Jury weighs fate of suspect in San Francisco pier killing

SAN FRANCISCO — Jurors on Tuesday started weighing the fate of a Mexican man who was in the United States illegally when he shot a woman on a San Francisco pier in a killing that stirred up another fierce national debate on immigration.

The jury of six men and six women will consider dueling arguments that Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was either a hapless homeless man who killed Kate Steinle in a freak accident or a calculated murderer intent on playing a sick game.

Steinle was walking with her father and a family friend on a sunny day in July 2015 when she was shot, collapsing into her father’s arms. Garcia Zarate had been released from the San Francisco jail about three months before the shooting, despite a request by federal immigration authorities to detain him for deportation. He had been deported five times before.

Steinle’s death put San Francisco and its “sanctuary city” policy in the spotlight, as Democrats and Republicans lashed out at city officials for refusing to cooperate with federal deportation efforts.

During the presidential race, then-candidate Donald Trump cited the killing as a reason to toughen U.S. immigration policies. Trump later signed an executive order to cut funding from cities that limit cooperation with U.S. immigration authorities, a policy that a federal judge in San Francisco permanently blocked Monday.

But the politics of immigration were not allowed to come up in the monthlong trial.