José Inés García Zárate said death of Kate Steinle was accidental in case that fueled debate over immigration and ‘sanctuary cities’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A jury on Thursday found a Mexican man not guilty of murder in the killing of a woman on a San Francisco pier that touched off a national immigration debate two years ago.

José Inés García Zárate had been deported five times and was wanted for a sixth deportation when Kate Steinle was fatally shot in the back while walking with her father on the pier.

García Zárate did not deny shooting Steinle but said it was an accident.

The shooting came in the middle of the presidential campaign in July 2015 and touched off a fierce debate over the country’s immigration policies. It spotlighted San Francisco’s “sanctuary city” policy, which limits local officials from cooperating with US immigration authorities.

Politics, however, did not come up in the month-long trial, which featured extensive testimony from ballistics experts. Defense attorneys argued that García Zárate was a hapless homeless man who killed Steinle in a freak accident. Prosecutors said he meant to shoot and kill her.

García Zárate was found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

The San Francisco deputy district attorney Diana Garcia said during the trial that she did not know why García Zárate fired the weapon, but he created a risk of death by bringing the firearm to the pier and twirling around on a chair for at least 20 minutes before he fired.

“He did kill someone. He took the life of a young, vibrant, beautiful, cherished woman by the name of Kate Steinle,” she said.

A defense attorney, Matt Gonzalez, said in his closing argument that he knew it was difficult to believe García Zárate found an object that turned out to be a weapon, which fired when he picked it up.

But he told jurors that García Zárate had no motivation to kill Steinle and that as awful as her death was, “nothing you do is going to fix that”.

The bullet ricocheted on the pier’s concrete walkway and fatally struck Steinle in the back.

The gun was stolen from the SUV of a US Bureau of Land Management ranger that was parked in San Francisco. The city has been plagued by an epidemic of car burglaries in recent years.

Before the shooting, García Zárate had finished a federal prison sentence for illegal re-entry into the United States and had been transferred to San Francisco’s jail in March 2015 to face a 20-year-old charge for selling marijuana.

The sheriff’s department released him a few days later after prosecutors dropped the marijuana charge, despite a request from federal immigration officials to detain him for deportation.

Donald Trump said during the presidential campaign that Steinle’s death was another reason the United States needed to build a wall on its southern border and tighten its immigration policies.

Trump signed an executive order to withhold funding from sanctuary cities, but a federal judge recently blocked it in a lawsuit from two California counties, San Francisco and Santa Clara. The administration has appealed.

After the verdict, the president tweeted:

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) A disgraceful verdict in the Kate Steinle case! No wonder the people of our Country are so angry with Illegal Immigration.

Another lawyer for the defense, Francisco Ugarte, said that the death of Kate Steinle was an “incomprehensible tragedy”, but the ruling was a vindication for immigrants.

Ugarte said the case was used “to foment hate” and used “to catapult a presidency along that philosophy of hate of others”.

He said the immigration status of García Zárate had no relevance to the case and the verdict was a correct reflection of what had transpired.