Kamala Harris: Pattern of Contempt for Voters and the Law

This article was originally published March 22, 2019. The author, Roger Canfield, suggested The Globe republish it – for context today. We agree. 

Sen. Kamala Devi Harris has declared herself unalterably opposed to the death penalty, but some critics, left and right, superficially declare her career as a prosecutor in San Francisco and California proves otherwise. False. Her actions disprove whatever words may or may not pass over her lips from time to time. She deviously pretends one thing while doing another. It is a pattern of contempt for voters and the law, including the death penalty. 

As District Attorney of San Francisco Harris protected illegal alien criminals from deportation, prosecution and the death penalty. She opposed death penalties for both David Hill, murderer of Officer Isaac Espinoza, and for MS-13 illegal alien Edwin Ramos, murderer of Tony Bologna and sons Michael and Matthew. As California Attorney General, Harris refused to criticize San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi for failing to hand over five times deported illegal alien, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, the murderer of Kate Steinle to ICE. Kamala Harris’s legitimated sanctuary policies freed thousands of criminal illegal aliens to murder cops and innocents, e.g. California police officers Danny Oliver, Michael Davis, Ronil Singh and innocents like Kate Steinle and Marilyn Pharis.

In fact, murder has never been at the top of Harris’s list of priorities. As San Francisco’s District Attorney Harris “solved’ 45 percent (32 of 73) of San Francisco’s backlog of murders by dismissing charges of murder. She plea bargained murder cases down to manslaughter, assault and burglary. Statistically, murder cases declined and her percentage of successful prosecutions increased to 67 percent during her reelection in 2007.

As California Attorney General, she pretended to refuse to take a public stand on death penalty initiatives before the voters of California. Why? Following decades of other attempts, in 2012 and 2016, California voters rejected two initiatives on the ballot to repeal capital punishment.  Again, Harris pretended to be officially neutral. Besides, not offending California voters, police and sheriffs, Harris had known duties conflicting with her actions as District Attorney of San Francisco.

The attorney general has the lawfully defined duty to write the official title and summary for ballot propositions. Second, as California’s top lawyer she was obligated to defend the state in court including defense of existing law, including the death penalty.  She exercised both duties capriciously to her own benefit. AG Kamala Devi Harris wrote or approved a series of biased, voter deceiving titles and summaries, which favored progressive positions (approving tax increases, gun control, weakening enhanced Three Strikes sentences for career criminals, and opposing the death penalty.)

In 2016, law enforcement groups sponsored an alternative initiative, Proposition 66, to speed up the near 20-years appeals process. Here’s the Harris’s official title and summary for Prop 66 for California voters:

DEATH PENALTY PROCEDURES INITIATIVE STATUTE. Changes procedures governing state court challenges to death sentences. Designates superior court for initial petitions and limits successive petitions. Requires appointed attorneys who take noncapital appeals to accept death penalty appeals. Exempts prison officials from existing regulation process for developing execution methods. Fiscal Impact: Unknown ongoing impact on state court costs for processing legal challenges to death sentences. Potential prison savings in the tens of millions of dollars annually.

“Nowhere in the Prop 66 summary does it say, ‘speeds enforcement of the death penalty’ or anything suggesting it, which was of course the purpose of the initiative,” said Mike Rushford, Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

Kamala Harris is a soft on crime progressive. Her book Smart on Crimes, is filled with the failed, soft on criminals policies and liberal judges of the sixties, creating crime waves only fixed by determinate sentences, Three Strikes and other measures against career criminals. Kamala Harris’s deft behind the scenes manipulations of the law have helped California empty prisons and jails and fill its streets with criminals. Yes, criminal justice needs reforms, but these are fixes too far.