Deliberations to resume after the holiday weekend
Jurors broke for the holiday Wednesday without reaching a verdict in the trial of the man accused of killing Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier.
Deliberations are expected to resume Monday. The jurors must decide whether 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.
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, 45, a
homeless Mexican citizen with a history of nonviolent drug offenses 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.
The case went to the jury Tuesday afternoon after an almost fourweek long trial, during which Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia presented evidence that she said showed that Garcia Zarate had to have brought the gun with him to the pier and deliberately pulled the trigger.
Expert witnesses called to testify by Garcia Zarate’s attorneys, however, analyzed the same evidence and said it indicated that the shot that killed Steinle was most likely an unintentional discharge. Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez maintains that Garcia Zarate set off the gun shortly after he found it wrapped in a cloth under his seat at the pier, and he did not know he was grabbing a gun until it fired in his hands.
The jury is considering three potential charges against Garcia Zarate: first-degree murder, second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
The prosecution spent much of the trial arguing for second-degree murder, in which the jury would have to find that Garcia Zarate acted with malice or intentionally committed a dangerous act with conscious disregard for human life. But in her closing arguments, Garcia presented a scenario in which Garcia Zarate sized up targets on the pier in “his own secret version of Russian roulette” — an act of premeditation supportive of a firstdegree murder conviction.
For the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, jurors would have to find 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.
His release sparked a political firestorm that helped fuel Donald Trump’s presidential bid, and both the prosecution and the defense sought to keep the controversy away from the criminal proceedings.