Five-Time Deported Illegal Alien Acquitted In Murder Of Kate Steinle

A homeless man whose undocumented immigration status intensified a national debate over the ethics of sanctuary laws was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges Thursday in the shooting of Kate Steinle as she strolled with her father on Pier 14 to take in a view of San Francisco Bay.

In returning its verdict on the sixth day of deliberations, the San Francisco Superior Court jury also found Jose Ines Garcia Zarate not guilty of assault with a firearm, apparently seeing credence in defense attorneys’ argument that the shot that ricocheted off the concrete ground was an accident, with the gun discharging after the defendant stumbled upon it on the waterfront.

The panel convicted Garcia Zarate, 45, of a single lesser charge of being a felon in possession of a gun. The charge carries possible sentences of 16 months, two years or three years in state prison. Garcia Zarate will be sentenced at a later date.

Jurors exited the city’s Hall of Justice quickly and declined to discuss their deliberations. “If I’m going to speak to anybody, I’m not going to do it today,” said one man, who declined to give his name. “I have to collect my thoughts.”

Garcia Zarate, a Mexican citizen who was released from San Francisco jail before the killing despite a federal request that he be held for his sixth deportation, was charged from the beginning with murder, and prosecutors gave the jury the option of convicting him of first-degree murder, second-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter.

Steinle, 32, had been walking with her arm around her father when she was struck in the back by a single bullet on July 1, 2015. The round had skipped off the concrete ground after being fired from a pistol that had been stolen, four days earlier, from the nearby parked car of a federal ranger.

San Francisco prosecutors told the jury that Garcia Zarate intentionally brought the gun to the pier that day with the intent of doing harm, aimed the gun toward Steinle and pulled the trigger. Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia spent much of the trial seeking to prove the gun that killed Steinle couldn’t have fired without a firm pull of the trigger, while establishing that Garcia Zarate tossed the weapon into the bay before fleeing the scene — an implication of his guilt, she said.

Defense lawyers said the shooting was an accident that happened when Garcia Zarate, who had a history of drug crimes but no record of violence, found the gun wrapped in a T-shirt or cloth under his seat on the pier just seconds before it discharged in his hands. Matt Gonzalez of the public defender’s office said his client had never handled a gun and was scared by the noise, prompting him to fling the weapon into the bay, where a diver fished it out a day later.

During the trial, jurors watched video from Garcia Zarate’s four-hour police interrogation, in which he offered varying statements about his actions on the pier. At one point he said he had aimed at a “sea animal,” and at another point, he said the gun had been under a rag that lay on the ground near the waterfront, and that it fired when he stepped on it.

Gonzalez said it was clear in the video that Garcia Zarate — who has spent much of his adult life behind bars, was living on the street before the shooting, and has a second-grade education — did not fully understand what the officers were asking him through an officer’s Spanish translation.