In campaign mode, Kamala Harris doesn’t refer to herself as a politician, but as a prosecutor.

Nigel Duara

CalMatters

Her rise in Democratic politics began in California’s courtrooms. Voters elected her first as San Francisco’s district attorney and then as the state’s attorney general.

She battled multinational corporations on behalf of Californians, but also oversaw the wrongful conviction of someone who was later stabbed in prison. As the state’s lawyer, she refused to defend California’s gay marriage ban, but did the opposite on the death penalty, defending the state’s policy despite her personal opposition to it.

When she first ran for president five years ago, in a time of rising skepticism about policing, she pitched herself to Democratic primary voters as not merely a prosecutor but a progressive prosecutor. Today, in a general election campaign that may hinge on winning over independents concerned about crime, she’s largely dropped the modifier. Her record as a prosecutor draws criticism from both sides: The left has criticized her for having been too tough, even as the Trump campaign charges that she was “soft as CHARMIN.”

These nine cases — some successes, some stumbles — helped define the complicated law enforcement legacy of Election 2024’s Democratic presidential nominee:

1. Harris Faces First Test When a Cop Is Killed

The shooting of a police officer on a poorly lit street in San Francisco in 2004 would haunt Harris for decades.

Officer Isaac Espinoza and his partner were in plainclothes when they approached a man in their unmarked vehicle on April 10. Espinoza, 29, stepped out and flashed a light at David Hill, according to accounts of trial testimony.

Hill fired several rounds from an AK-47. Two struck Espinoza, killing him. Espinoza’s partner was injured, and Hill was accused of first-degree murder, along with other charges.

The newly elected DA, Harris, declined to pursue the death penalty against Hill – consistent with her position while she campaigned for the office, but offensive to many who attended Espinoza’s funeral.

“This is not only the definition of tragedy, it’s the special circumstance called for by the death penalty law,” former Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the mourners, provoking a resounding standing ovation.

The decision immediately pitted Harris — the first woman, first Black and first Asian American district attorney in San Francisco history — against the police.

“Isaac paid the ultimate price,” said San Francisco Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes at the funeral. “And I speak for all officers in demanding that his killer also pay the ultimate price.”

After eight weeks of testimony, jurors convicted Hill of second-degree murder and attempted murder. They rejected the charge of first-degree murder, not finding the act premeditated, and Hill’s conviction and life sentence were upheld in 2011.

In her 2009 book “Smart on Crime,” Harris wrote: “The broadly held assumption that simply increasing the penalty for any crime will automatically deter more people from committing the crime is a myth. We have to understand why long sentences alone are not sufficient to rock the crime pyramid for many types of crimes.”

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2. Harris’ Office Convicts the Wrong Man — a $13 Million Mistake

Actor Jamal Trulove was a contestant on VH1’s “I Love New York 2,” a “Bachelor”-style dating show in which 20 men competed for the affections of a failed reality show contestant.

A viewer who happened to have witnessed a fatal July 2007 shooting at San Francisco’s Sunnydale housing project saw the show and told police she was convinced: Trulove, she said, had been the shooter.

The witness, Priscilla Lualemaga, had initially identified a different man as the shooter. When police showed her a photo lineup, and told her the shooter in that lineup, Lualemaga said Trulove “looks like the guy who could have shot” the victim.

But after the show aired, Lualemaga said she was certain.

When the case went to trial in 2010, the DA’s office put both Lualemaga and her sister in witness protection, citing alleged threats.The jury convicted Trulove of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to 50 years to life.

But on appeal, a ballistics expert testified that Lualemaga — the only eyewitness to testify that Trulove was at the scene — could not have observed the shooting from the direction she was facing, given the rounds’ trajectory.

“The prosecutor wove these points into the very fabric of her closing argument, going so far as to urge the jury to have the same ‘courage’ as Lualemaga and find defendant guilty,” wrote appellate court judges. “There was no evidence of any threats or other actual danger presented by defendant, his friends, or his family to Lualemaga or her family…”

Trulove was acquitted in March 2015, and went on to a role in the film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.”

A federal lawsuit he filed after his release — noting he was stabbed in prison when he failed to give his cell’s bottom bunk to a gang leader — cost the city and county of San Francisco $13 million.

In a new podcast interview, he recounted his conviction: “I’ll never forget, when I turned around and I looked, and I seen Kamala Harris — we locked eyes this one time, and she laughed — she literally just kinda busted out laughing,” said Trulove, who’s endorsed Donald Trump.

3. Harris vs. the Mentally Ill Woman Shot by Police, Then Prosecuted

The Espinoza case left Harris on shaky ground with the San Francisco Police Department — tension she sought to soothe via a monthly spot in the police union newsletter. In October 2008, here’s how her office presented a case in which police responded to a mentally ill woman in crisis:

“When police were called to the defendant’s home, she allegedly attempted to assault the responding officers with a knife. The police subdued the defendant by shooting her several times.”

Put another way: Police repeatedly shot a schizophrenic woman. And then Harris prosecuted her — but the jury balked.

In August 2008, Teresa Sheehan, then 56, was living in a group home for people with mental illness. When one of the home’s workers attempted to check on her, Sheehan replied with threats and said she had a knife.

A worker summoned police. Two officers knocked on Sheehan’s private room and eventually used a key to open her door. She grabbed a knife with a five-inch blade, the officers would later testify, and said “I am going to kill you. I don’t need help. Get out.”

The officers later testified that they retreated but, worried that Sheehan might climb out of her window and to a fire escape, they opened the door again. One pepper-sprayed Sheehan and, when she didn’t drop the knife, the other shot her twice. The first officer also shot her.

She survived, and a jury acquitted her of making criminal threats and deadlocked on assault, though 11 of 12 jurors voted for acquittal. Sheehan sued San Francisco, settling for $1 million.

“If (Harris) actually looked at it and said, ‘This is a righteous case, I want to go after a mentally ill woman who was shot,’ then you question that decision,” Laurie Levenson, a criminal law professor at LA’s Loyola Law School told CalMatters. “If she didn’t know about it, then you question her management skills.”

4. Harris vs. a ‘Predatory’ For-Profit College

When a 2013 U.S. Justice Department investigation turned up evidence that the for-profit Corinthian Colleges were targeting “isolated” people who were “unable to see and plan well for the future,” while falsely promising prospective students job placement rates as high as 100%, it caught the eye of Kamala Harris. As California’s new attorney general, she sued them, alleging false advertising and deceptive marketing.

The Santa Ana-based company had purchased several private for-profit colleges that were in financial trouble, including at least three in California. By 2010, it had enrolled more than 110,000 students at 105 campuses.

Soon a number of Corinthian students told the U.S. Education Department that the schools weren’t placing them in jobs at the rates Corinthian had promised, leaving them saddled with student debt. The Office of Federal Student Aid forced the schools to stop any mergers, purchases of new schools or offering new programs.

Harris said the schools were targeting some of California’s most vulnerable prospective students.

“The predatory scheme devised by executives at Corinthian Colleges, Inc. is unconscionable,” Harris said in 2013. “Designed to rake in profits and mislead investors, they targeted some of our state’s most particularly vulnerable people—including low income, single mothers and veterans returning from combat.”

In March 2016, Harris won a default judgment against Corinithian for $1.1 billion; the company never answered Harris’ legal complaint and its lawyers didn’t appear in court on the day of the verdict.

In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education discharged $5.8 billion in student loan debt to 560,000 borrowers who paid to attend Corinthian Colleges.

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5. Harris vs. Big Banks in the Mortgage Meltdown

Harris’ entry into the national spotlight came at the tail end of the Great Recession in 2011, when as California’s attorney general, she rejected a settlement offer from five major mortgage lenders — one other states agreed to.

It could have jeopardized the deal, but her brinkmanship worked: The banks kicked in a lot more, allowing California to collect about $20 billion, from an initial settlement offer of $4 billion.

The agreement meant Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. collectively reduced $12 billion in principal on loans or offered short sales to about 250,000 California homeowners who owed more on their mortgages than their houses were worth.

The story of that negotiation and settlement became a key part of Harris’ political narrative, especially during her first candidacy for president in the 2020 Democratic primaries.

But the shine has somewhat worn off that victory in the years since.

A recent Wall Street Journal analysis of the settlement found that, though Harris wanted to use the settlement money to reduce mortgage principals, about half the settlement went to banks that wrote off the mortgages on homes that had already been abandoned. Each Californian with a defaulted mortgage got a check for $1,400, which the state suggested it could use to help pay a month’s worth of rent.

Another $4.7 billion was used to reduce debt on second mortgages, often home equity credit lines. Only about $4.5 billion was used to lower debt on primary mortgages.

At the time, Harris told the New York Times that in a homicide case, “you’re talking about something where the body’s cold. So the conversation is about punishment, it’s about restitution. This was not that. Every day there are homeowners in California who will either receive relief so they can stay in their home, or will be in the foreclosure process and potentially lose their home. And that always weighed heavily on my mind.”

6. When Harris Defended the Death Penalty She Opposes

When Julia Miller’s husband found her body on Aug. 25, 1992, she had been bound with a telephone cord and stabbed to death. She had two knives still in her neck. There were pieces of three other knives near her body. There was a rag stuffed in her mouth.

Evidence immediately pointed to Miller’s daughter’s boyfriend, Ernest Dewayne Jones, who had already served six years in state prison for raping his previous girlfriend’s mother.

Pamela Miller, Juila’s daughter, told the court “That bastard needs to be sentenced to death.” A judge agreed and Jones was sent to California’s death row. But Pamela Miller told an LA Times reporter that the sentencing was pointless because of how rarely executions were carried out.

Nearly 20 years later, while Jones awaited execution, a federal judge overturned the sentence, declaring California’s death penalty was unconstitutional because of the “inordinate and unpredictable period of delay” before execution.”

Harris — despite her own personal opposition to the death penalty, and over the objections of death penalty opponents — went to court to defend it. “I am appealing the court’s decision because it is not supported by the law,” Harris said in 2014, “and it undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.”

She prevailed, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Jones’ death sentence. In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium on executions, shuttering San Quentin’s death chamber.

7. When Harris Refused to Defend a Same-Sex Marriage Ban

For 29 days in early 2004, San Francisco issued more than 4,000 marriage licenses. Then-mayor Newsom had decided to allow same-sex couples to marry three weeks into his first term; the number of people calling City Hall temporarily knocked out its phone lines.

The weddings were, technically, against the law. Newsom’s office expected an immediate injunction after the first wedding, but it didn’t come for a month. Among those who officiated weddings during that 29-day blitz was the city’s district attorney, Kamala Harris.

“One of the most joyful (moments of my career) was performing the marriages in 2004. Truly joyful,” Harris told The Advocate earlier this year.

The California Supreme Court nullified all of the marriages in April 2004, and voters then approved Proposition 8 to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

When same-sex couples challenged the ballot measure all the way to the nation’s highest court, then-Attorney General Harris refused to defend it, saying it was unconstitutional. “The Supreme Court has described marriage as a fundamental right 14 times since 1888,” Harris said in 2013. “The time has come for this right to be afforded to every citizen.”

Later that year, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California, Harris officiated the first wedding.

8. Cheap Prison Labor, Defended by Harris’ Office

Harris read a news story one day in 2014 and discovered that attorneys at the state Justice Department she was heading had argued against the release of minimum-security prisoners because of their value to the state labor pool.

That, at least, is how she explained it in an interview with Buzzfeed News.

“I will be very candid with you, because I saw that article this morning, and I was shocked, and I’m looking into it to see if the way it was characterized in the paper is actually how it occurred in court,” Harris told BuzzFeed News in a 2014 interview. “I was very troubled by what I read. I just need to find out what did we actually say in court.”

The inmates working in prisons as groundskeepers, janitors and cooks earned between 8 and 37 cents per hour.

A federal judicial panel overseeing California’s overcrowded prison system had ordered the state to increase the sentence reductions minimum-security inmates earned for participating in rehabilitation and education programs.

But California Justice Department attorneys had a different view, arguing that prisons needed cheap inmate labor to keep functioning.

“Extending 2-for-1 credits to all minimum custody inmates at this time would severely impact fire camp participation — a dangerous outcome while California is in the middle of a difficult fire season and severe drought,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in a September 2014 filing.

The argument, later disavowed by Harris, was part of her office’s frequent conflicts with the three-judge panel overseeing the prison system.

Harris’ attorney general’s office “continually equivocated regarding the facts and the law,” the three-judge panel wrote in 2013. “This court would therefore be within its rights to issue an order to show cause and institute contempt proceedings immediately.”

The judges said they didn’t do so because that might further delay the state’s release of nonviolent prisoners.

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9. Harris, Her Lawyers and a Fake Confession

A Kern County prosecutor invented two lines of incriminating testimony in a defendant’s 2013 deposition and sent the faked transcript to the defendant’s public defender.

The phony lines read like a confession from defendant Efrain Velasco-Palacios, and would have changed the potential charges of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child to penetrative sex with a child — meaning a conviction could trigger a life sentence.

When the public defender discovered the fabrication, he successfully argued to get the case dismissed.

Then, Harris’ Justice Department appealed.

Their argument: The charges shouldn’t have been dismissed because, while the prosecutor did fake the lines, he didn’t physically assault Velasco-Palacios.

“Dismissal is an appropriate sanction for government misconduct that is egregious enough to prejudice a defendant’s constitutional rights,” the California Court of Appeals found in 2015. “On appeal, however, the People dispute that (the prosecutor’s) misconduct was outrageous or conscience shocking in a constitutional sense, as it was not physically brutal.”

The appellate court justices said it found “no support” for that argument.

“If Harris really thinks that knowingly producing a fraudulent document to secure an illicit advantage isn’t ‘outrageous,’ then perhaps she slept through her legal ethics courses,” wrote Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, in 2015.

Robert Murray, the prosecutor who filed the false transcript, would later describe his actions to the State Bar Court as a joke and a prank. It recommended a two-year suspension. Murray now works at the Office of the Inspector General and has had an active law license since 2018, according to the state bar website.

In her 2009 autobiography on her years as a prosecutor, Harris wrote about the kind of crimes that motivated her.

“In nearly twenty years as a prosecutor, the last six as the elected District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco, I have spent a lot of time moving between the bright spotlight that shines on certain aspects of our criminal justice system and the darker places that the public doesn’t see,” she wrote. “I have prosecuted the manipulative predators who commit sexual assaults on children. I have prosecuted conduct that is so destructive that my first and only priority has been to remove the perpetrator from free society for as long as humanly possible. Sometimes, forever.”

About the Author

Nigel Duara joined CalMatters in 2020 as a Los Angeles-based reporter covering poverty and inequality issues for our California Divide collaboration. Previously, he served as a national and climate correspondent on the HBO show VICE News Tonight.

About the CalMatters

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