Kate Steinle case goes to the jury
It may well be a momentous Thanksgiving in San Francisco, where a case that grabbed the nation’s attention — and President Trump relied upon in arguing for his immigration enforcement agenda — is in the hands of a jury.
Vivian Ho for the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the jury began deliberating yesterday in the trial of the man accused of killing Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier, a case that thrust the city into a political firestorm over immigration enforcement.
The jurors must decide whether 45-year-old Jose Ines Garcia Zarate intentionally and willfully fired a gun on Pier 14, as prosecutors allege, or whether Steinle’s death on July 1, 2015, was simply a tragic accident, as Garcia Zarate’s attorneys contend. The jurors went home yesterday evening without reaching a verdict.
Steinle was killed as she walked with her father toward the end of the pier by a bullet that ricocheted off the concrete ground and flew 78 feet into her back.