Defense attorney focuses on police interrogation

To believe that the man accused of killing Kate Steinle on San Francisco’s Pier 14 confessed to intentionally firing toward her, jurors will have to accept that he understood the questions police asked him, his attorney said Thursday.

As the murder trial of 45- year- old Jose Ines Garcia Zarate entered its eighth day, defense attorney Matt Gonzalez attacked the four- hour interrogation of his client, a homeless man with a history of drug crimes and deportations whose release from San Francisco jail before the killing sparked controversy.

Gonzalez sought to raise doubt about whether insight could be salvaged from Garcia Zarate’s rambling accounts of what happened along the Embarcadero on the evening of July 1, 2015.

A video of the questioning, played in court Wednesday by Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia, showed that Garcia Zarate at one point spoke of aiming a gun at a “sea animal,” and at another described accidentally stepping on the gun as it lay under a rag on the pier, causing it to go off.

Prosecutors believe the statements, along with other evidence, make clear that Garcia Zarata acted intentionally and displayed the malice needed for a second- degree murder conviction. But the defense says the gun accidentally discharged after Garcia Zarate found it in a T- shirt or cloth under his seat on the pier and unwrapped it.

“Were you concerned that, depending on how many different times you asked him a question, you could get a different answer and they couldn’t all be true?” Gonzalez said as he cross- examined police Lt. Anthony Ravano, who led the questioning of Garcia Zarate hours after the shooting.

Ravano testified that, in his experience, suspects sometimes edge closer to the truth as investigators ask more questions.

“Weren’t you concerned that you could get Mr. Garcia Zarate to say what you wanted him to say?” Gonzalez asked.

“Questions are presented,” Ravano responded. “Answers are given.”

Steinle had been strolling with her arm around her father when she was struck in the back by a single bullet that had skipped off the concrete ground after being fired from a pistol. The handgun had been stolen four days earlier from the nearby parked car of an offduty federal ranger, but no one was arrested in the burglary.

After the shooting, police said, Garcia Zarate tossed the weapon in San Francisco Bay, and he was soon arrested in the area. Prosecutors think he fired intentionally, but have not identified a possible motive.

Portions of the interrogation video — in which Garcia Zarate spoke in both Spanish and English and sometimes through a city police officer interpreting for two homicide investigators — were introduced by the prosecution Wednesday.

On Thursday, Gonzalez, of the city public defender’s office, played additional clips from the video in a bid to highlight his client’s purported confusion and raise questions about the quality of the interrogation.

“Do you know what a pier is? Tell me what a pier is,” Ravano asked Garcia Zarate.

“Yes,” Garcia Zarate responded.

At one point, Ravano deceived Garcia Zarate — a tactic that is allowed in interrogations — by telling him police had already recovered the gun from the bay, had DNA and gunshot- residue evidence tying him to the shooting, and had found witnesses who saw him shoot.

But this information did not appear to gain the response Ravano was looking for.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Ravano asked, clearly frustrated.

“Yes,” Garcia Zarate said.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” the lead investigator said. “What did I just say?”

Garcia Zarate did not respond.

Referring to Garcia Zarate’s statement that he had aimed at a “sea animal,” Gonzalez asked Ravano why he believed this account and not the version in which the gun accidentally fired.

“Is it your belief that Mr. Garcia Zarate thought Kathryn Steinle was a seal?” Gonzalez asked. “You didn’t ask him where the seals were that he was shooting at? You never asked him if he successfully fired at a seal?”

“I don’t recall,” Ravano said.

The prosecution rested its case Thursday afternoon. Gonzalez is expected to call his first witness Monday.