He threw the gun into the bay after he shot Kate, but even that wouldn’t matter as the gun was issued to a BLM ranger so a substitute of same model would work.
To me, it sure looks like the DA’s office AND the judge threw this case away for the sake of politics.
This case will be forgotten soon if people let it be forgotten.
The involuntary manslaughter charge that the jury was read included two key requirements: 1) A crime was committed in the act that caused death; 2) The defendant acted with "criminal negligence"—he did something that an ordinary person would have known was likely to lead to someone's death.
So, this juror says his instructions were that he had to find both negligence and behaving unlawfully at the time of the killing in order to convict of manslaughter; but, when I look up California law, I keep finding things like this:
Excusable Homicide & Justifiable Homicide in California Law Penal Code 195 - 199 PC...
There are two kinds of non-criminal homicide in California. These are:
California excusable homicide,3 and California justifiable homicide.4 Excusable homicide occurs when someone kills another person without meaning to, while engaged in legal behavior.
The accidental homicide finding seems to require both lack of negligence and engaging in lawful behavior at the time of the killing. Since Zarate was found to not be engaging in lawful behavior (felony posession of firearm), the killing could not legally be an accident, or so it seems to me: but I'm not a lawyer.
I believe the gun was recovered immediately.