Plan B Forum

AP source: Fed's gun used in San Francisco pier slaying

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The gun used in the seemingly random slaying of a woman on a San Francisco pier belonged to a federal agent, a law enforcement official briefed on the matter said Tuesday.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity, said a police check of the weapon's serial number shows it belonged to a federal agent. The official declined to elaborate further.

The San Francisco Police Department, which is investigating the case, declined to comment.

The revelation was the latest dramatic twist in a tragic case that has become a new flashpoint in the country's debate over immigration policies.

The suspected gunman, Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, has been deported to his native Mexico five times and is suspected of living in the United States illegally when Kathryn Steinle, 32, was gunned down last week while on an evening stroll with her father along San Francisco's popular waterfront area.

Federal officials transferred Sanchez to San Francisco's jail in March to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge after Sanchez completed his latest prison term for illegally entering the country.

The San Francisco sheriff, citing the city's "sanctuary city" policy, released Sanchez in April after prosecutors dropped the drug charge, despite an Immigration and Customs Enforcement request to hold him for federal authorities so deportation proceedings could begin.

Sanchez pleaded not guilty Tuesday to first-degree murder.

He told two television stations who interviewed him in jail that he found the gun used in Steinle's killing wrapped in a shirt on the pedestrian pier she was walking on. Sanchez said the gun went off in his hands, and his public defender, Matt Gonzalez, said Tuesday that the San Francisco woman's death appeared accidental.

Regardless of the reason behind Steinle's death, the shooting has touched off criticism from leading Republican lawmakers — and from top Democrats, including both of California's U.S. senators.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told CNN that San Francisco was wrong to ignore the ICE detainer request and release Sanchez from custody.

"The city made a mistake, not to deport someone that the federal government strongly felt should be deported," Clinton said. "So I have absolutely no support for a city that ignores the strong evidence that should be acted on."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein called on San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee to start cooperating with federal immigration officials who want to deport felons such as Sanchez. Feinstein served as San Francisco mayor from 1978 to 1988.

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has defended Sanchez's release and the city law requiring it to ignore ICE detainer requests.

The shooting has fueled a national debate on "sanctuary cities" like San Francisco, which has a policy of noncooperation with federal immigration officials.

It also has outraged San Franciscans such as Frank Zona, a longtime resident who rode his bicycle to the pier earlier this week "to contemplate" the killing.

"It makes me sick," Zona said, as tourists walked onto the pier. "I'm a die-hard Democrat but this makes me want to vote for Donald Trump for (his stance on) immigration."

But while it might be tempting to blame San Francisco, there's another way to look at this story: Sanchez was on the street because federal immigration officials didn't work to apprehend him. This isn't a case of a city being too soft on a criminal — it's a case of a federal agency not doing what it had to do to get a criminal into its custody.

Francisco Sanchez's criminal record stretches back to 1991, the year he entered the United States. He had already been deported five times when he was apprehended in Texas in 2009 trying to enter the United States yet again. He was convicted of illegal reentry — which is a federal felony — and sentenced to a term in federal prison.

Typically, when an unauthorized immigrant finishes up a federal prison term, he's handed over to ICE officials for deportation. But when Sanchez's term ended in March, there were two different requests in the system: the request from ICE officials, and an outstanding warrant from 1995 for a marijuana offense in San Francisco. For reasons that aren't yet clear, prison officials decided to send Sanchez to San Francisco to honor the 1995 warrant, instead of turning him over to immigration. Once he got there, prosecutors decided it wasn't worth charging him with a 20-year-old crime for pot.

Here's where the "sanctuary city" thing comes in. ICE had sent a request to the San Francisco Sheriff's Department asking them to hold Sanchez after they were done with him, so ICE could pick him up. But San Francisco has a policy that immigrants can only be held for federal immigration officials (after they'd otherwise be released) if there's a warrant or a court order. If there's no warrant, and just a request from ICE to detain the immigrant, San Francisco only honors the request if the immigrant is being held for serious crimes — and a 20-year-old marijuana arrest doesn't qualify. So once the charges against Sanchez were dropped, they let him go.

Four months later, in July, Sanchez was arrested for Steinle's murder.

No one is arguing that Francisco Sanchez shouldn't have been in federal custody and deported. The question is whose fault it is that he wasn't.

If you blame San Francisco for releasing Sanchez into the community, you also have to think about the federal officials at the Bureau of Prisons, who decided to ignore ICE's request for custody after Sanchez finished his prison term — and instead honored a 20-year-old warrant for marijuana in a city that is literally already preparing for California to legalize marijuana in 2016.

You also have to consider ICE's decision to issue a request to San Francisco's Sheriff's Department, rather than a warrant or a court order — even though San Francisco's policy has been on the books since last year. And you have to think about the three months after Sanchez was released by the San Francisco Sheriff's Department, when ICE didn't track him down.

After all, someone like Francisco Sanchez is basically Exhibit A for what ICE calls a "deportation priority." He has a criminal record; he's a "repeat immigration violator"; he was apprehended just after crossing the border in 2011, so he hasn't been settled in the US. But the fact of the matter is that ICE is more interested, most of the time, in picking up immigrants from local jails than in tracking them down.

For reasons that aren't yet clear, prison officials decided to send Sanchez to San Francisco to honor the 1995 warrant

Pier-slaying defendant came to S.F. at sheriff’s request

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has deflected blame in the release of a Mexican national now facing murder charges in the Pier 14 slaying by demanding to know why federal authorities returned him to San Francisco to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge in the first place.

The answer, it turns out, is that the Sheriff’s Department asked federal officials to do so.

Mirkarimi’s agency requested custody of Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez as he was completing a 46-month stint in federal prison in March in San Bernardino County, according to a Sheriff’s Department letter obtained by The Chronicle. Lopez-Sanchez had been deported five times to Mexico and had been imprisoned for illegally re-entering the U.S.

The federal Bureau of Prisons alerted the Sheriff’s Department in March that Lopez-Sanchez was going to be released. Mirkarimi’s agency, realizing that Lopez-Sanchez was wanted on a $5,000 bench warrant related to a 1995 marijuana possession-for-sale case, asked prison officials March 23 to hold him and to notify San Francisco authorities “when the subject is ready for our pick-up.”

“Also, please notify us if the hold cannot be placed or the named subject is released to another jurisdiction prior to our receipt,” said the letter, signed by Vic Gaerlan of the sheriff’s warrant bureau.


For the next three weeks, sources with knowledge of the matter told The Chronicle, sheriff’s deputies sought clarification from the department’s legal division on whether to hold Lopez-Sanchez so Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials could pick him up for possible deportation. ICE had requested that the city detain Lopez-Sanchez.

In the end, the legal division told deputies they had no basis to hold Lopez-Sanchez, and he was released April 15. He was arrested last week in the July 1 shooting death of 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle on San Francisco’s waterfront, and has pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

Mirkarimi’s office did not immediately comment on the letter. It initially scheduled a news conference for Thursday to “set the record straight” on Lopez-Sanchez’s release but called it off late Wednesday “out of respect for Kate Steinle’s funeral services.”

In an interview Tuesday on KQED radio, the sheriff questioned why Lopez-Sanchez had been sent to the city.

“We’re trying to understand why ICE returned Sanchez to San Francisco on a 20-year-old marijuana possession charge in a city that really doesn’t even prosecute marijuana possession …[Because your own office requested it you friggin' asleep-at-the-switch mo-ron ] and knowing that he had been deported and illegally entered the country,” the sheriff said.

Freya Horne, legal counsel for the Sheriff’s Department, told The Chronicle on Tuesday that her office had dispatched a private transportation outfit to pick up Lopez-Sanchez.

“It seems kind of amazing that after all that time, he was brought back here for that purpose,” Horne said.

Joseph Russoniello, former U.S. attorney in San Francisco, said the city’s request to take custody of such an offender was “very unusual.” He said sheriff’s officials could have checked with local prosecutors about the case and opted not to intervene.

“They had the capability to examine the status of the file and determine whether or not to pursue the matter or move to cancel or withdraw the warrant,” he said.

The Sheriff’s Department letter came to light on the same day that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee attacked Mirkarimi, saying his decision to cut off even basic communication with federal immigration officials led to Lopez-Sanchez’s release.

Mirkarimi has said a 2013 city law designed to protect people without immigration status — a law signed by Lee — mandated the April release after the local charges against him were dropped.

But the mayor said the sheriff’s office could have satisfied both city and state law by simply picking up the phone and asking immigration agents to come over and pick up Lopez-Sanchez before the “serious, repeat” felon was set loose.

“I’ve sent that message over to the Sheriff’s Department regarding communications with the federal authorities,” Lee said at a news conference. “Do we need to educate somebody on how to pick up the phone?”

Lee said Mirkarimi “needs to read the entire ordinance” the mayor signed in 2013. The law prohibits most inmates suspected of being in the country illegally from being held for ICE after their scheduled jail release. The 48-hour holds are known as detainers.