As a prosecutor, Kamala Harris 'tried to bridge the tricky divide'
Kamala Harris became a deputy district attorney in 1990, won the race for San Francisco district attorney in 2004 and was elected California attorney general in 2010. (Photo from the White House)
Before she became a U.S. senator, the vice president and the potential Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris was a prosecutor in California who opposed the death penalty but defended capital punishment on behalf of the state.
After graduating from the school formerly known as the University of California Hastings College of the Law, Harris became a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, in 1990, where she specialized in child sexual-assault prosecutions, according to her White House bio. Such cases are “notoriously difficult to prosecute,” according to a 2019 profile in the California Sunday Magazine.
She won the race for San Francisco district attorney in 2004 and was elected California attorney general in 2010.
“As a county prosecutor, San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, Ms. Harris was known as focused, charismatic and effective,” according to an op-ed in the New York Times. “What has come to be perceived as sometimes crippling caution was once understood as pragmatism and deliberation—necessary qualities when building a case.”
During her time as a prosecutor, Harris took some positions applauded by liberals and some that “rankled progressive critics,” Reuters reports.
Progressives applauded Harris’ opposition to the death penalty and her initial opposition to a foreclosure-abuse settlement with banks, based on her argument that the initial offer amounted to mere “crumbs on the table,” CBS News reports. The final settlement was much larger. Liberals also liked her job-training, addiction and housing program for nonviolent offenders.
She also generated headlines when she obtained a $1.1 billion judgment in 2016 against Corinthian Colleges for misleading students.
Harris stuck with her stance against the death penalty as district attorney when a suspect was charged with killing a police officer. The defendant was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
On the environment, Harris joined 16 other attorneys general in a coalition to fight climate change, according to CBS News, which linked to a March 2016 press release. The states would be working together to investigate whether fossil fuel companies misled investors and the public on the impact of climate change, the news release said.
Progressives criticized Harris, however, for her policy to prosecute parents of children who repeatedly failed to show up for school and her rejection of a DNA request by a death row inmate who claimed that he was innocent.
She also backtracked on opposition to the death penalty. After Harris became California attorney general, a federal judge ruled that California’s death penalty was unconstitutional because prisoners waited so long for execution that the punishment was cruel and unusual. Harris appealed, and the decision was overturned.
During her short 2020 presidential campaign, Harris “worked to shed some of her tough-on-crime image and ran to the left of Biden on most criminal justice issues, including solitary confinement, federal mandatory minimum sentences and decriminalizing border crossings,” the Marshall Project reports.
She also staked out a position on clemency, proposing a sentencing review unit to consider early release for those who served at least 10 years of federal sentences running 20 years or more in length. And she backed a federal moratorium on executions.
According to a January/February 2018 profile in Mother Jones, Harris “has long tried to bridge the tricky divide between social progressivism and the work required as a prosecutor.”
The article noted her flip-flop on the death penalty and contrasts her push for a big settlement in the foreclosure-abuse case with her decision not to prosecute OneWest Bank for alleged foreclosure violations. The story also noted inconsistencies in stances on LGBTQ rights.
“In 2014,” the article says, Harris “co-sponsored a bill to outlaw the so-called gay-panic defense in California, a legal strategy that often shielded perpetrators of violent crimes against LGBT people from serious punishment. But a year later, she sought to block gender reassignment surgery for a transgender prison inmate.”
