Jeffrey Caplan
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The prosecutor trying an undocumented Mexican immigrant for the death of a 32-year-old woman on the San Francisco, Calif., pier got the murder trial underway Monday by arguing there is no way Jose Ines Garcia Zarate fired the gun accidentally, as he claims.
RARE POV: Does America need more protection from immigrants, or the ever-growing surveillance state?
Garcia Zarate, 54, admitted to shooting Kate Steinle, who was walking with her father, in the back on July 1, 2015. He says he found the gun, which had been stolen from a police officer’s car, wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench on the pier, and that when he picked it up, it went off. His attorney contended Monday that he didn’t know a gun was wrapped in the shirt.
The prosecutor, Diana Garcia, showed the jury the gun that killed Steinle and said a ballistics expert will testify that the gun would not have gone off accidentally. Garcia Zarate’s lawyer countered that the gun had a sensitive trigger and no safety, making it easy to fire unintentionally.
At the time of the shooting, then-candidate Donald Trump was making stricter immigration policies part of his campaign platform, and Steinle’s death was cited as a justification for those policies by their supporters. Trump himself pointed to the shooting as a reason for stricter immigration control. Garcia Zarate had been deported five times from the U.S. and was homeless in San Francisco when he shot Steinle.
Garcia Zarate had finished a prison sentence for illegal re-entry to the U.S. when he was transferred to the San Francisco County Jail on account of a marijuana charge from two decades ago. However, as San Francisco is a sanctuary city, he was soon released after prosecutors dropped that charge, even though there was a federal immigration request to detain him for at least two more days for deportation.
He now faces a charge of second-degree murder, which holds a penalty of 15 years to life in prison if he is convicted.
Steinle’s family tried to sue the city of San Francisco over her death, but a judge threw our their wrongful death lawsuit. The family argued in the lawsuit that the city and former sheriff should be held responsible for her murder.
