SAN FRANCISCO — A Mexican national charged with shooting a young San Francisco woman to death as she walked on a city pier wants his criminal case dismissed, months after it became a flashpoint in the national debate over illegal immigration.
Juan Francisco Sanchez-Lopez and his lawyer, Matt Gonzalez, were expected to ask a judge Friday to drop a second-degree murder charge and related counts, arguing that the judge presiding over a preliminary hearing late last year made procedural mistakes.
Sanchez-Lopez has pleaded not guilty. Gonzalez didn’t return a phone call and email inquiry seeking comment on the effort to dismiss the case.
Kate Steinle, 32, of San Francisco, was walking with her father along the popular and crowded waterfront on July 1 when she was shot in the back. She died in her father’s arms.
Sanchez-Lopez was arrested several hours later a few blocks from the incident. He told police he found a gun on the pier and that it fired accidentally when he picked it up. The gun was the service weapon of a Bureau of Land Management ranger, who reported it stolen from his car in late June.
Sanchez-Lopez was in the country illegally after being released from a San Francisco jail despite a request from federal immigration authorities that local officials keep him in custody for possible deportation. Sanchez-Lopez was previously deported five times to his native Mexico.
Former Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi said jailers released Sanchez-Lopez after local prosecutors dropped a marijuana-related charge. Mirkarimi said he was following a city policy of not cooperating with federal immigration officials by releasing Sanchez-Lopez.
San Francisco and other municipalities across California have enacted so-called sanctuary policies of ignoring requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold inmates thought to be in the country illegally for deportation proceedings.
Mirkarimi has said his department requires federal officials to get a warrant or court notice to hold an inmate facing possible deportation.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has repeatedly mentioned the killing of Steinle as he calls for a border wall and mass deportations to curb illegal immigration.
A San Francisco judge on Sept. 4 ordered Sanchez-Lopez to stand trial on murder charges after a five-day preliminary hearing.
