Times today demonstrates that this "don't ask, don't tell" rule can be suspended when an evil white man can be blamed for something:

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.

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."

Hat tip: David Paulin

Update - -David Paulin adds:

You still have to read quite away down in this AP version of the story to read:

The two suspected burglars, Hernando Riascos Torres, 38, and Diego Ortiz, 30, were unemployed illegal immigrants from Colombia. Torres was deported to Colombia in 1999 after a 1994 cocaine-related conviction.

If you read the AP piece from the Austin, TX newspaper, be sure you read some of the reader's comments, below the article. Frankly, I'm sort of surprised about the Grand Jury's decision, but then I'm not from Texas originally. I wonder what a Grand Jury in the Bay Area would have done?