Law Kathryn Steinle's Murder: Illegal Immigrant Found NOT Guilty of Manslaughter by San Francisco Jury

Illegal Immigrant’s Acquittal in San Francisco Killing Draws Backlash
By Zusha Elinson | Dec. 1, 2017



SAN FRANCISCO—The not guilty verdict in a murder case involving an illegal immigrant here continued to draw backlash from the White House and politicians around the country Friday.

A jury late Thursday acquitted Jose Ines Garcia Zarate—a repeat felon who had been deported five times—of murder and manslaughter in the fatal shooting of 32-year-old Kate Steinle in 2015.

“The Kate Steinle killer came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border,” President Donald Trump tweeted Friday. “His exoneration is a complete travesty of justice. BUILD THE WALL!”

San Francisco city leaders were more muted Friday. Mayor Ed Lee didn’t make any public comments about the verdict. A spokeswoman for the mayor said, “San Francisco is and will remain a sanctuary city.”

Jurors declined to speak to the media after the verdict, and the court has sealed their names.

Some San Franciscans came by the pier where Ms. Steinle was killed to pay their respects Friday. Alexandra Elvitsky, a 64-year-old San Franciscan who works at a nearby law firm, said she was upset by the verdict.

“It’s a sad day,” she said. “I think it’s a travesty.”

Ms. Elvitsky, a Democrat, said she opposed building a wall at the border with Mexico, but was upset that Mr. Garcia Zarate had been able to slip through the system.

Mr. Garcia Zarate had been freed from San Francisco County jail on an old drug charge months before the shooting, despite a request from federal immigration officials to the sheriff’s department that would have enabled the federal agency to take him into custody. The city doesn’t honor requests to hold suspects for federal immigration officials after they have been released from jail.

Mr. Garcia Zarate was convicted of illegally possessing a firearm. But the jury returned not guilty verdicts on first and second degree murder, as well as involuntary manslaughter.

A murder conviction in the case was difficult because the bullet that hit Ms. Steinle ricocheted off the ground some 80 feet away from her, said retired San Francisco prosecutor Russ Giuntini.

But Mr. Giuntini said that he believed the jury might return a guilty verdict on the lesser involuntary manslaughter charge.

That required prosecutors to prove only that Mr. Garcia Zarate was negligent with the gun, and not that he had any intent to kill, he said.

The difficulty of the case was compounded by the fact that it was tried in San Francisco where “people are going to give defendants more benefit of the doubt than they are elsewhere,” said Mr. Giuntini.

At trial, prosecutors said Mr. Garcia Zarate was playing a dangerous game of “Russian roulette” by firing the gun on the crowded pier, and that he knew exactly what he was doing.

Mr. Garcia Zarate’s public defender, Matt Gonzalez, argued the shooting was an accident. Mr. Gonzalez said his client found the gun after it had been stolen from a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger’s parked vehicle.

After the verdict, Ms. Steinle’s family told the San Francisco Chronicle Thursday that they were stunned by the news.

“We’re just shocked—saddened and shocked…that’s about it,” her father, Jim, said. “There’s no other way you can coin it. Justice was rendered, but it was not served.”

Mr. Garcia Zarate could be sentenced to up to three years behind bars for the gun conviction. He’s already spent two years in jail awaiting trial.

The Justice Department is exploring whether federal charges could be filed in the case, according to a person familiar with the government’s deliberations.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/illega...co-killing-draws-backlash-1512168040?mod=e2fb
 
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There's been some questionable verdicts in LA
Are they all druggie hippies? Sanctuary cities should make exceptions for fucking criminals and kick them the fuck out.
 
Didn't the killer admit to shooting her? How can someone admit to shooting someone & not get manslaughter?
 
He was higher on the victim scale.. That's how lefties figure out who are the good guys and bad guys. Seriously.
 
Guy was a previous felon, obtained gun illegally. These liberals are fine with people walking over with guns


Heard it was a high end pistol.
Sounds like he has connections to cartels or trafficking getting arrested 7 times and coming righ back
 
You guys are not understanding that the numbers coming across, or trying to come across, are a mere fraction of what was flooding over during the last administration.

What you are not understanding is that what you are saying is a lie.

You have no data to back it up: net migration was negative over the past ten years. Period.

That matters. Numbers matter in this equation.

I agree. The numbers are not on your side, though.

And they cooked the books on their illegal immigration numbers (and everything else, i.e. constantly lied) anyway, so it's laughable to take their word for anything but the manure it is.

Once again, you have not cited anything in support of this blind partisan statement. They didn't "cook the books:" they used the terminology promulgated in Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996: that exclusion and deportation be measured under the same "removal" provision given that they have the same aggregate effect on undocumented immigration levels.

Agree to disagree, I guess.

No, you don't get to punt on being wrong. This isn't a matter of "oh well, difference of opinions." It's a matter of you repeating talking points without substance.

If you want to report other things like, say, "Obama killed way too many people with drone strikes" then we can talk. But this isn't an ambiguous topic.
 
There wasn't a single fact, nor a statistic in your entire post. Just repeating silly and moronic talking points, i.e. "he was encouraging illegal immigration," when he accelerated removals AND net migration across the Mexican border has been negative since 2009.


You are why democracy is in peril. You have a world of objective data at your fingertips, and you're still saying illogical shit. Your post is seriously offensively stupid and misinformed. And could be corrected by spending about 3 minutes on Google.

Your post has nothing to do with the topic. A woman died at the hands of a criminal. Said criminal is now free.
That's what people are pissed off about and should be discussing in this thread.
 
Your post has nothing to do with the topic. A woman died at the hands of a criminal. Said criminal is now free.
That's what people are pissed off about and should be discussing in this thread.

Don't you all ever get tired of moving the goal posts and deflecting when your positions are disproved?

We're talking about policy that has the purpose or function of lowering the incidence of events like this. We cannot reverse the court's verdict, circumvent due process, or revise history to cast blame on policy making that has in actuality had a positive effect in lowering incidence of these events.
 
Don't you all ever get tired of moving the goal posts and deflecting when your positions are disproved?

We're talking about policy that has the purpose or function of lowering the incidence of events like this. We cannot reverse the court's verdict, circumvent due process, or revise history to cast blame on policy making that has in actuality had a positive effect in lowering incidence of these events.

Nope. We're talking about a woman being killed and her murderer getting off scot free.

You wanna talk about that other bullshit then go start a new thread.
 
Fucking sickening. This POS should have flung back across the border via catapult.
 
Ya know, if North Korea ever nukes California, it may not be such a bad thing.
 
How the Kate Steinle case became an immigration flashpoint
By The Associated Press | SAN FRANCISCO — Dec 2, 2017

WireAP_03b89942753f470bb362d723d3f76d8d_12x5_992.jpg

Jim Steinle, center, and Liz Sullivan, right, the parents of Kate Steinle, walk to a court room for closing arguments in the trial of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate accused of killing their daughter, in San Francisco
A jury's decision to acquit a Mexican man in the 2015 slaying of Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier has reignited the furor of critics who in the two years since have pointed to Steinle's death as evidence of the need for tougher immigration policies.

President Donald Trump on Friday called the verdict "a travesty of justice" and renewed his push for a wall on the border with Mexico. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions demanded cities like San Francisco scrap immigration policies that limit cooperation with federal deportation efforts.

Here's a closer look at how the case unfolded and why it got embroiled in the intense national debate about immigration:
THE SLAYING:

Steinle, 32, a medical device saleswoman, was shot while walking on a popular waterfront area in the city on the evening of July 1, 2015 with her father and a family friend who were visiting. Her father, Jim Steinle, testified that his daughter collapsed in his arms, saying, "Help me dad." He rolled her on her side and discovered a bullet hole. She was later declared dead at a hospital.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was arrested a short time later. He told police he found a gun on the pier wrapped in cloth, and that it fired accidentally when he picked it up. The gun was the service weapon of a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger, who reported it stolen from his car in late June.
THE REACTION:

The shooting immediately sparked criticism of San Francisco's policy of limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities and led to calls for stronger enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and was wanted for a sixth deportation when Steinle was shot. Before the shooting, he had finished a federal prison sentence for illegal re-entry to the United States and had been transferred to San Francisco's jail in March 2015 to face a 20-year-old charge for selling marijuana. The sheriff's department released him a few days after prosecutors dropped the marijuana charge, despite a request from federal officials to detain him for deportation.

The story dominated conservative talk radio, but also had Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, saying San Francisco was wrong to let Garcia Zarate go free. As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly referenced the Steinle shooting and vowed to crack down on sanctuary cities. His administration has moved to restrict funding from such cities, but judges have blocked those attempts.

Supporters of sanctuary policies say they improve public safety by allowing immigrants to cooperate with police without fear. They also say detaining people without a warrant just so immigration officials can pick them up is unconstitutional.
THE TRIAL:

Garcia Zarate was charged with murder, and throughout most of the trial San Francisco Deputy District Attorney Diana Garcia portrayed the defendant as someone who willfully disregarded the safety of others when he fired the gun. But she spoke more strongly in her closing argument, saying he had come to the pier with a gun and a desire to hurt someone, and should be convicted of first-degree murder.

His attorneys argued that he found a gun wrapped in cloth under a chair on the pier, and it fired accidentally when he picked it up. Their forensic experts testified that the bullet that killed Steinle ricocheted from 15 feet away, something he could not have done intentionally.

Jurors found Garcia Zarate guilty only of being a felon in possession of a firearm, which carries a maximum sentence of three years in jail.
WHAT MIGHT COME NEXT:

It's likely Garcia Zarate will have served long enough behind bars considering his time in custody.

But that might not be the end of his legal troubles. The Justice Department is considering bringing federal charges against him, and at its request, a judge in Texas on Friday unsealed an arrest warrant for Garcia Zarate that was issued days after Steinle's shooting. Federal officials say they believe the Steinle shooting violated the terms of Garcia Zarate's supervised release following his conviction for illegal re-entry to the U.S.

The Steinle family, separately, has also filed a lawsuit that names Garcia Zarate and alleges the U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger negligently left the gun used in the slaying loaded inside a vehicle in San Francisco before it was stolen.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/kate-steinle-case-immigration-flashpoint-51532980
 
I look forward to ten million tweets of outrage from the left the same as we got with Brock Turner.

All I could do was rage about this yesterday. It's barely worth discussing. Libtards gonna libtard. That's the Bay.
 
No but seriously, this is absolutely disgusting.

This is a perfect example of just how dangerous Leftist ideology can be.
 
Feds bring charges against Zarate

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/05/us/garcia-zarate-kate-steinle-federal-indictment/index.html

The undocumented immigrant who fatally shot a young San Francisco woman at a popular tourist spot two years ago has been indicted on two federal charges in connection with the controversial case.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, who was acquitted last week of state murder and involuntary manslaughter charges, was charged Tuesday with one count of a felon in possession of firearm and one count of an immigrant in possession of a firearm.
Garcia Zarate's acquittal in Kate Steinle's death prompted a firestorm of criticism from President Donald Trump and conservatives toward San Francisco, a so-called sanctuary city. Garcia Zarate was found guilty on a state charge of being a felon is possession of a firearm and could face up to three years in prison.


Immigration officials have said they want to deport him. Garcia Zarate claimed the shooting was accidental.

He remains in state custody, according to the indictment.
The federal charges were announced through a news release from US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, US Attorney from the Northern District of California Brian Stretch and Jill Snyder, a special agent in charge at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
Garcia Zarate, who is from Mexico and has been deported from the US five times, faces up to 10 years in prison on each count, if convicted.
Defense lawyers for Garcia Zarate said Monday they will appeal the state charge for which he was convicted. They believe the gun possession conviction seemed at odds with the acquittals, given that those verdicts aligned with the defense contention that Garcia Zarate found the gun by happenstance at the pier where the shooting occurred.
In closing arguments, lead attorney Matt Gonzalez argued that momentary possession, especially when you don't know what you're possessing, is not a crime.
CNN reached out to Garcia Zarate's attorneys on Tuesday but didn't receive an immediate response.
 
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