Interrogation error by police, expert testifies

A bilingual San Francisco police officer who acted as a Spanish-language interpreter in the interrogation of the man accused of fatally shooting Kate Steinle on Pier 14 mistranslated key portions of the interview, a Spanish translation expert testified Thursday.

The recorded interview of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate is a central piece of evidence in his trial, and defense attorneys called the expert as their final witness. They’re seeking to refute the accusation that the 45-year-old man fired the stolen gun intentionally — rather than accidentally — and is therefore guilty of second-degree murder.

Though homicide investigators asked Garcia

Zarate at various points in the four-hour interrogation if he had pulled the trigger of the gun, Officer Martin Covarrubias never actually said the word for trigger — gatillo — when he translated the questions into Spanish, said Fanny Suarez, an investigator for the city public defender’s office and a former court interpreter.

Police asked Garcia Zarate several variations of the question, “Did you pull the trigger?” But instead, Suarez said, Covarrubias translated into Spanish, “Did you shoot?” Garcia Zarate answered in the affirmative.

After Suarez took the stand, the defense rested its case, signaling that the high-profile trial is nearing an end, though the prosecution could call rebuttal witnesses next week. Closing arguments are scheduled for Nov. 20, with jurors deliberating after that.

Suarez’s testimony about the translation was aimed at the heart of the prosecution’s case against Garcia Zarate, a homeless man with a history of drug crimes and deportations to his native Mexico who was released from County Jail before the July 1, 2015, killing — despite a federal request to hold him for another deportation.

Steinle, 32, had been strolling with her arm around her father toward the end of the pier when the bullet struck her in the back. The shooting gained wide attention not only because of the randomness of Steinle’s death, but also because of how it figured into the national debate over sanctuary laws and the anti-immigrant sentiment embraced by thenpresidential candidate Donald Trump.

Prosecutors have suggested a range of evidence supports a murder conviction, including that the pistol that killed Steinle cannot be fired without a pull of the trigger, and that Garcia Zarate discarded the weapon in San Francisco Bay shortly after the killing.

The defense, though, has sought to prove that the gun unintentionally discharged shortly after Garcia Zarate found it under a seat at the pier. According to court testimony, a single round bounced off the concrete ground of the pier 12 to 15 feet away from Garcia Zarate before traveling roughly 78 more feet and striking Steinle.

Garcia Zarate, who was interrogated in the hours after the shooting, provided rambling accounts of how it happened.

At one point he said he had aimed at a “sea animal.” At another point, he said the gun — which had been stolen four days earlier from the car of a federal ranger while it was parked near the waterfront — had been under a rag that lay on the ground, that it fired when he stepped on it, and that he quickly tossed the weapon into the bay so it would stop “shooting on its own.”

Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez, of the public defender’s office, said it’s not clear if Garcia Zarate fully understood what police were asking and what he was admitting, such as that he had been aiming at sea animals or that he was 5 feet away from Steinle at the time of the shooting, not 90 feet away.

The translation issues only worsened the quality of the interrogation, Gonzalez said.

Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia asked just a few questions in her cross-examination. Though Suarez testified that “every word matters,” when Garcia asked her if she felt that Covarrubias’ interpretation was “off the mark,” she said she did not have an opinion on the matter.

When asked outside court if there was a difference between admitting to pulling a trigger and admitting to firing a gun, Gonzalez said, “That’s for the jury to sort out.

“I know Officer Covarrubius and I like him,” Gonzalez said. “There are certainly parts of his interpretation that are accurate. Our point is not to say he’s an incompetent interpreter. Our point is to say if you’re going to give significance to individual words and answers, then you have to look at this transcript very carefully.”

Garcia Zarate had been on track for a sixth deportation when federal authorities, in March 2015, brought him to San Francisco to face a 20year-old warrant in a marijuana case. When city prosecutors dismissed the case, the Sheriff ’s Department, relying on the city’s sanctuary policies for immigrants, released Garcia Zarate despite a federal request to hold him for removal.