As a prosecutor, Harris mixed criminal justice reform with tough-on-crime approach

[July 23, 2024]  By Luc Cohen

(Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Joe Biden has endorsed to replace him on the Democratic presidential ticket, started her political career as a California prosecutor who blended criminal justice reforms with a tough stance on some crimes.

Over more than a dozen years as San Francisco's district attorney and then as California's attorney general, Harris took some stances welcomed by the party's left flank, including opposition to the death penalty and staking out a hard line during negotiations with big banks over home foreclosure abuses.

But she rankled progressive critics with other moves, including a policy of criminally prosecuting parents of children who skipped school and rejecting a request for DNA testing from a Black man on death row who says he was wrongfully convicted of murder.

Her mixed record will likely provide fodder for Republican nominee Donald Trump to paint her as soft on crime. Harris has characterized her approach as being "smart on crime," and has spoken of the importance of preventing and punishing crime while also protecting the rights of defendants and curbing excesses.

"My vision of a progressive prosecutor was someone who used the power of the office with a sense of fairness, perspective and experience, someone who was clear about the need to hold serious criminals accountable and who understood that the best way to create safe communities was to prevent crime," Harris wrote in her 2019 memoir.

James Singer, a spokesperson for Harris' campaign, said her record stands in contrast to Trump's, who was convicted in May on criminal charges of covering up hush money paid to a porn star.

"Kamala Harris has spent her career taking on and beating the big banks, for-profit colleges, and criminals in service of our country," Singer said.

A spokesman for Trump's campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Trump has vowed to appeal his conviction.

ANTI-DEATH PENALTY

Harris, 59, in 2003 became the first woman elected as San Francisco's top prosecutor after campaigning in part on a pledge not to seek the death penalty.

Her stance was tested almost immediately, when police officer Isaac Espinoza was killed in 2004. Despite pressure from several California Democrats, including the state's two U.S. Senators, to bring the death penalty against the gang member who killed Espinoza, Harris held firm and secured a sentence of life without parole.

His widow Renata Espinoza told CNN in 2019 that Harris did not call her before announcing in a press conference she would not seek the death penalty.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, arrives to address the women and men's National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Champion teams in her first public appearance since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, on the South Lawn of the White House, Washington, U.S., July 22, 2024. REUTERS/Nathan Howard/File Photo

"She had just taken justice from us, from Isaac," Renata Espinoza said.

As district attorney, Harris drew praise from progressives for implementing a program to help young people arrested on non-violent offenses get job training, substance abuse treatment and housing. As attorney general, she launched bias training for state police officers.

But she attracted criticism from the left for a plan to discourage truancy by prosecuting the parents of chronically absent children - though none went to jail while she was district attorney, and Harris said in 2010 that elementary school truancy had fallen 33% over the prior two years.

'A FAIR DEAL'

After being elected attorney general in 2010, Harris' office opposed DNA testing requested by lawyers of Kevin Cooper, a man sitting on death row for a 1985 quadruple murder he says he did not commit. As a Senator in 2018, Harris reversed course and urged California to allow such testing.

A 2023 independent report found "extensive and conclusive" evidence of Cooper's guilt.

One of Harris' signature achievements as attorney general was obtaining a $1.1 billion judgment against for-profit Corinthian Colleges for misleading students.

She also secured an $18 billion settlement in 2012 from banks over foreclosure misconduct. California had initially been in line to receive around $4 billion as part of the multi-state litigation, but Harris said that was too little and threatened to walk away from negotiations.

"This outcome is the result of an insistence that California receive a fair deal," Harris said at the time.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; editing by Amy Stevens)

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