Kate Steinle: Politically Motivated Jury?

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

We have created this culture, and now we have to live with it.  We have allowed the liberal left to rip up the Constitution, and move us away from the rule of law.  We now reside in a land governed by the rule of man, and truth, justice, and the American Way has been tossed out the window as a result.

Kate Steinle was a lovely young woman of only 32 who died in her father's arms after being murdered in 2015 in San Francisco by an illegal alien, Garcia Zarate, who had been released by a San Francisco jail despite a standing federal deportation order.  Deported five times before, the illegal alien's murder of Kate Steinle became a battle cry for those calling for the federal government to enforce immigration law, which, under President Barack Obama, had not been happening.  The Trump Campaign in the 2016 Presidential Election used the incident as a rallying cry, providing that the Steinle murder was proof positive that sanctuary city status kills Americans.

Garcia Zarate was found not guilty of her murder by a San Francisco jury.

On July 1, 2015, Kate Steinle was fatally struck in the back by a single bullet from a gun fired by Jose Ines Garcia Zarate as she walked on Pier 14 with her father to view the San Francisco Bay.  The illegal alien, while not found guilty of Steinle's murder, was convicted of a lesser charge of being a felon in possession of a gun, and he now awaits sentencing.  He will likely serve a little longer than a year, and perhaps up to three years in state prison, with credit for time served already.

Also, there is an outstanding U.S. Marshals Service warrant against him.  Sanctuary Status, or not, San Francisco is required to turn over illegal aliens to the federal government when they have a warrant.

Chances are, after serving his couple years in State jail, Zarate will be deported to Mexico where he will then, likely, plan his next illegal visit to the United States.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the jury decided the shooting was an accident, and the police's misguided police interrogation strategy created reasonable doubt.

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.

Guns don't just discharge.  The bullet needs to be in the chamber, and the trigger has to be squeezed.  Firearms don't leap into life in the hands of an inexperienced person and then suddenly go off.  And I am supposed to believe an individual with a history of drug crimes, who has illegally crossed the border a number of times, and associates with low-lifes on the streets has never seen a gun before?

This is what happens when you get a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals from San Francisco on a jury together.

At one point during a video from Garcia Zarate’s four-hour police interrogation, of which the jury got a full viewing of, Zarate's version of the story was all over the place, and at one 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 - an impossible scenario no matter how delicate the triggering mechanism may be.  He was lying, he is a liar, and it's not a surprise because he was willing to break immigration law to get here which requires a lot of lying.

The defense attorneys simply said that poor Zarate, a street urchin who has spent much of his adult life behind bars, was living on the street before the shooting, and only has a second-grade education, did not fully understand what the officers were asking him through an officer’s Spanish translation so that's why his story was all over the place.

Do you think if Zarate had instead been white, and voted for Trump, the verdict would have been the same?

The bullet, after all (we are being told by the leftists), hit the concrete ground and then ricocheted up to hit Steinle, so obviously it was an accident, right?

The firearm, according to the defense attorneys, could go off accidentally because it’s an elite handgun intended for law enforcement and military personnel who may need to fire it with split second notice, therefore, it has a hair trigger in single-action mode.  According to the defense, even among well-trained users, it has a lengthy history of accidental discharges.

The trigger still needs to have a finger on it.  If you put your finger on a trigger, you intend to fire it.  The gun was fired, with Zarate's finger on the trigger, and an innocent life was snuffed out as a result.  In addition to the shooting, the shooter, Zarate, has a history of criminal offenses, in addition to the fact that he is in this country illegally in the first place.

The leftists who have no experience with firearms continued to argue. . .

Most police agencies don’t make records public, but those that do reveal disturbing data. In a four-year period (2012-2015), the New York City Police Department reported 54 accidental firearm discharges, 10 involving SIG Sauers. Los Angeles County reported more than 80 accidental discharges between 2010 and 2015, five involving SIG Sauers. From 2005 to January 2011, the San Francisco Police Department reported 29 accidental discharges (a time when it issued SIG Sauers as its primary sidearm)… 

The SIG Sauer in Lopez Sanchez’s case has three features prone to accidents: 

1. No safety lever, making it perpetually ready for firing.
2. Manufacturer-issued trigger pull of 4.4 pounds of force (in single-action mode), which is among the lightest on the market.
3. An unlabeled decocking lever despite being essential to disengage the single-action mode. (The SIG Sauer safety manual urges “DO NOT THUMB THE HAMMER DOWN the consequences can be serious injury or death — only and ALWAYS use the decocking lever.”) 

New York City requires officers using SIG Sauers to disable its single-action function because the hair trigger is too dangerous. Those using the gun can only do so in double-action mode, which has a 10-pound trigger pull.

From the jury's point of view, what they saw was a defendant with zero connection to Steinle, a defendant with a history of drug crimes but no known violent crimes, a bullet that killed Steinle that hit the ground and then ricocheted upwards, and a surveillance video possibly showing another group of people disposing of the gun where Garcia Zarate said he found it.

The jury bought into the idea of Zarate having no experience with guns, especially a SIG Sauer which costs $1,000 or more (because everybody knows that criminals who want to get their hands on an expensive gun goes to the gun shop to purchase one at retail price, right?) that he could not afford as a homeless illegal immigrant created a situation where a purposeful murder was unlikely.

Reasonable doubt.

The prosecutors were under tremendous political pressure. People wanted Kate Steinle’s killer’s head on a platter, even before Donald Trump ever tweeted her name.

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. They spent a lot of time seeking to prove the gun that killed Steinle couldn’t have fired without a firm pull of the trigger.

If you are telling this to a bunch of San Francisco liberals who are convinced that guns kill people and can go off at any time just by looking at it wrong, because the liberal left politicians and media has been telling them this their entire lives, and they religiously believe it, a courtroom lesson is not going to convince them otherwise.

Zarate was presented as being a poor stranger in a strange land who was confused and intimidated by the police.  He's just a poor victim who naively picked up a gun and caused a terrible accident.

I can hear the jury now. "Aaaah, poor guy.  He doesn't even understand what is going on."

Perhaps the prosecutors should have pursued a manslaughter charge, instead.

Is it possible that Steinle’s killing was an accident?

Doesn't matter, to me.  The man broke the law to be here, broke the law with past drug charges, and now had a firearm illegally in his hands and someone is dead because he pulled the trigger.  He has a history of criminal behavior, so why was the jury so surprised that Zarate was on trial for criminal behavior?  There is no reasonable doubt.  The only doubt is regarding the intend.  Was he was some vicious, deranged, foaming at the mouth killer who purposely wanted Steinle dead?

Regardless, the young woman is still dead.

The jury deliberated for six days, and they found Zarate not guilty of murder.

The doubt, however, is not because of lawyers as much as it is because of leftist political figures and media personalities who have distorted this case for various reasons.  They have misrepresented the case, and the jury went in with an unhealthy misunderstanding of the law.

Besides, if they thought it was "accidental," why didn't the jury say to each other, "Hey, it was accidental, but a woman still died.  So, while it was not intentional murder, it was still manslaughter."

Because in the jury's eyes Zarate is a victim.  Our culture has made sure of the fact that they should see him that way.

A helpless victim who didn't know any better.

What did you think was going to happen?

The jury was full of San Francisco bleeding-heart Democrats who wanted to make sure their sanctuary city status was protected, and the death of Americans is worth it when it comes to protecting their anti-American narrative.  The verdict was what I expected.  I hoped I was wrong, but if you put a bunch of San Francisco liberals together, they are going to circle the wagons to protect their religiosity of leftism, first.  Death is a minor setback.  Criminality is a necessary means.  Their goal of collectivism must move forward. . . at any price.

The real criminal, in the eyes of the jury, is the United States.  The real criminal are those who support our immigration laws, and support Donald Trump as president.  If you or I were on that stand, we'd be in prison for life, or executed.  But, because the defendant was a victim of American imperialism, and those mean racist xenophobic republicans who want to build a wall, Zarate won.  He's the poster child, now, for what happens to poor Mexicans because of American expansionism. . . even though all of what they believe is a lie.

Not only is Zarate a poor victim in their eyes, but now that he's going to be in jail for a while, they are going to make sure he can vote.  The justice system, after all, is unfair in the eyes of the liberal left. You are guilty for thinking the worse of poor Zarate.  He's a victim, a product of a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Besides, Zarate's case may have just won all kinds of Hispanic voters for the Democrats, and in the end, that's what it is all about.  Votes, and perpetual power.  The Democrats need the victims, the uneducated, low-skilled, illiterate, illegal, non-English-speaking aliens as the final voting nail in the coffin of the Republicans.  With the Hispanic victim-class as voters, the Democrats believe they can't lose.  This win for Zarate is a chance to get more votes, to secure the future of the Democrat Party as the eventual sole party in the socialist democratic republic of the United States.

The death of Steinle is simply a small piece of collateral damage to these people.  The liberal left agenda is more important than her.  Life must be sacrificed.

That is what they do.

It’s a small price to pay for the greater good, or the rise of the collective, and for the change America has been waiting for.

Mainstream America, however, won't stand for this.  Steinle's blood will now be a rallying cry for the wall, and it will get built.  While the liberal left claims "This case was used as a means to foment hate, to foment division, to foment a program of mass deportation. It was used to catapult a presidency along that philosophy of hate of others," in reality it will now encourage Americans to demand that we secure the border, that we build the wall, and that we protect our citizens from the dangers that lurk along the other side.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary