Kamala Harris
Encyclopedia
Kamala Devi Harris is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 attorney
Attorney at law
An attorney at law in the United States is a practitioner in a court of law who is legally qualified to prosecute and defend actions in such court on the retainer of clients. Alternative terms include counselor and lawyer...

. She is the 32nd and current Attorney General
California Attorney General
The California Attorney General is the State Attorney General of California. The officer's duty is to ensure that "the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced" The Attorney General carries out the responsibilities of the office through the California Department of Justice.The...

 of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 following the 2010 California state elections
California Attorney General election, 2010
The 2010 California Attorney General election was held on November 2, 2010 to choose the Attorney General of California. The primary election was held on June 8, 2010...

. Harris has worked as an author and a politician and has served as District Attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...

 of San Francisco since 2004. First elected in 2003, defeating incumbent district attorney Terence Hallinan
Terence Hallinan
Terence Hallinan is an American attorney and politician from San Francisco, California. He is the second of six sons born to leftist attorney Vincent Hallinan and his wife Vivian....

, she was re-elected in 2007. Harris is the first female, African-American, and Asian-American attorney general in California and the first Indian-American attorney general in the United States.

Early life and education

Harris was born in Oakland
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. She is the daughter of a Tamil
Tamil people
Tamil people , also called Tamils or Tamilians, are an ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. Historic and post 15th century emigrant communities are also found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, Canada,...

 India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan – a breast cancer specialist who immigrated to the United States from Chennai
Chennai
Chennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...

, Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...

, India in 1960 – and a Jamaican American
Jamaican American
Jamaican Americans are Americans of Jamaican heritage or Jamaican-born people who live in the United States of America. American citizenship is not a prerequisite of being a Jamaican American as permanent residents are also given this title....

 father, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 economics professor Donald Harris. She has one younger sister, Maya Harris
Maya Harris
Maya Harris is Vice President for Peace & Social Justice at the Ford Foundation. She was named to that position in June 2008. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, she served as the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California...

. While the Harris sisters grew up in a household that blended Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

 and Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

 teachings, she is currently a practicing Baptist.

Harris attended Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...

 in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, where she was initiated into Alpha Kappa Alpha
Alpha Kappa Alpha
Alpha Kappa Alpha is the first Greek-lettered sorority established and incorporated by African American college women. The sorority was founded on January 15, 1908, at Howard University in Washington, D.C., by a group of nine students, led by Ethel Hedgeman Lyle...

 sorority, and received her Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...

 (JD) from University of California, Hastings College of the Law
University of California, Hastings College of the Law
University of California, Hastings College of the Law is a public law school in San Francisco, California, located in the Civic Center neighborhood....

 in 1989.

Career

Harris served as Deputy District Attorney in Alameda County, California
Alameda County, California
Alameda County is a county in the U.S. state of California. It occupies most of the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 1,510,271, making it the 7th most populous county in the state...

, from 1990 to 1998. She then became Managing Attorney of the Career Criminal Unit in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office. In 2000, San Francisco City Attorney Louise Renne recruited Harris to join her office, where she was Chief of the Community and Neighborhood Division, which oversees civil code enforcement
Code Enforcement
Code enforcement, sometimes encompassing law enforcement, is the act of enforcing a set of rules, principles, or laws and insuring observance of a system of norms or customs. An authority usually enforces a civil code, a set of rules, or a body of laws and compel those subject to their authority...

 matters. Recognized by The Los Angeles Daily Journal
The Daily Journal Corporation
The Daily Journal Corporation publishes legal and business newspapers, a monthly magazine and legal information.The Daily Journal Corporation's largest publications are the Los Angeles | San Francisco Daily Journal and California Lawyer. The Daily Journal provides news of interest to California...

as one of the top 100 lawyers in California, Harris serves on the board of the California District Attorney's Association and is Vice President of the National District Attorneys Association.

In 2003 Harris was elected District Attorney of San Francisco by defeating two term incumbent Terence Hallinan
Terence Hallinan
Terence Hallinan is an American attorney and politician from San Francisco, California. He is the second of six sons born to leftist attorney Vincent Hallinan and his wife Vivian....

 and was reelected when she ran unopposed in 2007.

She was called a front-runner in her campaign being nominated to be California Attorney General
California Attorney General
The California Attorney General is the State Attorney General of California. The officer's duty is to ensure that "the laws of the state are uniformly and adequately enforced" The Attorney General carries out the responsibilities of the office through the California Department of Justice.The...

 in 2010, and on June 8, 2010, she received the Democratic nomination for California Attorney General.

In 2009, Harris wrote Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer. Harris looks at criminal justice from an economic perspective, attempting to reduce temptation and access for criminals. The book goes through a series of "myths" surrounding the criminal justice system, and presents proposals to reduce and prevent crime.

She has been outspoken on the need for innovation in public safety, particularly with respect to reducing the recidivism
Recidivism
Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been treated or trained to extinguish that behavior...

 rate in San Francisco. One such program, "Back on Track" was signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....

 as a model program for the state. Initially, there were issues with removing illegal immigrants from the program, including an incident involving Alexander Izaguirre, who was later arrested for assault. However, before the program was named a state model by Governor Schwarzenegger, it was revised to address this concern.

2010 race for California Attorney General

On November 12, 2008, Harris announced her candidacy for California Attorney General. She was immediately seen as the front runner and was endorsed by such prominent Californians as Senator Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein is the senior U.S. Senator from California. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served in the Senate since 1992. She also served as 38th Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988....

 and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi is the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives and served as the 60th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011...

. In the Democratic Party primary she faced Chris Kelly
Chris Kelly (entrepreneur)
Christopher Michael "Chris" Kelly is an American entrepreneur, politician, and lawyer. Until March 16, 2010, he was the Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook...

, former Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook; Assemblyman Alberto Torrico
Alberto Torrico
Alberto Torrico is a member of the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. He formerly represented the 20th Assembly District which includes Fremont, Newark, Union City and Milpitas among other cities in the East Bay...

; Assemblyman and former military prosecutor Ted Lieu
Ted Lieu
Ted W. Lieu is a Democratic Party California State Senator, who has represented the 28th Senate District since February 18, 2011, after being elected to fill the seat of deceased Senator Jenny Oropeza...

; Assemblyman Pedro Nava
Pedro Nava (politician)
California State Assembly member Pedro Nava grew up and attended public schools in Southern California. He studied at San Bernardino Valley College, graduated from California State University, San Bernardino, and obtained his law degree from the University of California, Davis, Martin Luther King...

; Rocky Delgadillo, former City Attorney of Los Angeles; and Mike Schmier. In the June 8, 2010, primary, she was nominated with 33.6% of the vote and her closest competitors, Torrico and Kelly, had 15.6% and 15.5% respectively. In the general election, she faced Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley
Steve Cooley
Stephen Lawrence "Steve" Cooley is an American politician. As a Republican, he has been a prosecutor for 27 years and has been the Los Angeles County District Attorney since his election in 2000, in which he defeated incumbent two-term District Attorney Gil Garcetti, a Democrat...

. On election night, November 2, 2010, Cooley prematurely declared victory, but many ballots remained uncounted. On November 24, as the count advanced, Harris was leading by more than 55,000 votes, and Cooley conceded. On January 3, 2011, Harris became the first woman, African-American, and Asian-American attorney general in California and the first Indian-American attorney general in the United States.

Endorsements

In her campaign for California Attorney General, Harris has received the endorsements of United Farm Workers
United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association led by César Chávez...

 co-founder Dolores Huerta
Dolores Huerta
Dolores C. Huerta is the co-founder and First Vice President Emeritus of the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO , and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.-Early life:...

, United Educators of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Firefighters Local 798. She has also received the endorsement of Antonio Villaraigosa
Antonio Villaraigosa
Antonio Ramón Villaraigosa , born Antonio Ramón Villar, Jr., is the 41st and current Mayor of Los Angeles, California, the third Mexican American to have ever held office in the city of Los Angeles and the first in over 130 years. He is also the current president of the United States Conference of...

, the current Mayor of Los Angeles.

Death penalty

Harris is opposed to the death penalty but has said that she would review each case individually. Her position was tested in April 2004, when SFPD
San Francisco Police Department
The San Francisco Police Department, also known as the SFPD and San Francisco Department Of Police, is the police department of the City and County of San Francisco, California...

 Officer Isaac Espinoza was murdered in the Bayview district. Harris announced that she would not seek the death penalty for the man accused of his killing. The decision evoked protests from the San Francisco Police Officers Association, Sen. Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein
Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein is the senior U.S. Senator from California. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served in the Senate since 1992. She also served as 38th Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988....

, and others. Those who supported the decision not to seek the death penalty included San Francisco Supervisors Tom Ammiano
Tom Ammiano
Tom Ammiano is an American politician and LGBT rights activist from San Francisco, California. Ammiano is a Democrat who has served as a member of the California State Assembly since 2008, representing the 13th district...

 and Sophie Maxwell
Sophie Maxwell
Sophie Maxwell was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representing District 10.-Biography:Maxwell has lived in the Bayview district for the last twenty years....

, in whose district the murder occurred. The jury found the convicted killer, David Hill, guilty of second-degree murder although the prosecutor, Harry Dorfman, had sought a first-degree murder conviction. The defense had argued that Hill thought Espinoza was a member of a rival gang and that the murder was not premeditated. Hill was given the maximum sentence for the conviction, life without the possibility of parole.

Harris's position against the death penalty was tested again in the case of Edwin Ramos
Edwin Ramos
Edwin U. Ramos is a Salvadoran gang member, convicted felon, and murder suspect. An illegal immigrant from El Salvador and member of the Mara Salvatrucha and Sureño street gangs, he is the suspect in the June 22, 2008 triple murder of Anthony Bologna and his sons, Michael and Matthew, in San...

, an illegal immigrant and alleged MS-13 gang member who was accused of murdering Tony Bologna and his sons Michael and Matthew. On September 10, 2009, Harris announced she would seek life in prison without the possibility of parole rather than the death penalty in the Ramos case.

Harris has expressed the belief that life without possibility of parole is a better, and more cost-effective, punishment. According to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, the death penalty conservatively costs $137 million per year. If the system were changed to life without possibility of parole, the annual costs would be approximately $12 million per year. Harris noted that the resulting surplus could put 1,000 more police officers into service in San Francisco alone.

Violent crimes, felons, incarceration rate, and conviction rate

As San Francisco District Attorney, Harris has raised the overall felony conviction rate from 52% in 2003 to 67% in 2006, the highest in a decade, secured an 85% conviction rate for homicides, and increased convictions of drug dealers from 56% in 2003 to 74% in 2006. While these statistics represent only trial convictions, she has also closed many cases via plea bargains. When she took office, she took a special interest in clearing some of the murder caseload from the previous administration. Harris claimed that the records were less than optimal from the previous administration, and worked to get convictions on what she could. That meant that out of the 73 homicide cases backlogged, 32 cases took deals for lesser charges such as manslaughter or took pleas to other crimes such as assault or burglary while the murder charges were dismissed.

However, critics argue that San Francisco sends fewer people to jail per arrest than other counties throughout the state. The San Francisco DA's incarceration rates are among the lowest in the entire state of California—fully 10 times lower than in San Diego County, for example. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "roughly 4 of every 100 arrests result in prison terms in San Francisco, compared with 12.8 out of 100 in Alameda County, 14.4 of 100 in Sacramento County, 21 of 100 in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, 26.6 of 100 in Fresno County, 38.7 of 100 in Los Angeles County and 41 of 100 in San Diego County." Police also note that lenient sentencing from San Francisco judges also plays a role in this.

While officers within the SFPD have credited Harris with tightening loopholes in bail and drug programs that defendants have exploited in the past, they have also accused her of being too deliberate in her prosecution of murder suspects. Additionally, in 2009 San Francisco prosecutors won a lower percentage of their felony jury trials than their counterparts at district attorneys' offices covering the 10 largest cities in California, according to data on case outcomes compiled by officials at the San Francisco Superior Court as well as by other county courts and prosecutors. (Officials in Sacramento, the state's seventh-largest city, did not provide data.) Harris's at-trial felony conviction rate that year was 76 percent, down 12 points from the previous year. By contrast, the most recent recorded statewide average was 83 percent, according to statistics from the California Judicial Council. In a small sample, a report computed that the conviction rate for felony trials in San Francisco County in the first three months of 2010 was just 53%. San Francisco has historically had one of the lowest conviction rates in the state; the county is known for a defendant friendly jury pool.

Hate crimes and civil rights

Harris created a special Hate Crimes Unit as San Francisco District Attorney. She focused on hate crimes against LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

 children and teens in schools. She convened a national conference to confront the "gay-transgender panic defense", which has been used to justify violent hate crimes. Harris supports same-sex marriage in California and opposed both Proposition 22 and Proposition 8
California Proposition 8 (2008)
Proposition 8 was a ballot proposition and constitutional amendment passed in the November 2008 state elections...

.

In 2004, The National Urban League
National Urban League
The National Urban League , formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. It is the oldest and largest...

 honored Harris as a "Woman of Power" and she received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the National Black Prosecutors Association in 2005. In her campaign for California Attorney General, she has received the endorsements of numerous groups, including the abortion rights EMILY's List
EMILY's List
EMILY's List is a political action committee in the United States that aims to help elect female candidates to office. It was founded by Ellen Malcolm in 1984....

, California Legislative Black Caucus, Asian American Action Fund, Black Women Organized for Political Action, Mexican American Bar Association, South Asians for Opportunity, and the National Women's Political Caucus.

Harris has been vocal in the immigration debate, supporting San Francisco's immigration policy of not inquiring about immigration status in the process of a criminal investigation. Harris argues that it is important that immigrants be able to talk with law enforcement without fear.

Education

In interviews with Matt Lauer
Matt Lauer
Matthew Todd "Matt" Lauer . is an American television journalist best known as the host of NBC's The Today Show since 1997. He was previously a news anchor in New York and a local talk-show host in Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and Richmond...

 on The Today Show
The Today Show
Today is an iconic American morning news and talk show airing every morning on NBC. Debuting on January 14, 1952, it was the first of its genre on American television and in the world. The show is also the fourth-longest running American television series...

and local KGO-TV
KGO-TV
KGO-TV, channel 7, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Walt Disney Company-owned American Broadcasting Company, based in San Francisco, California...

, Harris argued for treating "habitual and chronic truancy" among children in elementary school as a crime committed by the parents of truant children. She argues that there is a direct connection between habitual truancy in elementary school and crime later in life. She has received the endorsement of the California Federation of Teachers.

Environment

During her time as San Francisco District Attorney, Harris created the Environmental Justice Unit in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and has prosecuted several industries and individuals for pollution, most notably U-Haul
U-Haul
U-Haul International, Inc. is an American equipment rental company, based in Phoenix, Arizona, that has been in operation since 1945. The company was founded by Leonard Shoen U-Haul International, Inc. is an American equipment rental company, based in Phoenix, Arizona, that has been in operation...

, Alameda Publishing Corporation, and the Cosco Busan oil spill
Cosco Busan oil spill
The COSCO Busan oil spill occurred at 08:30 UTC-8 on 7 November 2007 between San Francisco and Oakland, California, in which of IFO-380 heavy fuel oil, sometimes referred to as "bunker fuel", spilled into San Francisco Bay after the container ship M/V COSCO Busan operated by, Fleet Management...

. She has also advocated for strong enforcement of environmental protection laws.

Financial crimes

Harris has prosecuted numerous financial crimes throughout her career, particularly those affecting elders, those involving use of high-technology, and identity theft. She has indicated that as attorney general she would crack down on predatory lending
Predatory lending
Predatory lending describes unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent practices of some lenders during the loan origination process. While there are no legal definitions in the United States for predatory lending, an audit report on predatory lending from the office of inspector general of the FDIC broadly...

 and other financial crimes.

Police department laboratory and disclosure failures

San Francisco Police Department drug lab technician Deborah Madden admitted to taking amounts of cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...

 from evidence samples in the police department's crime lab. The testing unit of the police department lab was shut down on March 9, 2010. Since then, hundreds of drug cases have either been dismissed or discharged due to evidentiary requirements. While Harris's office was aware of troubling issues at the police department's drug lab months before the issue became public, the entire scope of the issues did not become clear until Madden was exposed for removing drug samples. The police department later widened the investigation into their crime lab to include cases that were already prosecuted.

On May 4, 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

reported that a number of felony convictions were in jeopardy when it was revealed that the prosecuting attorneys did not disclose criminal backgrounds for relevant San Francisco police officers before testifying. On May 20, 2010, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo ruled that prosecutors had violated defendants' rights by failing to disclose damaging information about the police drug lab technician. The judge concluded that prosecutors had failed to fulfill their constitutional duty to tell defense attorneys about problems surrounding Deborah Madden, the now-retired technician at the heart of the cocaine-skimming scandal that led police to shut down the drug analysis section of their crime lab. Harris's office has been unable to vouch for the reliability of Madden's work and has dismissed more than 600 drug cases since the scandal became public in February. Madden testified at trials before leaving the lab in December. Under a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Brady v. Maryland
Brady v. Maryland
Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 , was a United States Supreme Court case in which the prosecution had withheld from the criminal defendant certain evidence. The defendant challenged his conviction, arguing it had been contrary to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United...

, district attorneys are obligated to provide defense attorneys with information in their possession about prosecution witnesses that could be used to challenge their credibility.

Massullo wrote that top drug prosecutor Assistant District Attorney Sharon Woo's November 19 memo about Madden to Russ Giuntini, Chief Assistant District Attorney, and Jeffrey Ross, head of the criminal division, showed that prosecutors "at the highest levels of the district attorney's office knew that Madden was not a dependable witness at trial and that there were serious concerns regarding the crime lab". The failure by Harris's office "to produce information actually in its possession regarding Madden and the crime lab is a violation of the defendants' constitutional rights," Massullo wrote. The Judge said that the prosecutors had the "duty to implement some type of procedure to secure and produce information relevant to Madden's criminal history." But Massullo said her repeated requests that prosecutors explain why they did not have such procedures were met with "a level of indifference." However, Judge Massullo refused to dismiss any cases, saying that all cases must be considered individually.

On May 26, 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a San Francisco coroner's supervising toxicologist, Ann Marie Gordon, vouched for blood-test results in drunken-driving cases for two years before prosecutors told defense attorneys that a Washington state court had labeled her as a "perpetrator of fraud" while running that state's toxicology lab. San Francisco prosecutors began telling defense attorneys about Gordon's past after the Chronicle reported earlier in May 2010 that scores of police officers had criminal arrests or misconduct cases that were never called to defendants' attention before trials. Prosecutors are obligated to provide potentially exculpatory information about their witnesses to the defense under the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

External links

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