Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) said on Friday that her “career as a prosecutor was marked by fierce opposition to the death penalty,” but it was just four years ago that she was defending the California death penalty in federal court.
The new stance came days after Harris was spotlighted as a “flawed political leader” by the New York Times for her reluctance to allow for a new DNA test to be used in the case of Kevin Cooper, a man on death row who many believe was framed for murder. Harris declined to comment on the Sunday story but called author Nicholas Kristof on Friday to say she felt “awful” after reading his story. She put out a statement touting her record of opposing the death penalty, which has since been added to the story.
“My career as a prosecutor was marked by fierce opposition to the death penalty while still upholding the law and a commitment to fixing a broken criminal justice system,” Harris wrote on Facebook, urging California to allow for DNA testing to be used in Cooper’s case.
Harris’s Senate office didn’t respond to a request for information to support the claim that her career was “marked by fierce opposition to the death penalty,” a claim that wasn’t challenged by the New York Times despite major action taken by Harris as California’s attorney general to defend the state’s death penalty.
In 2014, Harris went to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to urge a reversal of a U.S. District Court ruling that California’s death penalty was unconstitutional. – READ MORE
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