Immigrant incompetent to stand trial in pier death
Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, the undocumented immigrant acquitted by a San Francisco jury of murdering Kate Steinle on a city pier, has been examined by a mental health professional and found incompetent to stand trial on federal gun charges, a judge said Friday — a finding protested by Garcia Zarate’s lawyer.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ordered the examination last month after observing that Garcia Zarate’s responses to questions were “sometimes nonsensical” and that he “may not understand the charges against him.” Chhabria said Friday that the professional who examined him had concluded he was unfit to participate in a trial “because of mental illness that is not presently being treated.”
He scheduled a hearing for Wednesday and said further proceedings would be required,
delaying a trial date, if either side disputed the findings. Defense lawyer J. Tony Serra said Garcia Zarate’s attorneys would ask for a second evaluation.
“We want a trial,” Serra said in an interview. “We’re against having him (found) incompetent. He could go away for an indefinite period” to a mental hospital, under government supervision.
Steinle, 32, was shot in the back as she walked with her father on Pier 14 in July 2015. The bullet came from a gun held by
Garcia Zarate, who had been deported five times to his native Mexico, returned to the United States each time, and had just served 46 months in federal prison for illegal reentry.
Rather than deporting him again, immigration officials sent him to San Francisco to face an old marijuana charge, which local prosecutors dropped. San Francisco released him under the city’s sanctuary policy, which limits local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents. President Trump has invoked the case in his attacks on sanctuary cities.
Garcia Zarate’s lawyers said he had picked up a Tshirt or cloth wrapper containing the gun, which someone else had stolen from a federal agent’s car, and it went off accidentally, discharging a bullet that ricocheted off the pavement before striking Steinle.
A jury acquitted him of murder and manslaughter charges in November 2017 and convicted him only of being a felon in possession of a gun — a conviction that a state appeals court overturned last September because the trial judge had not told the jury it could acquit Garcia Zarate if he was only in “momentary” possession of the weapon before discarding it.
He has remained in jail, however, on federal charges of possessing a gun illegally as both a felon and an unauthorized immigrant, charges punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Chhabria, presiding over the federal case, said in his Jan. 10 order for a mental competency examination that Garcia Zarate had been diagnosed with schizophrenia during criminal court proceedings in Texas in 2009, was prosecuted only after receiving treatment and had been treated for serious mental illness while in prison.
Serra, his attorney, acknowledged Friday that Garcia Zarate has said in recent court proceedings “he thought he was charged with merely unlawful entry” and seemed unaware of the gun charges he faces.
But if the case goes to trial, he said, Garcia Zarate would be able to cooperate adequately with his attorneys because “I don’t need him much. We can do it all on evidence of the video” showing his brief possession of the gun before the shooting.
Even if Garcia Zarate were convicted, Serra said, he would get credit for the years he has spent behind bars since the shooting and “could be out very quickly” — possibly much sooner than he would be released from a mental hospital if found incompetent. In either event, he would face immediate deportation.