Will Government Officials Be Held Accountable for Kate Steinle’s Death?

In an attempt to hold government officials accountable for the shooting death of their 32-year-old daughter Kate, the Steinle family filed a lawsuit against three government agencies. The suit alleges that those agencies are in part responsible for Steinle’s death, but experts say the family has little chance at prevailing. “Unfortunately, prior lawsuits against cities over their sanctuary policies that were directly responsible for the murder of American citizens have been unsuccessful due to sovereign immunity,” Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.  Steinle was fatally shot in San Francisco on July 1 by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez. Lopez-Sanchez is an illegal immigrant who had seven prior felony convictions in the U.S. and was deported to Mexico five separate times. He was released from a San Francisco jail in April under a city law barring the jail’s deputies from informing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of his release, despite the agency’s previous notification request. The Steinles filed the lawsuit in hopes that San Francisco and the other 200-some sanctuary cities will reform their policies, which the family claims are illegal, so that no one else will experience what happened to their daughter. The Steinles’ lawsuit alleges that the Bureau of Land Management and Immigration and Customs Enforcement—and San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi—directly contributed to Kate’s death by neglecting to oversee different aspects that led to her being shot. Their claim against the Bureau of Land Management is that the agency didn’t follow regulations in properly securing the gun Lopez-Sanchez stole and used to kill their daughter Mirkarimi, the sheriff implicated in the lawsuit, is accused of failing to detain Lopez-Sanchez. In a statement, Mirkarimi voiced sympathy for the family but says he was only following city policy. The lawsuit accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement of being aware that Mirkarimi had no plans to detain Lopez-Sanchez unless they obtained a court warrant, but the agency neglected to do so...more