Jury begins deliberations on accused killer’s fate

The jury began deliberating Tuesday in the trial of the man accused of killing Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier, a case that thrust the city into a political firestorm over immigration enforcement.

The jurors must decide whether 45-year-old Jose Ines Garcia Zarate intentionally and willfully fired a gun on Pier 14, as prosecutors allege, or whether Steinle’s death on July 1, 2015, was simply a tragic accident, as Garcia Zarate’s attorneys contend. The jurors went home Tuesday evening without reaching a verdict.

Steinle was killed as she strolled with her father toward the far end of the pier by a bullet that ricocheted off the concrete ground and flew 78 feet into her back.

Garcia Zarate, a homeless Mexican citizen with a history of nonviolent drug crimes and deportations, has admitted handling the weapon — a .40-caliber Sig Sauer handgun that had been stolen four days earlier from the parked car of an off-duty federal ranger. He is facing charges of murder, being a felon in possession of a firearm and assault with a semiautomatic weapon in connection to the shooting.

On Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia asked jurors to find him guilty on all counts, saying the evidence supports the pre-

meditation and implied malice required for a first-degree or seconddegree murder conviction. She argued that Garcia Zarate brought the gun to the pier with the sole purpose of shooting it and causing harm.

“When the defendant fired that gun, he did it with a conscious disregard of every person on the pier that day,” Garcia said.

Attorney Matt Gonzalez disputed Garcia’s theory in his closing remarks. He has maintained during the fiveweek trial in the Hall of Justice that the defendant didn’t bring the gun to the pier, but found it underneath a seat there wrapped in cloth. On Tuesday, Gonzalez pointed out that investigators were never able to find evidence of a motive and that it was unrealistic to believe that Steinle died because Garcia Zarate felt like killing that day.

“You’d have to believe that somebody with no history of firing a gun, that if this person were to find a gun, they would become a killer,” he said. “If that’s the argument, are we to believe that if he were to find a knife, he would have wanted to stab someone?”

Garcia Zarate did not know he was grabbing a gun when he reached for the cloth bundle under his seat at the pier until it accidentally discharged, Gonzalez said.

Prosecutors have long scoffed at this account, saying the pier was too crowded and open for a gun to go undiscovered until Garcia Zarate found it, but Gonzalez argued that a homeless person like Garcia Zarate would be more likely to “pick up an object that had been discarded and investigate it.”

“He picked up an object,” Gonzalez said. “He did not know its character. And it went off.”

Jurors can also consider the charge of involuntary manslaughter, which would require a finding that Garcia Zarate’s actions don’t rise to the level of murder but that Steinle’s death was caused by his negligence.

Before the shooting, Garcia Zarate had been on track for deportation after serving 46 months in prison for felony reentry into the country. But he was transferred from federal custody to San Francisco on an old warrant, and when prosecutors discharged that case, the Sheriff ’s Department released him despite a federal request to hold him for deportation, relying on the sanctuary policies that restrict cooperation with immigration agents.

San Francisco and California have stood by their sanctuary policies, with officials saying public safety is benefited when undocumented immigrants feel comfortable working with authorities.