Unpacking Kamala Harris’ Complex Record as Prosecutor

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After Vice President Kamala Harris’ fast ascent to the highest of the 2024 Democratic ticket, a torrent of reports, evaluation and commentary on her prosecutorial profession has adopted. Final weekend, my colleague Lakeidra Chavis and I shared among the key components of Harris’ document on felony justice points. This week, I’m diving a bit deeper on some circumstances and applications that outlined her time as San Francisco District Legal professional and California Legal professional Normal. Lots of these things have already re-entered nationwide political discourse, or are more likely to within the coming weeks.

Writing for Politico this week, Ankush Khardori, a former federal prosecutor, argued that no prosecutor’s profession could be judged successfully based mostly on simplified accounts from a couple of high-profile circumstances. “The precise work of prosecutors is far trickier than political commentators — and even prosecutors themselves — typically painting it within the political enviornment,” Khardori wrote.

Complexity is troublesome to speak in political messaging, and even throughout debates. For readers more likely to encounter mentions of applications and circumstances that Harris has been concerned in, we hope this week’s version will probably be a useful primer to the extra nuanced points of her document.

Loss of life Penalty

One of many earliest exams of Harris’ profession as district legal professional got here after a San Francisco man shot and killed police Officer Isaac Espinoza in 2004. Harris had campaigned towards capital punishment and rejected calls by police teams, the officer’s household and outstanding state Democratic officers to hunt a loss of life sentence. The choice completely fractured Harris’ relationship with town police, based on individuals near Harris and police officers. The Trump marketing campaign is already citing this case to criticize Harris.

That uneasiness between Harris and police teams endured by way of her first bid for California Legal professional Normal in 2010. However she labored to restore these relationships in her first time period, based on a 2016 New York Occasions Journal characteristic, and gained the assist of quite a few police teams throughout her reelection marketing campaign.

As state legal professional normal, Harris appealed a federal court docket ruling that will have successfully ended the loss of life penalty within the state, irritating anti-death penalty advocates. Harris argued that regardless of her personally-held convictions in regards to the punishment, the ruling was legally flawed — a place with which the ninth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals in the end agreed.

Incarcerated Transgender Folks

On quite a lot of points that got here up throughout her tenure as legal professional normal, Harris has stated that as a lawyer, she was sure to advocate on behalf of her consumer (the state of California) in ways in which may not align together with her private beliefs. This was her clarification for arguing to launch fewer prisoners than courts had ordered after the U.S. Supreme Court docket discovered that overcrowding in California prisons was creating merciless and weird punishment.

Harris informed the LGBTQ+ outlet The Advocate that her position advocating for the state is similar cause her workplace composed a quick looking for to disclaim gender affirmation surgical procedure for transgender individuals in jail. “I had purchasers, and one among them was the California Division of Corrections. It was their coverage. After I discovered about what they have been doing, behind the scenes, I bought them to alter the coverage,” Harris stated.

Whereas Harris’ position is just not publicly recognized, the division agreed to a settlement in 2015 that requires it to think about gender affirmation surgical procedure for incarcerated individuals on a case-by-case foundation.

Diversion Applications

One in every of Harris’ trademark efforts as San Francisco District Legal professional was the Again on Monitor diversion program, which was pretty uncommon for the mid-2000s, based on a then-Harris staffer, Michael Troncoso.

This system was made out there to some individuals between the ages of 18 and 30 pleading responsible to first-time non-violent drug prices. Individuals acquired individualized assist and job coaching, carried out neighborhood service and have been required to search out work or be enrolled in class. Profitable graduates had their responsible pleas tossed out and scrubbed from their data.

This system, which inside paperwork confirmed graduated between 30 and 100 individuals yearly, boasted a re-offense charge of about 10%, in comparison with 50% for comparable populations within the state.

Harris, who majored in economics as an undergraduate, conceived this system as a collection of incentives and disincentives — carrots and sticks. “Our job encompasses working unceasingly to make and hold our communities secure utilizing each instrument at our disposal,” she defined in her 2009 ebook “Sensible on Crime.” That strategy pushed again on the prevailing logic of the period: That prosecutors’ solely position was to win convictions.

She has spoken about this system in very sensible phrases. “This isn’t social work we’re doing. It is a regulation enforcement program,” Harris wrote. “We didn’t develop Again on Monitor out of pity or compassion.”

Innocence Circumstances

In 2008, Jamal Trulove was arrested in San Francisco and prosecuted by Harris’ workplace for the homicide of his pal Seu Kuka. An appellate court docket later discovered that cops had framed Trulove, and he was launched after six years in jail. The town agreed to pay him a $13 million settlement.

A former district legal professional staffer informed Vice that “prosecutions like Trulove’s would have needed to be authorised by Harris. However the approval course of was a rubber stamp, and it was extremely unlikely she was conversant in the main points.” Harris has not publicly commented on Trulove’s case.

As legal professional normal in 2010, Harris’ workplace additionally opposed DNA testing requested by the legal professionals for Kevin Cooper, who had been on the state’s loss of life row since 1985 for a quadruple homicide he stated he didn’t commit. In 2018, after a New York Occasions article highlighted misconduct by police investigators in Cooper’s case, Harris advocated for the state to permit the testing.

A complete investigation commissioned by the state did in the end conduct DNA testing, concluding final yr that the proof of Cooper’s guilt was “in depth and conclusive.”

Massive Banks

In 2011, as California Legal professional Normal, Harris walked away from a $4 billion settlement with a number of of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders over the fraudulent and unscrupulous habits that led to the 2009 monetary disaster — particularly their foreclosures practices.

The settlement was being negotiated by attorneys normal from a number of states on the urging of the Obama administration, and lots of have been advocating that states settle circumstances rapidly for a decrease quantity, based on reporting from the Los Angeles Occasions.

Harris dismissed the deal as “crumbs on the desk,” and in the end gained a $25 billion settlement for California. Harris has steadily cited the settlement as proof of her bona fides in looking for accountability from highly effective actors.

Critics of the settlement say even the topline quantity “wildly overstates the penalty for the banks and the profit for householders,” and that Harris let different banks answerable for “widespread misconduct” off the hook.

Journalist David Dayen, who reported on each of the criticisms, made clear that the evaluation of the choices was not particular to Harris, nonetheless, and utilized to all of the officers answerable for holding banks accountable for the mortgage disaster.

Harris has responded to the critique of the financial institution she didn’t go after — OneWest Financial institution — arguing that the regulation was on the financial institution’s aspect.

Truancy

Harris’ embrace of anti-truancy legal guidelines was probably the most controversial insurance policies of her prosecutorial profession. As district legal professional, she directed her workplace to file prices towards a handful of San Francisco dad and mom whose youngsters have been persistently lacking elementary college.

In her ebook “Sensible on Crime,” Harris explains the rationale: “We owe each little one an training and we owe ourselves the extra inoculation towards violence and crime that combating truancy can carry.”

Below the native effort, no dad and mom ever confronted jail time, and the fines levied have been uncommon and small.

A Harris marketing campaign aide touted this system’s effectiveness in remarks to NBC Information earlier this week. “Truancy dropped by 33% due to the coverage, and it additionally helped individuals in the neighborhood — this wasn’t one or two days; this was youngsters lacking 60 to 80 days out of a 180-day college yr.”

However as Legal professional Normal, Harris pushed for and noticed the passage of a statewide anti-truancy invoice that exported among the considering to California as an entire. Below that regulation, some dad and mom have been arrested by native regulation enforcement and confronted harsher penalties, together with Cheree Peoples, who was very publicly “perp-walked” throughout a 2013 arrest in Orange County in Southern California. Peoples stated her daughter’s college absences have been on account of hospitalizations for a power sickness.

Harris has defended her give attention to truancy broadly however expressed remorse for the way some circumstances have been dealt with after the passage of the statewide regulation.