Motive elusive as jurors sift facts
Decision difficult without eyewitnesses, clear video
As the trial in the San Francisco killing of Kate Steinle draws to a close, jurors must sift between dueling evidence and experts to settle whether the waterfront shooting that ignited a national debate over immigration enforcement was an intentional act by a violent gunman or a freak accident that befell a hapless homeless man.
Prosecutors pressing for a second-degree murder conviction sought to prove that the stolen gun that killed Steinle couldn’t have fired without a firm pull of the trigger, while establishing that the defendant, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, tossed the weapon into the bay before fleeing the scene.
The defense, pushing for an acquittal, seized upon the fact that the single bullet bounced before it struck Steinle, suggesting that a purposeful shot was improbable. While a lesser charge of manslaughter is an option, Garcia Zarate’s attorneys maintain his innocence.
But with the main testimony done and closing arguments scheduled for Nov. 20 — though attorneys may still call rebuttal witnesses — jurors were left with little insight into an issue
that is often clarifying in homicide trials: a motive.
Under California law, prosecutors need not present a motive, and in a typical murder case, proving that the defendant was at the scene of the homicide with the gun that fired the deadly bullet would be enough for conviction.
But evidence of a motive, experts say, would be helpful in a case in which a man is accused of randomly shooting a woman he did not know.
“Whenever you have a case that hinges on intent, you can’t really get into somebody’s head and know what they’re thinking,” said Hadar Aviram, a criminal law professor at UC Hastings in San Francisco. “Motive, and in general the backstory between the defendant and the victim, can in a lot of cases illuminate the intent.
“Here, we don’t have that,” she said. “We have two complete strangers and circumstances physically that are quite bizarre.”
Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia spent much of the Superior Court trial, which has spanned 13 days so far, bringing forth witnesses and experts who could bolster her contention that Garcia Zarate had fired the gun deliberately, either at Steinle or in a direction he knew would harm others, an act that arguably carries the malice needed for a second-degree murder conviction.
But defense attorneys painted a scenario in which Garcia Zarate stumbled upon a gun left concealed on the pier for an unknown reason and was startled to see it discharge as he unwrapped it from a T-shirt or rag. Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez of the Public Defender’s Office said his client had never handled a gun and was scared by the loud noise, prompting the fling of the weapon into the bay.
What is certain is that on the evening of July 1, 2015, Garcia Zarate was in a seat on the pier as Steinle, 32, strolled with her arm around her father, heading toward the end of the walkway to take in the views of the bay.
A .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol, stolen four days earlier from an off-duty federal ranger’s nearby parked vehicle, discharged from where Garcia Zarate sat, sending one bullet into the pier’s concrete surface about 12 to 15 feet away from the defendant.
After ricocheting, the bullet traveled 78 more feet to pierce Steinle’s back. As she collapsed in her father’s arms — pleading, “Help me, Dad!” — Garcia Zarate tossed the gun over the side of the pier and walked away as the picturesque setting devolved into chaos. He was arrested an hour later.
In the days that followed, Garcia Zarate’s immigration status emerged, thrusting San Francisco into a political firestorm and fueling anti-immigrant rhetoric embraced by Donald Trump as he campaigned for the presidency. Garcia Zarate, a Mexican citizen with a history of drug crimes, was on track for a sixth deportation when local authorities, relying on the city’s sanctuary policies, released him despite a federal request to hold him for removal.
The politics around Steinle’s death meant jurors most likely had heard about the case before they received their summons, but both the prosecution and the defense made a point during jury selection to try to keep the issue of immigration out of the criminal proceedings.
Instead, the question jurors must weigh is whether Garcia Zarate acted with the necessary intent — a question complicated not only by the lack of a known motive but an absence of clear surveillance video as well as eyewitnesses who might have seen the shooting or at least provided an account of the defendant handling the gun.
What jurors do have to wrestle with is Garcia Zarate’s video-recorded police interrogation in the hours after the shooting, which prosecutors said implicated him and defense attorneys said revealed little except confusion worsened by an officer’s Spanish translation.
Garcia Zarate provided varying accounts of what happened on the pier. He said at one point he had aimed the gun at a “sea animal,” and at another point said the gun had been under a rag that lay on the ground and had fired when he stepped on it.
Some of his answers were inconsistent with physical evidence. Yes, he said, he had been 5 feet away from Steinle when the shooting occurred — not 90 feet as investigators later found. Yes, he had walked by her as she bled in her father’s arms — even though she was at the opposite end of the pier from the exit.
Another pivotal dispute emerged when Garcia, the prosecutor, called in the San Francisco police inspector who processed the crime scene to testify that he drew a straight line from where Garcia Zarate sat to where the bullet ricocheted to Steinle. In those circumstances, the inspector said, Garcia Zarate had to have aimed the gun at Steinle and pulled the trigger.
The inspector testified that some novice shooters pull a gun’s trigger before they lift the muzzle up, which could explain why the shot hit the ground.
But Gonzalez’s experts said there was no way to tell which direction a ricochet would travel and that a shot that first hits the ground is most likely an unintentional discharge.
In cases like the Pier 14 shooting, evidence can become a Rorschach test of jurors’ experiences and beliefs, said Professor Aviram.
“People’s demographics and people’s experiences inform the way they interpret evidence, especially when the evidence itself is really open to interpretation, and that’s going to come to play in this case,” she said. “The defense will say, ‘You can clearly see X,’ and the prosecution will say, ‘You can clearly see Y,’ and the jury will see different things.”
The interrogation highlighted another issue that could affect the jurors’ decision: the mental state of Garcia Zarate, who has spent much of his adult life behind bars, was living on the street before the shooting, and has a secondgrade education, according to his lawyers.
The defense is not arguing that Garcia Zarate is innocent because of insanity or mental defect. Even so, Aviram said, that doesn’t stop jurors from weighing a defendant’s mental capacity in deliberations.
“I’m sure they have all already gotten a chance to form an impression of the defendant, and the question now is how that impression is going to play out when they look at the issue of intent in this case,” Aviram said. “Any demonstration that the person is not thinking right could dig into the intent. If a person’s mental abilities show that the person was not trying to shoot anyone, for the jury, that could make a difference. For them, this could mean that the person did not form the requisite intent for murder.”
On the other hand, jurors do not have to believe Garcia Zarate pointed the gun at Steinle and tried to kill her to convict him of second-degree murder. The act of pulling the trigger of a gun in a crowded place — like Pier 14 — could be enough.