This seems the most appropo thread for those venting re this Steinle case. And we don't need new threads for fake passports, fake uranium one conspiracies, and Hillary's mass murdering rampages.
I have not followed this case at all. Are the pertinent facts these:
Defendant sees cloth rag on ground. Picks it up, finds a gun inside. Manages to discharge one round, some 18 inches (or feet) from where he stood, for God knows why he decided to shoot it, and the bullet ricochets off the ground (wood pier? strange; or concrete pier? not strange) as to richochet ability.
Nonetheless, the bullet then travels about 150 inches (or feet) striking the victim in a manner that led to her death?
If I'm accurate enough, first degree murder seems like overcharge. Unless he had intent to harm her, specifically, based on some other fact I'm not aware of. Ex girlfriend, etc., and he was a terrible shot. Or he's a bumper pool shark with amazing dexterity in the ricochet angles of bullets to wood or concrete and the expected trajectories involved.
If she was a mere innocent victim, then the guy most certainly is responsible for a reckless disregard for others, and breached his duty of care, by firing it in any direction, even if straight up, and it came down on a victim harmed.
Did the jury have options in their instructions to consider crimes of homocide other than first degree murder? There are plenty of lesser homocide crimes it would have been appropriate for the jury to have in the alternative to deliberate, if available.
Because it seems now the US will rightly deport this guy again for the umptenth time, a free man, who may well sneak back in. Rather than incarcerate him for negligent homocide, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, etc. then deport him when he's served his sentence.
