Kamala Harris was all the rave after her debate performance Thursday night that featured the California Senator cause all sorts of problems for former vice president Joe Biden and his controversial past regarding desegregated bussing in the United States.
And the problems Harris caused for Biden was certainly deserving given the former VP still doesn’t want to take any ownership of his former stance on extremely an controversial issue.
However as Harris has undoubtedly capitalized off of her political points scored Thursday night with a surge in media attention and fund raising the Senator has so far been able to avoid answering for her own political transgressions, especially those from when she served as Attorney General of California.
In fact, Harris initially raising her hand when asked by the moderators as to whether or not she would abandon private insurance for a government run health program -only to backtrack the following day claiming she didn’t understanding the question perfectly sums up a lot of her record as a prosecutor.
First lets take a look at this New York Times write up from this past January citing her record as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011:
Consider her record as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011. Ms. Harris was criticized in 2010 for withholding information about a police laboratory technician who had been accused of “intentionally sabotaging” her work and stealing drugs from the lab. After a memo surfaced showing that Ms. Harris’s deputies knew about the technician’s wrongdoing and recent conviction, but failed to alert defense lawyers, a judge condemned Ms. Harris’s indifference to the systemic violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights.
Additionally as noted in the January NYT piece, Harris also pushed for California legislation that made it possible for the parents of elementary school children who were often absent from class to be prosecuted despite the concerns that these new laws would disproportionately affect low-income people of color.
And this was all before Harris became California’s top cop.
As Attorney General in California, Harris essentially fought to keep her State’s jails and prisons crowded despite the US Supreme Court finding that overcrowding in California prisons was so bad that it amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. And as bad as that sounds, Harris’ state lawyers once argued that releasing prisoners would lead to a depletion of its pool for prison labor. Harris though walked back what her lawyers presented as she clarified that she was unaware that was the direction her office was going.
Perhaps the worst part of Harris’ record in California was her knack of keeping people behind bars despite overwhelming evidence supporting their innocence.
One case in particular was Harris fighting to keep Daniel Larsen who was serving a 28-year-to-life sentence for a concealed weapon locked up even though there was very compelling evidence that he was in fact innocent. Harris even tried to keep him in prison over a technicality citing that Larsen didn’t bring forth his legal defense arguments in a timely fashion.
Lara Bazelon also cites other cases in which Harris defied evidence in order to keep presumably innocent people locked up.
In other incidents regarding Harris’ record, she was criticized for some of her stances when it came to investigating police shootings, at times took a hypocritical approach to capital punishment in California and in 2014 declined to take a position on Proposition 47 which reduced certain low-level felonies to misdemeanors. In fact Harris once laughed at the thought of decriminalizing marijuana before ultimately favoring to do so long after weed legalization started to pass around the country.
So as the mainstream media continues to gush over Harris’ debate performance perhaps in the coming days and weeks leading up to the next standoff in Detroit maybe in addition to continuing to hold Biden’s feet to the fire Harris should begin to answer questions regarding her controversial past as a prosecutor.