As speculation grows over U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris’s presidential aspirations, the California Democrat’s record as a prosecutor and state attorney general are attracting new scrutiny.
The perception that Harris, 54, acted as a “progressive prosecutor” during her tenure as the district attorney of San Francisco and then California’s attorney general contradict her actions, a University of San Francisco associate law professor argues in an op-ed piece.
“Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent,” Lara Bazelon writes in the New York Times.
“Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.”
Bazelon then lists multiple instances where the Democratic senator failed to embrace criminal justice reforms – either opposing them or declining to state an opinion. – READ MORE