As Harris makes case for presidency, her record as prosecutor draws fresh scrutiny

(CNN) — When Kamala Harris famously refused to seek the death penalty against a young gang member accused of killing a cop two decades ago, she said then that her opposition to capital punishment was well-reasoned and absolute.

Even under pressure from the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who received a standing ovation when she called for the death penalty at the officer’s funeral, Harris, then 39, stood strong.

“For those who want this defendant put to death, let me say simply that there can be no exception to principle,” she wrote in an opinion piece published in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004, shortly after being elected the city’s first female district attorney.

“I gave my word to the people of San Francisco that I oppose the death penalty,” Harris wrote, “and I will honor that commitment despite the strong emotions evoked by this case.”

Just four years later, however, Harris pushed aside her long-held opposition to capital punishment when she announced plans to run for attorney general of California. She vowed that, if elected, she would “enforce the death penalty as the law dictates.”

As attorney general of California, she advocated for enforcement of a state law under which the parents of chronically truant kids could be thrown in jail. But years later, during her first campaign for president, she expressed regret that some prosecutors had actually done so, saying that was “never the intention” of the law.

Her shifting stance on the contentious topic is but one example of how the Democratic presidential nominee has attempted to walk the line between tough-on-crime prosecutor and progressive politician.

Following the controversial police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, Harris launched a pilot program requiring field special agents of the California Department of Justice to begin wearing body cameras. She declined, however, to back a far more comprehensive measure favored by police reform advocates that would have provided statewide regulations on the devices.

About six years later, following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Harris noted the importance of “independent investigations” into alleged police misconduct, citing the inherent problem of perceived or real conflicts of interest when such cases are investigated by local prosecutors. As California’s AG, however, she declined to provide that sort of outside scrutiny to several controversial police shootings in the state.

Her critics have seized on these and other perceived contradictions as evidence that she’s a flip-flopping politician – “a chameleon” as Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance has repeatedly called her. But Harris’ supporters see her as an opened-minded leader unafraid to change her thinking when persuaded by evidence.

Brendon Woods, who currently serves as the top public defender in Oakland, California, where Harris got her start as a prosecutor, said he has closely watched her career—both as a prosecutor and as a politician—and seen her change course on issues that matter to him.

“I think people can evolve,” Woods told CNN, “And I think that’s what she’s done.”

Asked about some of her shifting stances in a CNN interview in August, Harris said, “my values have not changed.”

In a statement, James Singer, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign, said, “Throughout her entire career, Kamala Harris has fought to protect people and hold bad actors accountable. She took on predators, rapists, abusers, fraudsters, and gangs to get justice for the people and she will continue to fight for justice and freedom as President of the United States.”

Asked about Harris’ change on the death penalty, a Harris aide said that the “role of attorney general is different from that of district attorney,” and added that Harris followed state law as AG.

The long-standing problem of racial inequities in the criminal justice system is among the issues that prompted Harris to become a prosecutor in the first place.

“I grew up knowing about the disparities, inequities, and unfairness in the criminal justice system,” Harris said during a 2019 town hall hosted by MSNBC. “What I said to my family and friends is look, if we’re going to reform these systems, we should also be on the inside where the decisions are being made. And that’s why I chose to do the work I did. And I am proud of the work that I did.”

As a prosecutor, Harris adopted what she called a “smart on crime” approach to law enforcement. It included the launch of a program that sought to steer non-violent offenders toward job training and away from prison, and the release of statewide criminal justice data in an effort to enhance government accountability.

One of Harris’ boldest moves as district attorney was to launch a program aimed at preventing young people from ending up in jail or prison by making sure they stayed in school.

“I believe a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime,” she said in a speech at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club in 2010. “So I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy.”

“This was a little controversial in San Francisco,” she said, laughing, “and frankly my staff went bananas.”

She wrote in an op-ed around that time that she had “prosecuted 20 parents of young children for truancy” and that the crime carried a potential sentence of up to a year in jail.

She never put anyone in jail, Harris would later say, but her program became the basis of a bill that made it a criminal misdemeanor for parents to let their kindergarten-through-eighth-grade children miss 10% or more of class without valid excuses. Those convicted are punishable by a fine not exceeding $2,000, or by “imprisonment in a county jail for a period not exceeding one year.”

Harris testified about the issue to the state senate. She said, “Through the power of the prosecutor’s office we have an incredible carrot and stick. The carrot of course being to hopefully encourage good behaviors. And the stick outlining what will be punishment or severe consequences when those good behaviors … are not followed.”

After the bill passed in 2010, some district attorneys took action. Dozens of parents have since been arrested or even jailed by other prosecutors for allegedly allowing their children to miss too many classes, according to local government press releases.

Among those arrested were Ayman Haddadin and his wife, Alice, who live in Orange County, south of Los Angeles. The couple was accused by local prosecutors in 2011 of allowing their middle-school-age child to accumulate 12 unexcused absences in a school year, failing to respond to notices or attend a meeting about the issue and permitting absences in prior years.

In a recent interview with CNN, Ayman Haddadin said his son had struggled with chronic allergies that were often exacerbated at school, so he racked up absences that he believes should have been excused.

“If he can’t breathe,” he said of his son, “he can’t function.”

Even though his family had sought to discuss the issue with school administrators, Haddadin told CNN, police showed up at his home just after dawn and took him and his wife, who was still in her pajamas, into custody. They were hauled off in handcuffs, he said, and details of their arrest were spotlighted in local media reports.

The spectacle, he said, affected his whole family.

“I remember being absolutely terrified,” his now-adult son, Connor Haddadin, who had accumulated the absences, said of his parents’ arrests. “It was extremely wrong and traumatic.”

Ayman Haddadin said the case was ultimately dismissed. A spokesperson for the Orange County District Attorney’s office said the case against the Haddadins is sealed and declined further comment.

Another parent caught up in the May 2011 truancy sweep in Orange County said she was a single mom working two jobs to support her five kids.

Following her arrest, during which a photo of her in handcuffs was publicized in local media, she said she lost one of her jobs working as a line cook at a restaurant and her family was shunned by the community.

“There has to be another way,” she said. “It’s inhumane.”

Harris, who for years had advocated on behalf of prosecutors getting involved in truancy cases, has since expressed regret about the “unintended consequence” of parents being prosecuted and jailed, “because that was never the intention.”

But Alice Haddadin questioned those statements from Harris. “I don’t think you can consider that an unintended consequence because she created the law,” she told CNN.

As attorney general of California, Harris had attained the ultimate position for changing the state’s criminal justice system from within, as she had set out to do as a young lawyer.

She was California’s “top cop” and had a wide purview to set policy and right wrongs in the manner she saw fit.

On the campaign trail as a presidential candidate, she routinely touts her record as California’s top prosecutor, including the way she says she took on big banks that foreclosed on people’s homes and prosecuted Mexican drug cartels and other transnational criminal organizations.

But she was also faulted by critics—some of whom had once been her supporters—for not doing enough during her time as AG.

In 2015, following the widespread civil unrest in the wake of the police killing of Brown in Ferguson, Missouri the previous summer, Harris began requiring special agents working for the state Department of Justice to wear body cameras when on duty.

Harris, however, declined to support a bill that would have imposed statewide regulations impacting throughout the Golden State.

Harris balked at the aim of the proposed law, warning against a “one-size-fits-all” regulation.

Her cautious stance on the issue frustrated many advocates of criminal justice reform, including those who expressed support for Harris on other issues.

Bryce Peterson, a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who has studied police body-cam policy and implementation across the country, said Harris declining to back the legislation may have been a missed opportunity for leadership on the issue.

“You’re never going to get police officers to change or agencies to change, unless they’re spurred in one way or another,” he said.

Another area that has drawn scrutiny was Harris’ apparent resistance to using the broad powers of the AG’s office to conduct independent probes into fatal police shootings.

As AG, Harris declined to support a 2015 bill by Democratic Assemblyman Kevin McCarty from Sacramento that would have required the state to conduct such probes, as opposed to county prosecutors who may appear biased due to their close working relationship with local police.

“The African American and civil rights community have been disappointed that (Harris) hasn’t come out stronger on this,” McCarty, a member of California’s Legislative Black Caucus, told the Los Angeles Times in 2016.

Aside from not backing the bill, Harris declined to investigate controversial fatal police shootings in Los Angeles, Anaheim and her former hometown of San Francisco, in which local officials declined to file charges against officers. The suspects in Los Angeles and Anaheim were unarmed; the man killed in San Francisco had a knife.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting in Anaheim, the city’s then-mayor, Tom Tait, called on Harris to conduct an independent probe during a press conference in which scores of protestors packed the lobby of the Anaheim Police Department.

“I believed we needed an independent outside investigation to get to the truth of what happened,” Tait told CNN in September. “I thought this would have helped provide credibility and public trust in our justice system.”

Harris opted not to get involved, he said.

McCarty told CNN that, despite the disappointment he voiced in 2016, Harris later helped shape a subsequent law mandating the attorney general’s involvement in investigating fatal police shootings of unarmed suspects.

“I applaud Kamala Harris for helping lay the foundation to make this a reality,” he said.

Years later, after being elected to the US Senate and launching her first campaign for president, Harris noted the importance of the sort of “independent investigations” she had declined to provide as attorney general.

She did so in the wake of yet another high-profile police killing – one that would ignite a global movement – that of Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.

Speaking to colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Harris asked for their support in passing a new federal law, one that would help ensure independent oversight in cases in which local prosecutors have a perceived or real conflict of interest with investigating the officers in question.

“As a former prosecutor,” she said, “I know that independent investigations into police misconduct are imperative.”