REDWOOD CITY — Only one person has been sentenced to death in San Mateo County in the past 30 years — a case that San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe himself helped prosecute.

The decision by Wagstaffe on Tuesday to seek the death penalty against Chunli Zhao — the farmworker accused of killing seven people in a workplace rampage two years ago — appears to fit in line with the longtime district attorney’s willingness to seek capital punishment for some of San Mateo County’s most high-profile cases.

Wagstaffe prosecuted five death penalty cases prior to winning office and has recently defended capital punishment in court filings. That included his work prosecuting Alberto Alvarez for the 2006 fatal shooting of Richard May , an East Palo Alto police officer who died in

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