It would not surprise me, at all, if the defense expert is correct; and, yes, that would change the nature of the crime– from a deliberate homicide, “with malice aforethought,” to an accidental homicide, a decidedly lesser criminal offense.

Kate Steinle is still dead, either way, and an illegal act– the firing of an illegal weapon in public– by an illegal alien, who had been deported five times, yet who kept illegally reentering the United States, was the direct cause of her death.

The prosecutor’s claim that the shooting was deliberate is one thing; whether he targeted anyone at all, let alone Kate Steinle herself, is quite another. If the bullet did, in fact, ricochet from the pavement to hit Kate Steinle, it will be damn near impossible to prove that she was personally targeted; and, since the defendant did not know her from Eve, it is implausible that he actually did target her, from amongst a milling crowd of total strangers. A deliberate-but-motiveless killing, in that time and place, always did seem like an implausible theory of the case.

The most salient issue, in determining the degree of his legal (as well as his moral) culpability in her death, is whether he fired the deadly bullet intentionally, albeit into the pavement, or if he accidentally discharged the gun, while handling it recklessly. If the former, than he is apparently akin to the man who now has been charged in the death of the nine-year-old girl in Ferguson, Missouri, by firing into her house, where she was reportedly shot and killed while doing her homework, on a bed (unless, of course, he was aiming at someone else in the house, or thought that she was that someone else, in which case his merely having bad aim or bad eyesight, while nonetheless actually attempting to kill someone, without either a legal justification or a legally recognizable excuse, would constitute murder in the first or second degree, depending upon the state’s criminal statute– as would be the case with this illegal alien, if he had been attempting to kill someone else, but accidentally killed Kate Steinle, either by his bad aim or by mistaking her for the person that he did want to kill).

The bottom line, as a matter of criminal law, is that the prosecutor ought to charge him with what she honestly believes, as a professional prosecutor, she is able to prove in court, beyond a reasonable doubt; she should not charge him with anything more, in hopes that he will thereby be forced to plead to what he, in fact, actually was guilty of, to avoid the possibility of his being convicted of something even greater. Unfortunately, overcharging, with just such hopes, seems to have basically become standard operating procedure for many, if not indeed most, American prosecutors, these days.

The bottom line, as a matter of public policy, is that this killer, whatever his criminal or moral culpability actually is, should not have been allowed to roam free, in virtual security, due to San Francisco’s self-selected status as a so-called “sanctuary city” for illegal aliens, including violent offenders known to the local authorities. Kate Steinle well may have been killed accidentally; the public policy that allowed for her death, however, was no accident, at all: it was, and is, an utter abomination!

They better not let him get away by overcharging him. This is an open-and-shut case of manslaughter at least.

So he spends ten years in prison then is returned to Mexico instead of doing the hot-squat dance or spending twenty years in jail. I don’t like it but I can live with it.

His alibi has a lack of precision; he initially said he was shooting at seals. My bet is he deliberately and knowingly fired the gun in her general direction because she was an attractive women who wasn’t paying any attention to him and he wanted to awe her with a bullet going past. Possible he deliberately ricocheted the bullet and miscalculated, possibly the bullet took an extra ricochet. But he is not a child with a BB gun and he knew that shot could kill. In my book if you do something that risky to someone and it ends in their death you have committed murder.

I agree with Ron that it’s important for us to stick to the facts and the evidence.

Our biggest criticism of the news media is that they ignore the facts and falsify evidence in order to support “the narrative” of evil white American straight cis-males victimizing everyone else.

Let’s not start lying, too. Facts are facts.

In this case, the facts seem not to fit our “narrative,” but unlike our adversaries, we adjust our narrative to fit the facts instead of doing the opposite.

Ron,

As for perfectly aiming his shot so that it ricocheted off the sidewalk and then hit his intended victim at that distance, I think that would be beyond the skills of even an Olympic Gold Medalist

An ex-con carries a gun tucked in and barrel down, not sticking out like a sore thumb The angle for a ricochet is unlikely. Not impossible but very, very unlikely.

Sorry, that I certainty I had probably was excessive. But to be clear, I did not and still do not think he was trying to hit her, I think he was trying to shock her when he fired. In my opinion he may have aimed wide and got an accidental ricochet (at an oblique angle, a ricochet off the sea is not impossible). Whether or not he deliberately fired at whatever the ricochet was off, the bullet went in a direction he never intended. But he deliberately leveled the gun and pulled the trigger, of that I have no doubt.

The place where the killing happened is somewhere people, often couples, go for a pleasant walk in the breeze. He went there for some reason, it’s not somewhere you wander. The man who killed Adrienne Shelly came up with a good story too. Adrienne’s liberal blogger husband knew it was murder, though he still isn’t anti immigrant.

Ron, why are you defending a man who was deported five times, yet came back anyway and killed Kate? Had he stayed in Mexico where he belongs, a young woman would be alive today.

please excuse o/t

Does Unz Review have rules/customs similar to DKos?

https://www.unz.com/tsaker/europe-in-free-fall/#comment-1096110

It’s good to know someone remembers why we are on this comment thread and not another.

My bet is he deliberately and knowingly fired the gun in her general direction because she was an attractive women who wasn’t paying any attention to him and he wanted to awe her with a bullet going past.

Apparently she was with her father. Men generally do things in public to catch the attention of women who are alone, not chaperoned.

He claims he found the gun while picking through trash cans,

Where did you get that?

Because CNN says:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/08/us/san-francisco-killing/

Quote:

Kate Steinle, 32, died after being shot July 1 at a San Francisco pier.
Lopez-Sanchez told CNN affiliate KGO-TV that he fired the weapon, but it was an accident. He said he’d found the gun wrapped inside a T-shirt before it accidentally went off.

and SFGate says it was *sleeping pills he found in the garbage.* The gun, he ostensibly found in a T-shirt and when he picked it up, it went off 3 times.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/S-F-pier-killing-suspect-accused-of-new-gun-6410858.php

Quote: Police said the gun, a .40-caliber pistol, had been stolen from a federal agent in a car burglary in San Francisco four days prior to the shooting. In a jailhouse interview with KGO-TV, Lopez-Sanchez said the gun went off after he found it wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench — and after he took sleeping pills he found in a trash can.

And Ron says:

also very minor drug offense

I found a complete list of his arrest records. Here are some excerpts:

5/12/1993 – Sanchez convicted by a Washington state criminal court of felony manufacturing narcotics – sentenced to nine months in jail.

6/10/1994 – The former Immigration and Naturalization Service arrested Sanchez and placed him in removal proceedings as an alien who’s been convicted of a controlled substance violation and an aggravated felony

7/22/1997 – Sanchez arrested by Arizona law enforcement authorities for assault and threatening/intimidating. The final disposition of this arrest is unknown.

3/26/2015 – Sanchez released from prison custody and turned over to the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Office to an active criminal warrant for felony sale/furnishing marijuana. Bureau of Prisons transferred him directly to county jail upon his release.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Francisco-Sanchez-Pier-14-Heroin-Deportation-Immigration-Debate-Steinle-312139981.html#data

So, yeah, a real harmless dude: A narcotics manufacturer, aggravated felony, drug Dealer.

You still claiming he’s some kind of confused but not intentionally violent homeless guy who “happened” to find a gun and “carelessly” wandered around with it until it went off and killed a woman?

Nah. He’s an illegal alien scofflaw who’s NOT SUPPOSED to be here, a drug manufacturer and dealer who got hold of a weapon (maybe he stole it from the federal agent it belonged to?) who’s NOT ALLOWED to have a weapon since he’s a felon, and fired it. Now a lovely young woman is dead.

http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2015/07/07/sweet-mother-of-hades-the-gun-used-by-illegal-in-san-francisco-belonged-to-a-federal-agent/

This is also interesting; makes it clear Sanchez was lying when he said the gun “accidently” went off.
http://news.yahoo.com/fatal-shot-san-francisco-pier-shooting-ricochet-082728408.html

Quote:

San Francisco Police ballistics expert Andy Smith testified that the gun was in good, working condition and that the weapon probably didn’t malfunction.

“Pulling the trigger, however that trigger was pulled, was the only way for that gun to discharge,” Smith said. “This gun could not just be sitting on a table and all of a sudden, due to some malfunction, go off.”

Gonzalez suggested that his client “mishandled” the gun, which needs about five pounds of pressure to pull the trigger and successfully fire.

–Oh, and one more thing, the link to Sanchez’ record shows he does not just “caught a few times smoking marijuana” but HEROIN.

I see they have you brainwashed. Deportation of criminal illegal aliens is a fiction:

In 2013 the Obama administration released 36,007 criminal immigrants who had nearly 88,000 convictions. Those convictions included 193 homicide convictions, 426 sexual assault convictions, 303 kidnapping convictions, and 1,075 aggravated assault convictions.

In 2014 the administration released another 30,558 criminal immigrants, who had a total of 79,059 convictions.

The convictions included in the 2014 releases included: 86 homicide convictions, 186 kidnapping convictions, 373 sexual assault convictions, 449 commercialized sexual offenses, 1,194 battery convictions, 1,346 domestic violence convictions, and 13,636 DUIs.

http://cis.org/ICE-Document-Details-36000-Criminal-Aliens-Release-in-2013
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/07/more-than-347000-convicted-criminal-immigrants-at-large-in-u-s/

I must say that the anti-immigrant fanatics

I agree his idea is nutty.

However, we need a little fanaticism if the US as a majority white country is to be preserved — as many of us think it should be. Perhaps even you can understand that.

IANAL but there is a provision in the laws of many states that a homicide in the commission of a felony whether intentional or not is murder. Thus discharging a firearm in the course of robbing a convenience store and killing a woman sitting in her apartment upstairs or a drive by shooting and hitting the ‘wrong’ person walking down the street= murder!

This guy was committing a felony by being a convicted felon in possession of a handgun, possibly burglary and grand theft because I don’t for a minute believe he found a Sig Sauer handgun under a park bench wrapped in a tee-shirt. In California the negligent discharge of a firearm can be prosecuted either as misdemeanor or a felony. In this case it almost certainly would be a felony. It would also be a qualifying offense under California’s ‘Three Strikes” law.

We wouldn’t have any “anti-immigrant fanatics” if immigration policy in this country had not been ceded to “pro-immigrant fanatics”…. without any of them so much as winning an election, let alone putting said policy on a ballot box for the people to vote yea or nay on.

He will not be sentenced under TSL:

Proposition 36 (2012)
Proposition 36, a Change in the “Three Strikes Law” Initiative, was on the November 6, 2012 ballot as an initiated state statute, where it was approved.
Proposition 36:
Revises the three strikes law to impose life sentence only when the new felony conviction is “serious or violent”.
Authorizes re-sentencing for offenders currently serving life sentences if their third strike conviction was not serious or violent and if the judge determines that the re-sentence does not pose unreasonable risk to public safety.
Continues to impose a life sentence penalty if the third strike conviction was for “certain non-serious, non-violent sex or drug offenses or involved firearm possession”.
Maintains the life sentence penalty for felons with “non-serious, non-violent third strike if prior convictions were for rape, murder, or child molestation.”

The defense strategy is to convince the sentencing judge that it was an accidental discharge which killed a woman which is just not that serious.

Your honor, our client will except voluntary deportation so he can return to San Fran as a hero and an example of our love for criminal illegal aliens.

The bullet that killed Kate Steinle on Pier 14 last month as she walked with her father was fired accidentally, a ballistics expert testified Thursday on behalf of the man charged with her murder.
“The gun was pointed at the ground,” James Norris, the former head of the San Francisco Police crime lab, said repeatedly on the stand Thursday during the preliminary hearing of Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican national and five-time deportee who has ignited a national debate on illegal immigration and drawn the ire of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

http://www.fox10tv.com/story/29910987/kate-steinle-case-defense-claims-the-gun-fired-accidentally

Francisco Lopez Sanchez is accused of killing 32-year-old Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier last month. Today, Public Defender Chief Attorney Matt Gonzalez called his only witness, Jim Norris, former head of the San Francisco police crime lab, to the stand. Gonzalez believes the gun Sanchez is accused of firing accidentally discharged in his hand.

http://www.times-standard.com/general-news/20150826/kate-steinle-killing-stolen-gun-allegedly-used-in-slaying-was-fired-once-expert-says

San Francisco Police criminologist Andy Smith said the weapon was a .40 caliber automatic pistol stolen from a U.S bureau of land management wildlands ranger. Smith testified it is his finding that the gun fired the bullet that killed Steinle. It had ricocheted off a “very hard surface” like steel or concrete. Steinle was shot once in the back while walking on Pier 14 with her father on July 1.

http://sfbay.ca/2015/08/26/expert-deadly-bullet-ricocheted-off-pier-14/ identifies it as a P239. “The P239® was developed in response to demands from law enforcement and federal agents for a compact back-up pistol ideal for off duty concealed carry”. OK, he could have had it tucked in or in a pocket without too much trouble. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdq-YBc-zFY
Video LinkIt’s not exactly a hair trigger as defence expert Norris said, if you cock it and ease the hammer down it needs at least 4lb of pressure to fire.

It’s only at the stage of an arraignment, so maybe I was out of line. Nonetheless, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez seems to be more recalcitrant than confused and decrepit. For example he has crossed the border quite a few times, which is not all that simple, and not long after being released from city jail he by his own account decided to carry a gun, which could have cost him some serious time if (or rather when) police caught him with it. That’s extreme nativity and confusion or defiant machismo. My understanding is that if you do something illegal that you know might seriously injure someone, and they die of it, in law you may be found guilty of murder, even though in practice it is very difficult to prove such a case beyond reasonable doubt. A trial for murder is already looking shaky although the top of this forum story includes the information that a police officer testified at the hearing “Lopez-Sanchez admitted firing the gun”.

If he took the gun out it is difficult to see what was doing other than deliberately firing. His defense is still unclear on that point but he certainly must argue the gun was never deliberately aimed anywhere near the victim. In the 100 feet between where he was standing and the victim, there must be a mark on the pier where the bullet ricocheted. On his clothing there may be a hole and other damage , there might be some matching injuries on his skin. His defence, which is citing the guns hair trigger, can use forensic traces to support a contention that the gun went off while he moved in his pocket say, which would be a powerful pointer to a genuine accident. This is no railroading of a friendless borderline incompetent migrant. He seems to have had a bit of conscience initially, now he is saying the streets of SF were paved with valuable illegal items he just picked up.

However, all we have so far is his exculpatory assertions. Unsupported statements by the accused only carry weight if they are assertions against the accused’s own interests. Contra his defence’s expert witness, it is a very big jump we and a court are not entitled to make from knowing there was a ricochet of the fatal bullet before it killed the victim, to inferring an accident and that Lopez did not fire at the woman with murderous or other criminal intent. Obviously the bullet having ricocheted proves the gun at the instant of firing was not objectively lined up directly at the victim. I suppose that will make it in practice hard for him to be convicted of anything but involuntary manslaughter. The press quoted the defence consultant testimony to indicate that Lopez couldn’t have been trying to kill the victim with a ricocheting bullet, but that is not the issue, unless and until it is established how the gun went off. The shot that killed her has not been shown to have been an accidental discharge so the bullet killing her by a ricochet does not decide the issue or whether he committed murder.

Allow me to elucidate, in the film American Sniper the archenemy (ex Olympic) marksman firing from 1000 yards hits a SEAL with a bullet that misses the intended target of his head, but ricochets into his face. We don’t know what the bullet that killed this poor young woman ricocheted off, it could have been something near her or just out of line with her from the shooter’s perspective . With average skill, a shot with a pistol at a human from 30 yards away would not usually result in a direct hit. Hence the fatal ricochet could have been off the pier guard rail just feet from her, having resulted from a determined effort to shoot right at her, or close enough to terrify her (which is what I suspect happened). He may have deliberately tried to scare her by firing at the ground and killed her unintentionally, but that is still murder.

Lopez is not a child, the fact he likes funny cigarettes and living in the US doesn’t make him 12 year old Adlai Stevenson, but young Stevenson aimed and pulled the trigger when he shot 16 year old Ruth Merwin in the head and killed her. The gun didn’t just go off.

young Stevenson aimed and pulled the trigger when he shot 16 year old Ruth Merwin

Even if your claim is true (no idea, really), re this specific case, exactly how is it relevant?

Stevenson was showing off in front of a girl who was out of his league. Lopez was doing something similar IMO. Lopez isn’t an elite WASP, but that does not make him a child.

I’m not sure how Sean’s (admittedly odd) fantasy about the killer’s motives parses to “anti-immigrant.” Seems his point was more about illegal immigrants systematically being given license by municipalities to break the law. Not immigration policy, or immigrants, in general.

Seems discussion of these points would advance more effectively if everyone stayed on topic and accurate.

Lopez-Sanchez was our problem up here in the PNW before he went south to enrich SF. My brief searches indicate he operated under 30 aliases and had quite a record of felony narcotics manufacturing (probably meth), felony and misdemeanor possession (including heroin), felony re-entry, and more.

The story that he was only “smoked marijuana or something like that” was his defense attorney’s spin designed to stick in the mind, like hands up don’t shoot or I can’t breathe. He was in fact brought back to SF on legal proceedings related to a $20-pot bust. But his criminal career is much more extensive, and SF’s LE concerns about him more substantive.

His attorney, btw, is Matt Gonzalez; his career is surely of note as regards this case and his spin of it. He and Kamala Harris are two SF politicoes who have made lucrative political careers out of vilifying whites and elevating illegal immigrants to the status of demigods.

If you dig a little deeper, I think you’ll find a bunch of people in Sacto, DC, City Hall, and Telegraph Hill whose real agenda is unseating Sheriff Mirkarimi. Start with TomKat and others.

There are widespread movements to delegitimate legal action against individuals who show every sign of not being able to live in a structured, civilized society. We have seen this elsewhere, ranging from attacks on Terry stops and “broken windows policing” to outright demands that blacks not be arrested for property destruction, theft, assault, and other crimes (on the theory what “white law don’t apply.”

What strikes me the most about Ron’s comment in that same vein: that it seems more focused on excusing the killer’s lifetime of actions that led up to the erasure of a woman’s life.

Finally, Ron, guns don’t “just go off.” Those who handle guns regularly and responsibly do not use the term “accident” to describe a negligent or intentionally lawless discharge. This too is the fantasy of an anti-gun mentality like Gonzalez’s.

Suffice it to say, this is why many of us left SF. The city’s proudly leftist leadership is proudly disdainful of those of us who prefer the company of orderly people who can life peaceably.

the anti-immigrant nuts

So now the fanatics have morphed into nuts.

Just more infantile ad hominem from Unz, who invariably targets only low hanging fruit type comments. Pathetic.

“‘I’m not sure how Sean’s (admittedly odd) fantasy about the killer’s motives parses to “anti-immigrant.” It wasn’t an old man he killed. She was a young attractive woman. These jailbird types like to think they are hell on wheels, wolves among sheep, and persons of consequence who must by accorded respect. A Mexican police interrogation would have got a bit more out of him, to the extent he understands why he did it, but resentment and frustration is my bet.

Whether the shot was deliberate is precisely on topic, where I have been throughout. Look at the title of the news article under discussion.

http://sfist.com/2015/07/06/video_wandering_man_says_he_took_sl.php
Sanchez said he found a gun wrapped in a t shirt near the pier and he took it onto the pier to shoot at seals but it went off.

He seems to have told a lie about the gun going off for no reason three times since he found it. It only had been fired once. He got rid of the gun immediately by throwing it off the pier. All in all he seems rather collected and rational, if you look at his actions rather than listen to him. However he knew he would not be getting the treatment Mexican police would have dished out. I don’t suppose Mexican prisons are pleasant places for someone who does things like that, but he is in the US.

‘Mexican police in ‘torture’ class?’

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2008/07/mexican-police.html

Mexican police interrogations
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/02/mexico-torture-43-student_n_6594154.html

I’m not sure how Sean’s (admittedly odd) fantasy about the killer’s motives parses to “anti-immigrant.”…What strikes me the most about Ron’s comment in that same vein: that it seems more focused on excusing the killer’s lifetime of actions that led up to the erasure of a woman’s life.

Hey! Stop making sense — you’ll just confuse Unz, who prefers to keep the narrative simple(-minded) — people who comment here are “anti-immigrant fanatics” or “anti-immigrant nuts” — how that’s different from boilerplate MSM rhetoric, I can’t tell you — but I’ll assume it is somehow different — after all, the Unz site is “An Alternative Media Selection”.

As for perfectly aiming his shot so that it ricocheted off the sidewalk and then hit his intended victim at that distance, I think that would be beyond the skills of even an Olympic Gold Medalist.

The claim was that he shot in her general direction to impress an attractive woman with the manly act of discharging a firearm. As noted, he probably didn’t intend to kill her.

In an abjectly pathetic way, it was an “act of love”, which pretty much sums up our immigration results.

Thank you for the excellent summation of the facts.

If Americans really cared about this, they would boycott the Sanctimonious City, whose scumbag mayor has had the balls to call for boycotts against places where stuff happens that he doesn’t like.

Well said.

Firing a gun in an outdoor public place, among a large milling crowd of strangers, strikes me as a pathologically odd way to impress a total stranger, who is strolling by, some distance away, with her father and a friend!?! Regardless, since the young woman was shot in the back, how was she supposed to be impressed by the shooter, even if she had realized, somehow, that a shot had been fired in her general direction? Did the shooter stand there, holding onto the smoking gun, where any stranger might tackle him, or simply get a good, long look, to give a description of the suspect to the police, while the shooter waited to see if the strange girl, with father and friend in tow, were going to be impressed enough to turn around, walk back, and chat him up?!? As someone trained in both Law and Personality & Social Psychology (M.S.), this does not strike me as an argument that either a prosecutor or an expert witness is going to want to trot out in court….

You’re not related to that Bryce Williams fellow who shot those news reporters by any chance?…

You’re a scumbag Unz.

Ron you should know (as I doubt if you’ve had the time to go through the threads), the genesis of this complaint. (I am sorry that is was brought up here, completely off topic)

Here is a summary

https://www.unz.com/tsaker/europe-in-free-fall/#comment-1095855

I think, as far as internet wars go, a commenter “threatening” to expose another’s identity etc., is, in the scheme of things, guilty of a much lesser offence than his target, who, on more than one occasion, threatened ‘POP’ing people off, named public persons, who he says ‘require brass wires’ to be hung from lampposts (regardless of what one thinks of those persons, calling for their murder, I think crosses the line).

Ban me if you wish, but if you go through the complainers threads, it should be amply evident that he posts lengthy entries, completely off topic, almost exclusively written to purport a total benevolence of the Nazi regime, in just about any of the essays he comments on. I have replied to him in an objective manner, whenever I was able to (not always of course), but his entries have the effect of truly polluting on-topic discussion. ( https://www.unz.com/article/playing-the-long-game-on-iran/#comment-1091777 )

I had to respond here, as the complaint was filed and answered here as well.

The owner of this site is a bit a wacky himself- “anti immigrant fanatics who HANG OUT here” ??

Has he not read the people that have blogs here? He seem surprised that people are even anti-immigration (I am one of those people) yet he runs the superb Steve Sailer. Weird comment.

Nope not brainwashed. I used to hand these guys over to INS. Literally. Sometimes they were back here before my chief had signed off on my report.

There is no real deportation. Only a vacation home.

Sorry meant to reply here. Anyway I know how it works. I know how they get benefits I know how they get registered to vote. In my state you are required to ask them every time they apply for benefits. Every. Single. Time. Even if you know they are criminal invaders.

I know how they avoid many, many warrant arrest as every single criminal invader I have arrested has had multiple IDs with multiple names and dates of birth. Every. Single. One. This guy is a career criminal with multiple felony assaults to his name. He was bound to kill someone some time but criminal invaders are like that.

No kidding. I guess he figures he owns the site so he can forget about common courtesy. Or facts, or honesty. He’s picked a hill and he’s going to defend it no matter how many times it turns out to be a big pile of fertilizer.

Ron Unz, I pointed out that you mis-characterized Sean’s description of the shooting in a crass way.

South of the border is well known for firing guns in celebration or to draw attention.

When someone “finds” a gun, I believe the civilized thing is to turn it over to the authorities. That someone sticks it in his pants and then manages to shoot an attractive woman speaks to some volition.

strikes me as a pathologically odd way to impress a total stranger

Maybe that’s it.

D.K., my understanding is that it wasn’t a milling crowd; it was passersby. It is plausible enough that he was pumped up by being in possession of a gun and wanted to get a thrill from the reaction of letting people know he was armed and dangerous. He is a guy who craves a thrill. He wasn’t looking to start a conversation or a relationship. When one is a bit “wired”, one tends to focus on something that stands out; often an attractive woman or someone in garish clothes.

Your investment in defending this guy seems a little beyond the pale.

Well, if an erstwhile attorney who believes that the state needs to be able to prove each and every element of the crimes it alleges, beyond a reasonable doubt, is somehow beyond the pale to you, you will just have to suck it up. Despite my being trained in Personality & Social Psychology, inter alia, I will forego speculating a clinical diagnosis of someone who makes up not merely evidence, but also the supposed mental states of the accused, all out of whole cloth. Criminal prosecutions are not made by making up “plausible” scenarios of what might have occured; they are made by presenting admissible facts, through sworn testimony and exhibits, subject to cross examination and objections, followed by defense witnesses and exhibits, etc.

I don’t understand why you describe Ron as defending him rather than doing what upholders of the law should do, namely trying to give the most plausible account of the relevant facts and law – none of which allows for perceptions of his character to condemn him – and then see whether they lead to proof beyond reasonable doubt of one criminal offence or another – or none.

Do you support the methods of the lowest type of elected prosecutor who sees bad records like the current defendant’s as an opportunity and invitation to fit him up for a serious offence he didn’t commit and improve the prosecutor’s credentials as a law and order vote winner?

I support your complaint against StoC whose conduct is difficult to understand. “Vicious troll” would not be a false description but not very explanatory. His answer to my detailed set of questions designed to elicit just what his case for being a Holocaust denialist was produce a long non-responsive response, acceptable only for his amusing line about the Germans being guilty of mass tattooing. So, despite an earlier inclination which you expressed agreement with to treat him as someone whose obsessions didn’t stop him producing some interesting stuff from his wide reading it does seem now that the only point in following his emissions at all is diagnostic. He reminds me of one of the first times that I was called on to take a responsible interest in a person of dubiously sound mind. I had lost track of a young lawyer who had once been one of my sisters’ boyfriends when I had a call from a police station saying that he was there and wanted to see me. I was a bit bemused but could just understand why I was the sort of person he might wish to help him. (I have had experience too of people with mental conditions that have had them locked up telephoning me with requests to get them out). Apparently he had been creating a disturbance in the building where he lived after his parents and grandmother had given up housing him. I noticed a policewoman wore a gun (not all that common with Australian police, at least until recently) in the room I was in with the large strong 35 year old that I had come to see. In the course of conversation he said “How’s your father”. “Oh Charlie he’s been dead for quite a long time I’m sure you knew”.

“Yes, I know”
Me: “Well why did you ask how he was?”
Him: “Because I liked him”.

In the end I didn’t doubt the police sergeant who told me he was a paranoid schizophrenic.

The moral. For the layman the varieties of psychiatric disturbance and their manifestations can be very confusing and hard to pick.

Don’t waste your time treating him as a suitable person to dispute with.

It is not “defending” someone in the everyday non curial sense to point to the sources of reasonable doubt in relation to the most serious of the several possible charges against him. That is surely just attempting to think clearly as far as known facts allow.

There are a lot of comments here which make me sympathise with Ron’s less amiable sallies to the extent of being reminded of the research I once organised into jury systems that made me understand very well why extended voir dires for choosing juries might be justified in America. As a Californian (LA) Superior Court judge who had been a Public Defender in Pennsylvania said to me “there are a lot of people here who don’t have much idea of reasonable doubt” [he may have been speaking of judges or prosecutors: I forget] and that seems confirmed by a lot of the Comments.

What do we know? Set aside the technicality that it may be a relevant felony for a murder charge (though presumably not for a death sentence) to have possessed and discharged a firearm when he was or had been a convicted felon. Assume that he had [to be continued]

[Continued, after the *#$¥% App wiped out 100 words…]
Assume that he had beyond reasonable doubt discharged the firearm and could, if he wished, have not discharged it, then common law murder would be committed if he aimed to cause grievous bodily harm to anyone at random or someone else than the victim (or the victim) or if he fired with reckless indifference to human life and killed her. It would have to be proved BRD that he adverted to the danger to human life and that he was indifferent to it. Alternatively that he was intending to cause grievous bodily harm to someone (random anyone would do) if one assumes that he was not deliberately aiming at her, or at least might not have been doing so, as the fact of its being a ricochet would be sufficient to establish in the mind of a juror….except for one possibility which I shall deal with first.

That possibility is that the forensic evidence shows the ricochet was at a height to prove that the gun was pointing at torso height and within a very small acute angle from a direct line to the victim. Without that evidence we are blathering in the dark if we wish to be sure about the deliberate murder case.

Even an aim at torso height but not directly at her could just about be explained (enough for doubt) by getting inside this very odd man’s head and adopting the hypothesis that he was trying to get her attention not necessarily for any other purpose than a 6 year old child may throw an apple fecklessly to hit a wall just beside an old lady on the other side of the street.

But let’s suppose it is proved that the ricochet was from something at torso height 30 degrees or more away. Here there really could be scope for an innocent if feckless explanation. If he wasn’t aiming for seals he could have just been practising his aim by stupidly aiming at some post or other solid object.

What if the forensic evidence shows that the ricochet was from the concrete, or conceivably wood, pier (and so far we’ll assume just one ricochet point)? The aim would have to have been downwards to a point not more than about 50 feet from the shooter – at least 50 feet away from the victim. Even if the ricochet point was directly in line with the victim no case for it being a deliberate shot at her would stand up.

Contrast the case that might be made if Sanchez could be called a terrorist. Then the victim might have attracted his attention but the case could be put that he was just blasting off to hurt some Gringo or infidel indiscriminately. A jury might have little trouble concluding that he was conscious of the danger to human life and recklessly indifferent to it or, anyway, had sought to inflict grievous bodily harm on someone.

But in Sanchez’s case the case that might work against a terrorist doesn’t help the prosecutor as far as we know.

So it looks like the best hope of a murder conviction is the inferences to be drawn from an aim which must have been so close that the jury could be invited to infer, if not deliberate murder, then reckless indifference to human life with its burden of proof still being on the prosecution.

I suspect that a good defence lawyer with the right sort of jury would be making a convincing case (though not having the burden to prove anything) that this was a low IQ man with little foresight of consequences whose acquaintance with guns was what he got from TV or computer games, and that, at worst, he was fecklessly using the gun as an inarticulate form of self-expression or as dumb attention seeking. “Think of the possible consequences? Members of the jury – not him, not this grown up child, not for a moment, and certainly not as you or I would imagine what might happen”.

We are free to speculate about all possible scenarios on an internet message board.

Behind closed doors, I would hope that attorneys engage in reasonable speculation about all possible scenarios, even if the scenarios don’t totally fit all currently available facts. Things can change.

That you cite legal restrictions and your credentials is rather gauche. It is a part of our current social anxiety in some quarters to save every immigrant, and to cast immigrants as heroes; saviors; messiahs; etc etc. That the evidence is accumulating in the other direction just becomes more reason for the cultists to become even more strident.

namely trying to give the most plausible account of the relevant facts and law

Ron as not trying to give the “most plausible account of the relevant facts” when he claimed
Sanchez was in prison for “very minor drug offenses” and, “he claims he found the gun while picking through trash cans, and then carelessly wandered around with it for a while, after which it accidentally went off .”

Ron, it’s clear enough to conclude if you read my posts, was trying to MINIMIZE what this guy did. That counts as defending him, don’t you think?

Five minutes of googling on my part and I destroyed what Ron claimed.

First: it was NOT very minor drug offenses. The guy was a MANUFACTURER of drugs (likely meth, I’ll bet — what else can be manufactured without the infrastructure of an entire industry?) the guy was a DEALER of drugs, and the guy was a USER of not mj but HEROIN.

This is not a guy who was convicted of very minor drug offenses. This is a Drug Lord.

As far as the gun, he did NOT find it in a trash can. He found sleeping pills in a trash can. The gun, Sanchez says, he “found wrapped in a T-shirt under a park bench.”

This guy is a FELON, not some confused homeless guy. Felons are NOT ALLOWED to have guns. When he so much as touched that gun, he was committing a felony. That he so much as picked it up, much the less “wandered around with it” is WILLFUL felonious actions.

Then Ron says, “the gun accidently went off.”
No it didn’t. The expert in one of the stories I linked to above says, the gun is in good condition and wouldn’t have gone off without four pounds of pressure on the trigger –iow, it takes EFFORT to make that gun fire. That bastard Sanchez deliberately fired that gun.

So Ron calls folks like me “anti-immigrant fanatics,” without even bothering five minutes of Googling to see whether his minimization of the facts was going to stand scrutiny.

Also, Ron said, “If I’m wrong about the facts, somebody tell me.” Which I did two days ago, but Ron has yet to concede everything he claimed to exculpate this guy, is wrong.

Nope. He’d rather call folks like me, who are taking a hard look at Sanchez, anti-immigrant nuts.

Ron is the nut, here.

Sorry, short answer because the blasted Opera Mini browser has found only a time out for this site and wiped out my detailed reply.

In brief you are ignoring the legal approach in favour of the one that Ron seems to be characterising as the push for police, prosecution and courts to punish immigrants of bad character heavily and regardless of legal niceties. He may not have got all the facts he states right but some are irrelevant just as much of what you say is in the sense that it could not properly, under the rules of evidence designed to ensure traditional fair trials, be considered by the court.

You are free to speculate to your heart’s content; lawyers, judges, jurors, and witnesses are not! Scenarios are not evidence. The police and prosecutors’ theories of the case are not evidence. The latter’s arguments to the jury are not evidence. The trier of fact simply is to apply the law to the facts admitted at trial; in the case of jurors, they are to adhere to the instructions of the judge, as to how they must do so. It is the burden of the state to prove each and every element of the crimes that it alleges, both in terms of actions and intentions, beyond a reasonable doubt, based solely upon the evidence that has been admitted by the trial judge. Whether the defendant is otherwise Christlike or diabolical is utterly immaterial, when the facts admitted at trial have failed to prove the charges, beyond a reasonable doubt.

If you find my professional expertise gauche, that is just fine; I find your ignorance appalling. As for my views on immigration, let alone illegal immigration, they are widely sprinkled throughout this forum. In short, I am against mass immigration, as a matter of principle– not just here, in the United States, and not just now, during these past fifty years. I consider mass immigration to be “genocide”– under the United Nations’ own legal definition of that term! In the instant case, I was the first one to comment on this particular post. I will quote my own closing, from last Friday afternoon:

“The bottom line, as a matter of public policy, is that this killer, whatever his criminal or moral culpability actually is, should not have been allowed to roam free, in virtual security, due to San Francisco’s self-selected status as a so-called ‘sanctuary city’ for illegal aliens, including violent offenders known to the local authorities. Kate Steinle well may have been killed accidentally; the public policy that allowed for her death, however, was no accident, at all: it was, and is, an utter abomination!”

Wiz,
Good to know that others felt similarly. To be honest, it did not escape my imagination, that a commentator who nonchalantly calls for public persons to be shot or lynched (and not on a solitary occasion either) is perhaps not simply displaying a momentary lapse of judgement. After all aren’t we constantly deluged with stories of the mentally unsound committing or inspiring murderous atrocities after having declared their intentions on the internet?

Your last paragraph is good sense.

The facts here may well show he was “showing off” in some way. Finding a gun; carrying it contrary to law; putting yourself in a position to accidentally shoot someone; this points to someone nurturing edginess that is too often rewarded with attention from modern media.

In general here, it is rather parochial to show up at a debate/discussion and start preaching about procedural rules.

Anyway, re the incident itself, what strike me most now, as from the outset, is the apparently tragically awful bad luck of this poor young woman — if her walk had begun one sec earlier, or one sec later, or if her body had been at a slightly different angle at that moment, etc etc — that must torture her family and friends.

There seems to be no motive — eg there was never a suggestion he tried to rob her and her father, or something like that. So I would not be surprised if it was an accident — even if it turns out there really was no intent to fire the gun at all.

But he should never have been on the street. People trying to talk that down, or talk down his criminal history, are disgusting.

As for the rest of it, I don’t understand all the speculation — some of it is indeed far-fetched.

I am, in part, the product of a parochial school (not only long-defunct, now, but unceremoniously razed, paved over, and literally turned into an extension of its own former parking lot). As for the preaching, you have mistaken me for one of my older brothers (a member of our former school’s first graduating class, in 1962), who was ordained, in Saint Peter’s Square, by the late Pope Paul VI, in the largest ordination ceremony in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, forty years ago this June. When it comes to American jurisprudence, however, I and my eldest brother are the two with professional expertise– rather than idle speculations, and rank prejudices, that have no place in an American court of law.

You certainly bloviate in the manner of a social science academic as if people will be impressed by such verbose replies but what have here is an ex-con killing someone during the commission of at least two felonies. He was in possession of handgun ( felony) and he discharged it ( can be charged as either a misdemeanor or felony in California) causing the death of a person. Not much doubt in this case it would be charged as a felony!

Given that we have at least two predicate felonies that led to the death of the young woman there isn’t much ‘wiggle’ room for the defendant. That it was a ‘lucky’ shot doesn’t change the fact that it was the defendants actions that caused the death and as a habitual criminal and, contrary to what has been said, a felony murder most certainly is a qualifying offense under California’s Three Strikes Law this guy is toast if he has two prior felony convictions which I believe he does.

Screw that. “Fair trial.” Constitutional rights are rightfully for citizens of the United States, not imminvaders. Invaders (including imminvaders, imo) are rightfully shot as the foreign enemy they are.

You are an imminvader when you reenter a country illegally that you have been deported from, because the deportation process is sufficient notice that you are not supposed to be here, so if you willfully return (as this bastard did, five times prior) you are an invader.

He should have been shot, as any invader should, the second time he crossed illegally over the border.

It is the burden of the state to prove each and every element of the crimes that it alleges, both in terms of actions and intentions, beyond a reasonable doubt, based solely upon the evidence that has been admitted by the trial judge. Whether the defendant is otherwise Christlike or diabolical is utterly immaterial, when the facts admitted at trial have failed to prove the charges, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Dan White would agree with that. The case against Dan White was blown by the prosecution failing to use the evidence properly. White avoided a search by going in a back window, after the first shooting, he went to an office and reloaded, he discussed football with police just after his arrest. White was allowed to have psychiatric hearsay support his defence, and by playing tapes of him sobbing, the prosecution gave the court a misleading impression. Lopez may have made a smart decision to talk to the media because that interview does make him seem so totally confused that anyone watching it believes him incapable of understanding his situation. I’ll bet that interview would be a huge help to his defence if played in court. The only thing that can convict him of murder (which is what he is charged with) is the facts.

The prosecution needs to establish exactly where the shot was fired from and where the ricochet was. The closer the ricochet to the victim the less chance it was any kind of accident. They also need to examine the T shirt to see if the shot came while the pistol was was wrapped or if the shot came while the gun was out and in his hand . Lopez said he was on the pier to shoot at sea lions, so by his own account he was there to do something that would result in his immediate arrest. The prosecution needs to emphasise that Lopez immediately got rid of the gun in the sea and made a successful getaway. Thinking a little too quickly on his feet there! Was he planning to dump the gun and vamoose after shooting the sea lions?

Lopez’s interview makes him seem like a confused man who barely understands simple questions in his own language, but he has the very best of reasons for giving that impression. It is not paranoia to point that out, and to turn back to the facts. So far the defence seem to be relying on the ricochet, but that does not necessarily get him out of a murder charge. A ricochet close to his feet might, but my feeling so far is that the ricochet was probably a lot closer to the victim. Anyway it is up to the prosecution. If they don’t do their job properly, the twinkie defence will have some company.

If you fire a gun in a crowded, public place like that, where its reasonable to assume that by doing so, someone would be apt to be injured or killed (and then someone is killed by your so doing), that can be deemed 2nd degree murder. I dropped out of law school in 1994, so I’m a little rusty on the details, but even if the defense counsel’s contentions are correct, it still looks like 2nd degree murder to me, rather than manslaughter. Manslaughter would be the appropriate charge, if the gun was discharged by accident. But if he meant to fire that gun in a crowded, public place (which I suspect he probably did, for some undoubtedly jackass reason), even if he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, he’s still guilty of murder in the second degree.

“Ron, why are you defending a man who was deported five times, yet came back anyway and killed Kate? Had he stayed in Mexico where he belongs, a young woman would be alive today.”

Standing up for an accurate depiction of events, does not constitute defending this loser.

Ron, I’m not so happy with embedded articles, makes the site load slower, particularly the Javascript related bits; also, it loads potentially virus-infected JS-based ads. Else, keep on with good work!*

* also also: you might want to bicker less with immigration nuts (like myself). use the time instead to give Steve a shoulder massage or bring him a soda–the man needs all the help he can get :-)))

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=187-199

***

http://statelaws.findlaw.com/california-law/california-second-degree-murder-laws.html

***

But, it’s *not* an accurate description of events. Anyone who paid even mild attention to the media reports or googled for five minutes would not have described Sanchez’ prison record as being a mild one of being imprisoned “for repeated violations of immigration law and also very minor drug offenses.

Those “minor drug offenses” included MAJOR infractions like being a heroin user, a drug manufacturer (meth, I’ll bet) and drug dealing (selling marijuana). In addition he had convictions for assault / intimidation and aggravated felony.

His rap sheet is longer than my arm. Ron tried to characterize him as some confused homeless, but basically harmless, man. If Ron truly was uninformed of how bad this guy is, he shouldn’t have commented, calling his offenses “very minor”. If Ron DID know but was trying to minimize the truth and so deflect scrutiny of him, in service of his own ideological agenda (allowing mass immigration of Mexicans) then he’s a rat.

You’ll note Ron said, above, “if I’m wrong, let me know.” I did, but he has yet to concede he falsely characterized Sanchez. Why is that if not because he’s trying to defend the guy?

Thanks, didn’t think of that.

He was sitting on one of the permanent metal seats on the pier and the victim walked past. He fired moments later, the bullet impacted on the concrete runway four yards from were he was sitting and ricocheted into her back. I am more convinced that ever that Lopez deliberately ricocheted a bullet in her direction.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/News-crews-robbed-in-S-F-camera-operator-6362833.php

Remember the news crew reporting the story that was robbed at gunpoint on live TV? That gave someone the idea to commit murder on live TV.

The prosecutors seem to be diligently discharging their duty. A judge has ruled on the case and Fernandez is to be tried for murder one. If he gets the death penalty it will save many lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Glasgow_bin_lorry_crash#Previous_similar_incident

Really?!? How soon would you expect him to be executed, Sean, for shooting a bullet twelve feet from his own feet (according to you, supra) and hitting a total stranger, among countless others, in the back, about a hundred feet away (according to Mr. Unz’ latest reply to you)? How old would he be, then, Sean? How many lives do you figure he would have managed to have taken, in prison, from that point until an otherwise natural death, Sean? What is your estimate based upon, Sean? Sean, if you will pardon my saying so, as someone trained in both Law and Psychology, inter alia, your own grasp of reality, for whatever reason, seems to be rather tenuous.

He fired at right angles to the direction his feet and body were pointing, The shot went right along the walkway. I do freely admit that I have trouble grasping the idea that one is responsible for firing a bullet, but not to where it goes subsequent to a ricochet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricochet#Angle

The angle of departure, both vertically and horizontally, is difficult to calculate or predict due to the many variables involved, not the least of which is the deformation of the bullet caused by its impact with the surface it strikes.[6] Ricochets will almost always continue on a somewhat diagonal trajectory to their original trajectory, unless the impact is against a flat surface perpendicular to the angle of incidence (or approach), in which case the angle of reflection depends on the other variables involved.

Perpendicular to the angle of incidence, the impact was not. So it was quite predictable that after the ricochet the bullet would be on a rising trajectory and continuing in the same plane as he was pointing the barrel.

How many lives do you figure he would have managed to have taken?

There are 500 Americans killed in firearms accidents each year. Reporting of gun violence is a perhaps a root cause of gun violence (or ‘accidents’) in the way that reporting of suicide is a known cause of suicide clusters.. The media have protocols for reporting suicide (don’t put it on the front page, don’t say no one can understand why they did it). The way shootings and suicide are described and the prominence given to them is very important. Highly publicised accidents are often followed by a rash of similar ‘accidents’. There are a lot of unstable folk in this world, and they should not be given the impression that there is a way to kill and not be held fully accountable.

I still don’t see how Ron is trying to defend him. You seem hysterical and sound like you’d characterize anything short of hysterical vituperation as a defense of the man.

The Constitution distinguishes between “persons” and “citizens”, and does guarantee various rights to “persons” i.e. individuals on US territory as well.

Let me get this straight, Sean: Anyone who is involved in criminal gun violence that makes the news is thereby responsible for countless others who subsequently employ criminal gun violence, under your own psychological theory that news accounts of general gun violence, including an accidental killing by ricochet, will have caused those others to commit gun violence that they otherwise would not have committed? And you base this on treating suicides, psychologically, as identical to homicides? Neither as someone who graduated from law school, thirty years ago, and who subsequently was a lawyer for nearly fifteen years, nor as someone with an advanced degree in Personality & Social Psychology, of even older vintage, with occasional consulting work in legal psychology, have I ever heard a more attenuated theory of cause and effect, neither as a matter of criminal psychology nor of legal culpability!?! Your belief that only putting this illegal alien to death could serve to deter susceptible consumers of news from similarly discharging their own guns in a public place, even near their own feet, without a legal justification or excuse, is utterly mind-boggling to me. Am I really such an outlier in my being dissuaded from acting criminally, or even recklessly, because of legal consequences, short of having the state put me to death?

Spot on.

Am I really such an outlier in my being dissuaded from acting criminally, or even recklessly, because of legal consequences, short of having the state put me to death?
I said it would save lives. The outliers are the unstable people for whom the balance may be tipped by things you consider atavistic.

Neither as someone who graduated from law school, thirty years ago, and who subsequently was a lawyer for nearly fifteen years, nor as someone with an advanced degree in Personality & Social Psychology, of even older vintage, with occasional consulting work in legal psychology, have I ever heard a more attenuated theory of cause and effect, neither as a matter of criminal psychology nor of legal culpability!?!
Some may consider it an obvious accident, but such opinion is idiosyncratic in view of the recent judicial ruling that he may be tried for murder one. For the avoidance of doubt, the ricochet does not preclude him being convicted on that charge. Judges have discretion to view inexplicable or trivial motive as exacerbating, and impose an exemplary sentence such as death

I don’t think by “anti-immigration fanatics” he means people who are anti-immigration, but people who are anti-immigration in such a way that facts and details are largely irrelevant.

A judge in Baltimore just upheld all of the charges against all six defendants in the “murder” of the martyred Black saint, Freddie Gray, Jr., Sean, as well as the prosecutors’ dubious behavior. I guess that I am merely being “idiosyncratic” in my finding that judicial ruling wrong, to the point of ludicrous, as well.

The apparent absence of any motive to murder the deceased in an apparently accidental shooting death– for which the prosecution is unable to provide, or even to suggest, a plausible motive, at trial– itself then becomes the evidentiary basis for the state that employs both the prosecution and the courts to put the accused to death, Sean?

Where are you licensed to practice psychiatry, Sean? Where are you licensed to practice law?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0mVkUnlRGA

Video Link
Reid obviously believed his clowning was with an unloaded pistol, but it according to a number of those present, immediately after this the gun went off while he was, as he thought, dry firing it at the ground. He later admitted he had been drinking and lost track of what he was doing. Now he would have been charged with murder if he had dropped the hammer on the wrong chamber, but would have been able to argue that he genuinely thought there was no possibility of the gun killing when he pulled the trigger.

Plausible is not necessarily comprehensible. Fernandez had no reason to think if he pulled the trigger he was not going to send a bullet in the general direction of the victim, he admitted firing the gun according to testimony. His lawyer might have been able to work something out if Fernandez had kept his mouth shut, but now it seems quite reasonable to charge him with murder and let the court decide. If he is convicted, the court has found him guilty of knowingly having played a game of Russian ricochete with an unwitting bystander, and with a gun he had no reason to think was not loaded. Surely you can see why this trivial attitude to killing or not killing is as serious an exacerbating factor as a murder to collect insurance or murder for hire.

You’ve certainly given a coherent account in a way a couple of the lay screamers and blowhards on this thread haven’t ** but you might have overlooked some simple physics. It is true that a ricochet from a point close to the victim strengthens the prosecution case whether it is based on his intention to hit her or to hit someone else or indifference about consequences, but that seems to be almost ruled out by the distance of shooter from victim being 100 feet and the shot hitting the victim’s back high enough to kill her. Maybe the bullet came off the concrete or other deck at a different angle from that at which it struck the deck but it seems unlikely that it would have had much momentum after digging into concrete far enough to change angle greatly. But that admittedly is speculation outside any possibility of my having a decided opinion… Still….

**I’m reminded of the awkward situation at a friend’s dinner party when someone with precise professional knowledge is confronted with confident ignorant blowhards with attitude demanding that he respond to nonsensical or just plain ignorant and bombastic prejudice. Should he risk answering them carefully. He’ll only be abused again.

For my appreciation of your patient attempts to stick to your professional calm, careful judicious style in the face of provocation see my reply to Sean (who is not chosen as the guilty party!).

A bit of a worry, but not much of a surprise, to find that fair trials are for citizens only in the minds of some of those the defence would clearly want to exclude from a jury(shades of Twelve Angry Men).

According to your own assertion, Sean, the gun was pointed down to a mere four yards from his own feet. No one, here, least of all yours truly, has suggested that firing a gun in such a manner, in a public place, is not criminally reckless. Our courts do not (currently) condemn killers to their deaths for their mere recklessness and bad luck (irrespective of the issue of his actual mindset, in this case, and whether he actually intended to fire the gun, at all). A young woman was killed in the French Quarter of New Orleans, some years ago, when a bullet that was fired into the sky, in celebration of New Year’s Day (if I am recalling correctly), failed to return all the way to the Earth, because it pierced the top of her head! That was a criminal homicide; it was not one that was, or should have been, punished by death at Angola– regardless of whether the shooter, at some level or another, even actually realized that bullets fired into the sky will, shortly thereafter, return to (or near to) the Earth, at very high velocity!?! I cringe whenever I see guns fired into the sky, in just such a mindless manner, as is quite common, unfortunately, in some cultures. That does not mean that I wish to see those occasionally hapless shooters who kill innocent bystanders, through such reckless shooting behavior, put to death, as if they were “the worst of the worst” among us– much less that I would claim, as a former lawyer with an advanced degree in Psychology, that the failure of the state to put those unlucky bastards to death will cause “many [more such shooting] deaths” through the mere reporting of such fatal accidents.

No you’re right he’s just a three strikes felon who happened to find a gun under a bench. Then fired it and killed a woman.

No reason he shouldn’t spend the rest of his useless life in prison. But of course, he by no means should be kept out of the US in the first place. I guess we need to deport him a sixth time. Next time he can come back and kill two people.

I’ve personally known two people killed by illegal aliens (one from Mexico and one from Guatemala) and knew the murderer in a third case in my town of 3,000. I’d love to take Ron on a tour of my little town. Show him where the criminal invaders live with twenty cars registered to a singlewide trailer. Show him where one illegal stabbed another then was simply deported. Show him where I was when I heard the gunshot that killed my acquaintance of many years. I can take him to where a toddler standing in a pool of her mother’s blood called 9-11.

If he has the nutsack for it Sailer has my email address. I’ll set up a private tour of the place where my pregnant daughter was attacked by a Guatemalan fleeing the ICE. I’ll show him where he lives now since they only deported him. I’ll take him to where the criminal invaders register to vote (two places in my town) and why you’re not allowed to challenge them on it.

I’ll show him how hard it is to find newspaper articles about the crimes even though I know the names of the perps and victims and when and where they occur. It’s almost as if they are trying to memory hole the events. Strange that.

Nobody can tell me they do not commit crimes all out of proportion to their numbers. I’ve worked in law enforcement, prisons, and probation. I know how many are in our system.

Evidently, the public schools in your “town of 3,000” are so attrocious that you still read proper English composition with all the comprehension of a dull-witted third-grader. To repeat myself, yet again:

***

If you find my professional expertise gauche, that is just fine; I find your ignorance appalling. As for my views on immigration, let alone illegal immigration, they are widely sprinkled throughout this forum. In short, I am against mass immigration, as a matter of principle– not just here, in the United States, and not just now, during these past fifty years. I consider mass immigration to be “genocide”– under the United Nations’ own legal definition of that term! In the instant case, I was the first one to comment on this particular post. I will quote my own closing, from last Friday [8/28] afternoon:

“The bottom line, as a matter of public policy, is that this killer, whatever his criminal or moral culpability actually is, should not have been allowed to roam free, in virtual security, due to San Francisco’s self-selected status as a so-called ‘sanctuary city’ for illegal aliens, including violent offenders known to the local authorities. Kate Steinle well may have been killed accidentally; the public policy that allowed for her death, however, was no accident, at all: it was, and is, an utter abomination!”

***

If there is a God, I am sanguine that that explains why you are where you are, and as you are….

Your comment made me laugh because it hit right at the heart of Mr. Unz’s misdirected comment, but I am sure that Mr. Unz did not intend his remark the way it came out. I am as anti-immigrant as they come, but I agree with the poster above who says it’s best not to overcharge. First or even second degree murder would probably be overcharging in this case. Hit him with involuntary manslaughter, make him serve his time and then deport him. To correct the problem of deportees returning again and again, we need to change the law to make it a felony punishable by a mandatory 10 (20?) years for anyone caught returning a second time. That should correct the problem. We should think seriously of making it a felony to enter illegally the first time, but I’m not sure our compassionate Congress would go for that.

If I offended you in some way I apologize. I was intending most of my comments for Unz. You were just in the way.

I have no doubt there is a God and thus I am commanded to turn the other cheek so I have. Wrath is one of my besetting sins and I allowed it to get the better of me.

Thanks! I am a gluttony man myself. Fortunately, I have a Vatican-educated brother to plead my case on my behalf, when the time comes, and my law degree loses what little value it still has now. He just got back from his fortieth-anniversary ordination reunion, in Rome, as a matter of fact, which included an audience with Pope Francis, set up by his classmate, Raymond Cardinal Burke. Needless to say, my brother and I are on different sides of the immigration debate– especially since he has been a priest down in El Salvador for over thirty years, now! He surprised the Pope by talking to him, in Spanish, about the assassinated Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, who just was beatified by Pope Francis himself, on May 23.

It is true that a ricochet from a point close to the victim strengthens the prosecution case whether it is based on his intention to hit her or to hit someone else or indifference about consequences, but that seems to be almost ruled out by the distance of shooter from victim being 100 feet and the shot hitting the victim’s back high enough to kill her.

He was sitting in a seat and they walked right past him (there are photos showing it was close by they passed) and then he fired, not forward in the direction he was naturally facing, but at right angles to the way the chair forced him to sit. He twisted and fired in the general direction of their retreating backs as they walked away along the pier. As he was seated and is a small man the angle with the ground would be oblique. Assuming the bullet came up at same angle after travelling another 16 feet it would have been at thigh height, another 16 feet mid back, another 16 feet neck height. So at 62 feet it would have been at the perfect height to kill her.

This was a predictably a ricochet that put them in extreme danger. If he had fired at a surface perpendicular to them and the ricochet had for some reason went at right angles he would have an arguable case for not knowing how dangerous it would be, but that is not what happened, and the ricochet was highly unlikely to go straight up into the sky. Given that there were two people the chances of one being hit were not low at all.

I would say they were roughly comparable to the chance of killing someone by doing what Read did in that linked video (if we accept the gun was loaded). The main difference is that Read had convincing evidence he did not know it there was any chance of the reporter being shot, because he did not let the spinning cylinder revolve until it lost momentum like a roulette wheel, he stopped it (a balanced cylinder would give two shots before the live chamber). So if it was loaded when he put it to his head there was a one in six chance of shooting himself. If he had killed the reporter he would point to the unlikelihood of his having taken that risk with the gun to his own head before doing the same with someone else’s.

What Fernandez did is roughly equivalent to playing the loaded ‘stopped’ Russian roulette with someone else’s head. When Fernadez fired the chances of someone being shot were less than 50/50, but far more than one in a hundred. He knew.

Be sure to check what grades he attained in Geometry and Probability & Statistics, Sean, before he dropped out of grade school….

IWell I concede my relative absence of knowledge of relevant matters. I didn’t take account of his sitting though I’m not sure that his body facing away from the victim means that he twisted towards her and deliberately fired or that it wouldn’t otherwise add to reasonable doubt based on accidental discharge and the unlikelihood of his actually hitting her. My bet would be on a plea bargain and that, indeed, it is an only slightly less pernicious example than usual of the prosecution overcharging to compel a guilty plea to a lesser offence. The “overcharging” is not just a prejudice of one from the rest of the common law world but also that of federal judges, academics et al. writing in the NYRB. I neglect, of course, any consideration of a technical felony-murder charge based on his having or firing a gun at although the fact that it might be good law wouldn’t stop me, with my prejudices derived in part from living in a country and city with only a modest fraction of the rate of gun violence in the US, from regarding a murder charge as overcharging.

I would also bet, on a hunch, on the defence making much of his psychological limitations including an IQ low enough to attract the bizarre SCOTUS ruling that if you are so dim as to be barely recognisable as a fellow human you can’t be executed.

If he needed to be a high school grad to know the bullet was going in her general direction, then Sammy Sosa must have a Phd.

Go to your local high school, Sean. Go out onto its football field; stand on one of its one-yard-line markers. Take a picture, from there, focused on the five-yard line, a mere twelve feet in front of you. Post that picture here, Sean, so that we all can see what you could have made out, passing by at roughly a right angle, up at the thirty-five-yard line, barely one hundred feet in front of you.