This Is Justice?

Kathryn Steinle was a 32 year old woman who was shot on July 1, 2015, while out on a stroll with her father on Pier 14 in San Francisco’s Embarcadero district. She died in her father’s arms. The shooter, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, was a homeless, undocumented Mexican immigrant who had been deported from the U.S. five times and had illegally re-entered the country five times. Garcia Zarate said the shooting was an accident. Prosecutors were unable to prove it was not an accident, so a jury found him not guilty of murder or manslaughter. (The jury was not told that he had seven previous felony convictions.)

The gun had been stolen from a federal Bureau of Land Management ranger a week earlier. Garcia Zarate claimed he found the weapon under a chair on the pier and it went off when he picked it up.

Okay, say he’s telling the truth. Say the woman’s death was an accident.

I have a young cousin who sits in prison now because he killed a woman. He didn’t kill her with a gun, he killed her with a car. He was speeding and driving under the influence when he drove into her car. It was an accident. He clearly didn’t intend to kill anyone by driving into them. But after a trial he received a seven year prison sentence. Actions have consequences. He killed a person and now he suffers the consequences.

But Garcia Zarate killed a person, too, and where are his consequences?

After a jury set Garcia Zarate free, the Department of Justice announced it might file charges against him. Somehow this homeless seven-time felon found attorneys and is now suing the federal government for filing ‘vindictive and unfair’ charges against him. This is justice?

I hope somewhere down the line his case encounters common sense.