KATE’S LAW

first published in the San Francisco Chronicle, July 5, 2017

Lawyers for Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, Matt Gonzalez & Francisco Ugarte, leave Department 9 of the San Francisco Superior Court after Garcia Zarate’s arraignment, July 7, 2015. Photo by Justin Sullivan for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Proposed Kate’s Law would not have saved Kate Steinle

By Matt Gonzalez

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill last week called “Kate’s Law” (HR3004). The bill is named for Kate Steinle, the young woman whose unfortunate death in San Francisco in 2015 has been exploited as a recurrent shibboleth in efforts across the nation to instigate anti-immigrant fervor.

Were it in effect in 2015 however, nothing in this proposed eponymous law — which increases maximum sentences for immigrants who re-enter the country illegally after a deportation — would have prevented Steinle’s death. Her death was the result of systemic defects and individual errors that the bill does not address. What the law will do is fill our already overcrowded prisons with nonviolent immigrants.

The bill would do two things:

Increase the maximum sentence for previously deported people who re-enter the U.S. from two years to 10, and increase the maximum sentences for people who re-enter after being convicted of certain criminal offenses — including for immigration offenses — to up to 25 years.

These law changes have nothing to do with the circumstances preceding Steinle’s death. Had the bill been law in 2015, it would have had no effect on Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, the man accused of causing her death. That’s because Garcia Zarate already faced a 20-year-prison sentence each time he entered the country based on a minor narcotics conviction from 1993 in the state of Washington — an offense that aggravates any illegal entry he committed. (8 U.S. Code §1326).

The facts of this case are largely unknown to the public. Garcia Zarate didn’t travel to San Francisco voluntarily: He was transferred here by federal authorities, because San Francisco maintained a 20-year-old warrant in a marijuana offense. Garcia Zarate then appeared in San Francisco Superior Court, where his case was promptly and predictably dismissed and he was released. Alone, unemployed, in a city he did not want to be in, Garcia Zarate wandered the streets. In statements to ABC-7 news (while incarcerated), Garcia Zarate described picking up an object wrapped in a t-shirt that discharged while he handled it. What is uncontroverted: He did not know the victim; she was 100 feet away from him when shot, and the single bullet ricocheted off the concrete pier near where Garcia Zarate was seated. The Sig Sauer .40 caliber automatic pistol, known for having a hair trigger, is documented in hundreds of accidental discharges, even when handled by trained law enforcement.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate (also known as Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez)

The firearm should never have been on the streets. The Bureau of Land Management official who left his loaded weapon unsecured in a car that was burglarized has never accounted for his negligence in starting the chain of events that resulted in Steinle’s death.

The frenzy surrounding the House’s passage of this law — and the repeated false assertions that being tougher on immigrants would have averted this tragedy — now threatens Garcia Zarate’s chances of a fair trial. Yet, none of the tragic events that led to Steinle’s death would have been affected by Kate’s Law. It wouldn’t have prevented Garcia Zarate’s transfer to San Francisco or subsequent release, nor prevented the negligence and theft that placed a firearm in his path.

For those who want to whip up fear of immigrants, it is politically expedient to cast Garcia Zarate as dangerous. But the truth is he has never previously been charged with a crime of violence.  He is a simple man with a second-grade education who has survived many hardships. He came to the U.S. repeatedly because extreme poverty is the norm in many parts of Mexico. He risked going to jail so that he could perform a menial job that could feed him. Each time, he came to the U.S. because American employers openly encourage illegal immigration to fill the jobs U.S. citizens don’t want.

Passing Kate’s Law as a response to this tragedy is the legal equivalent of invading Iraq in response to 911—a preying upon emotions to further a pre-existing agenda. It is a cynical anti-immigrant effort unrelated to Steinle’s death that in no way honors her memory.

Detail of San Francisco Chronicle, page A8, July 5, 2017.

Matt Gonzalez is one of the attorneys representing Jose Ines Garcia Zarate whose trial is scheduled to begin later this month. He is the chief attorney in the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.