After six days of deliberation, on November 30 a San
Francisco jury acquitted Mexican immigrant José Inez García Zárate of murder
and manslaughter charges in the July 2015 shooting death of Kate Steinle.
Prosecutors said García Zarate (AKA Juan Francisco López-Sánchez and Francisco
Sánchez) had purposely shot into a crowd of tourists, while the defense claimed
the bullet, which hit Steinle on a ricochet, was fired accidentally. The jurors
found the prosecution case open to reasonable doubt, although they convicted
the defendant of felonious possession of a firearm.
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| José Inez García Zárate. Photo: Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle |
President Trump and rightwing propagandists like Ann Coulter
had tirelessly exploited Steinle’s death as an example of violent crime by
undocumented immigrants against U.S. citizens—and as a justification for border
walls, mass deportations, and a cutoff of funds to so-called “sanctuary
cities.” Naturally, the president and his supporters tweeted furiously against
the jury’s decision.
Sloppy media coverage of the case has tended to provide
cover for Trump’s side. For example, there’s been almost no discussion of how a
revolver fell into the hands of a homeless immigrant in San Francisco. An agent
of the Bureau of Land Management had left the loaded weapon inside a car parked
in a high-crime part of the city—a violation of BLM policy and an
invitation to theft. It's not clear whether the BLM, an obscure federal agency, has disciplined the
careless officer—or explained why its employees would ever need to carry arms.
Meanwhile, media outlets repeat endlessly that García Zarate
had seven felony convictions and was deported five times. Sources rarely
mention that four of the convictions involved drug possession and the remaining
convictions were for illegal re-entry of the U.S. None of the convictions were for
violent crimes, although Trump and others dishonestly called the immigrant
violent. García Zarate seems to be a mentally disturbed person with a drug
problem; at one point a federal court recommended sending him to a medical
facility. And if anything, his record of deportations should make people
question the wisdom of shipping immigrants out of the country as a way to stop
crime. They can come back, and no amount of border security guarantees that
they won’t. Wouldn’t it have been better to keep García Zarate here and try to
deal with his drug issues?
Actually, what would happen if we provided drug addicts
treatment instead of imprisonment, tried to rehabilitate foreign-born convicts
instead of deporting them, and limited the number of irresponsible government
employees roaming the streets heavily armed? Probably Kate Steinle would be
alive today, along with many others, including a large number of the more
than 59,000 who died of opioid overdoses last year.—TPOI editor
Kate Steinle trial: Garcia Zarate acquitted in San Francisco
pier killing
By Vivian Ho, San Francisco Chronicle
November 30, 2017
A jury handed a stunning acquittal on murder and
manslaughter charges to a homeless undocumented immigrant whose arrest in the
killing of Kate Steinle on a San Francisco Bay pier intensified a national
debate over sanctuary laws.
In returning its verdict Thursday afternoon on the sixth day
of deliberations, the Superior Court jury also pronounced Jose Ines Garcia
Zarate not guilty of assault with a firearm, finding credence in defense
attorneys’ argument that the shot that ricocheted off the concrete ground
before piercing Steinle’s heart was an accident, with the gun discharging after
the defendant stumbled upon it on the waterfront on July 1, 2015.[…]
Read the full article:
Trump Is Outraged an Undocumented Immigrant Just Got
Acquitted of Murder
The president called the verdict "disgraceful"
after making Kate Steinle's killing a centerpiece of his border wall proposal.
By Drew Schwartz, Vice
December 1, 2017
A murder case that helped fuel Donald Trump's call for a
border wall ended in an acquittal on Thursday when a San Francisco jury found
undocumented immigrant Jose Ines Garcia Zarate not guilty in the shooting death
of 32-year-old Kate Steinle, the Washington Post reports.[…]
Read the full article:
Federal agent’s loaded gun, left
unsecured in a car, killed Kate Steinle
So why is all the attention on
an immigrant who was at the end of an unfortunate chain of events?
By Matt Gonzalez, 48 Hills
(San Francisco)
July 21, 2017
Kate Steinle was killed two years
ago in San Francisco after a gun stolen from a car was discharged on Pier 14, a
popular tourist attraction. Homeless immigrant Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez
handled a discarded bundle that contained the firearm, resulting in the
unintentional shooting. A single bullet ricocheted off the ground, travelling
100 feet before striking Steinle.[…]
Read the full article:
The Scapegoating of Sanctuary Cities
San Francisco has become an anti-immigration punching bag
in the wake of a grisly killing. But there’s little evidence that the city’s
sanctuary law was to blame.
By Daniel Denvir, CityLab
July 9, 2015
An undocumented immigrant named Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez
allegedly shot and killed Kathryn Steinle on San Francisco's Embarcadero last
Wednesday. And it turns out that the city's Sheriff's Department had released
Lopez-Sanchez earlier this year after refusing an Immigration and Customs
Enforcement request to detain him—all to comply with a city policy protecting
everyday undocumented immigrants from deportation.[...]
Read the full article:
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