Friday, December 1, 2017

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate and The Case of a Tool to Fight the State Gone Bad: Jury Nullification of a Murder Charge?


I really haven't followed the case of  Jose Ines Garcia Zarate close enough to know whether he should have been convicted of first-degree murder or not. But with a cursory knowledge of the case, it would seem he should, at a minimum, have been convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

But the San Francisco jury set him free without a conviction on any count.

Reports suggest that the jury might have done this in a rebuke to the anti-immigrant posturing and statements of President Trump. And, indeed, that might well be the case. If so, it is a form of jury nullification, responding against the state as represented by President Trump and his views on illegal immigrants.

If so, this is another example that shows that most anti-state measures from separatist movements and revolutions to even jury nullification are only tools. They can move us toward the NAP or away from the NAP. Thus, they can be good or bad.Never cheer the use of the toll before asking: What will the outcome be?

In this case, jury nullification may have resulted in a murderer, that is a horrific violator of the NAP, getting away with it.

 -RW

12 comments:

  1. He also crossed the arbitrary line on a map 6 times prior to this. But now that he's done killing white women he can get job in a high tech field and pay for the boomercucks retirement.

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    1. Well we all know what white people don't do Paul, which is cross imaginary lines to kill people for money. Never happened.

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    2. @incognost
      Was Jose Zarate part of Mexico's army and acting on behalf of their empire? I'm fairly certain that if I illegally entered Mexico 5 times and shot one of their citizens I wouldn't get the same treatment as this beaner.

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    3. How is that relevant? You're making a racist argument, and I just disproved it.

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  2. A demographic breakdown of the jury would be helpful.
    I see none anywhere at this time other than 3 fake Americans were on the jury.

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    1. --- A demographic breakdown of the jury would be helpful. ---

      Yeah, that's not racist at all.

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  3. We can only hope that if this guy does something again, some vigilantes will take it out on this jury of idiots. Clearly not a group of people who have a life or property worth defending.

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  4. The district attorney decided to waste everyone's time by pushing a murder conviction that couldn't be proven. The evidence suggested from the very beginning that, at most, this was a case of reckless operation of a firearm, or at least an accidental death. The victim's father said the bullet was a ricochet. The forensic evidence showed the bullet that hit Steile was a ricochet. Even the alleged shooter's ever-changing story was consistent in one thing: he didn't shoot directly at anybody.

    But because of the prosecution's zeal to convict that man of murder, the jury was unnecessarily distracted by deliberating the wrong charges.

    I don't see this as a case of jury nullification. I see this a a botched prosecution with no evidence save for a dead woman and an idiot who thought the gun he claimed he found under his seat was a toy. The reason this case received so much attention is because the shooter is an undocumented immigrant with felony convictions and multiple deportations. This probably placed more pressure on the DA's office to seek a murder conviction which backfired badly.

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  5. --- But the San Francisco jury set him free without a conviction on any count. ---

    That not true. He was found guilty of a weapons possession charge. But like I stated above, the prosecution botched the case by going over the top with a murder one and murder two charges. No wonder the jury spent six days wonder why...

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  6. It is surprising that even the readers of this site can let their emotions rule their words. First, having served on several juries there is no way to judge guilty or not guilty without at least being there and even the jury often remains uncertain after hearing the information presented and second this is a government operation! The readers of this site surly understand that the government is tragically incompetent at every thing it does. And this is because the government uses its force to create a monopoly for itself in its areas of operation. Monopolists have no incentive to meet the needs and goals of others, it only exists to serve itself and those who control it. Even jury selection has been distorted to near meaninglessness. And this results in serious dysfunctional human behavior. I am sure that after some reflection the readers of this site will leave this story alone as there is no justice to be found there.

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  7. There are different ways to think about jury nullification from the NAP perspective.

    The standard reason to nullify is that the juror believes the "crime" set out in the statute is unjust. This is not the case here, but would apply for the many victimless "crimes" the state conjures up, such as tax evasion, insider trading, illegal narcotics, etc.

    However, there is also an argument that the state, as an illegitimate entity which cannot suffer a loss from any crime, is always the wrong prosecuting entity. If A injures B, only B has the right to take action against A for his loss; he can prosecute it himself, hire someone to do it for him, assign/sell the right to someone else, or drop it. But unless B hires C, or assigns his rights to C, C has no right to take action against A. This is not a novel argument, even in our statist society: in civil cases, only the injured party can bring the action (the notion of "standing"). It is a complete fiction created by the state that the state has "standing" in all criminal matters.

    So why shouldn't a libertarian juror nullify every instance of a state (C) prosecuting a rights violator (A)?

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  8. Garcia Zarate was charged with murder from the beginning, and prosecutors gave jurors three options.

    They could convict on first-degree or premeditated murder. They could opt for second-degree murder, requiring a finding that Garcia Zarate either intended to kill Steinle or intentionally committed a dangerous act with conscious disregard for human life. Or they could choose involuntary manslaughter, which would require a finding that Garcia Zarate caused Steinle’s death with an unlawful, negligent act.

    To prove murder, Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia needed to convince jurors that the round that killed Steinle had been fired intentionally. But this was a difficult task as the bullet first struck the pier’s concrete 12 to 15 feet from Garcia Zarate, then bounced and traveled 78 more feet to strike Steinle in the back as she strolled with her father.

    “The evidence that Kate Steinle was killed with a ricochet shot, rather than a direct shot, makes it even tougher to prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that it was an intentional killing,” said attorney Jim Hammer, a former city prosecutor.

    Throughout the trial, attorney Matt Gonzalez of the public defender’s office sought to characterize the ricochet as proof that Steinle’s death had been a tragic accident that befell a hapless man.

    With no direct accounts from eyewitnesses or surveillance video showing Garcia Zarate’s actions during the shooting and in the moments just before, what remained were dueling conclusions drawn from circumstantial evidence.

    And in California, the law on circumstantial evidence swings in the defense’s favor. Jurors are instructed that if they “can draw two or more reasonable conclusions from the circumstantial evidence, and one of those reasonable conclusions points to innocence and another to guilt, you must accept the one that points to innocence.”

    “That’s a tough hurdle for a prosecutor to overcome,” Hammer said. “I think for those who are outraged by this verdict, they have to remember that the defense didn’t have to prove that it was an accident. All they had to do was raise reasonable doubt and that there was some other reasonable scenario.”

    http://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Kate-Steinle-murder-trial-How-the-12399543.php

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