Campaign fact check: Here’s how Kamala Harris really prosecuted marijuana cases (2019)
Campaign fact check: Here’s how Kamala Harris really prosecuted marijuana cases (2019)
Kamala Harris oversaw more than 1,900 marijuana convictions as San Francisco district attorney, new data obtained by the Bay Area News Group shows.
Older article but it is still relevant
Non-paywall link: https://12ft.io/https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/11/kamala-harris-prosecuting-marijuana-cases/
“Kamala Harris and I disagreed on a lot of criminal justice issues, but I have to admit, she was probably the most progressive prosecutor in the state at the time when it came to marijuana,”
;tldr is she did her job well as PA and litigated marijuana charges without seeking jail time solely for that crime. Supported medical marijuana at the time, and after it is all said in done also supports legalization nowadays.
👍
Hell yeah
Her prosecutors appear to have convicted people on marijuana charges at a higher rate than under her predecessor, based on data about marijuana arrests in the city.
But former lawyers in Harris’ office and defense attorneys who worked on drug cases say most defendants arrested for low-level pot possession were never locked up. And only a few dozen people were sent to state prison for marijuana convictions under Harris’ tenure.While there were more marijuana convictions during Hallinan’s tenure, there were also a lot more arrests. San Francisco arrest data compiled by the Attorney General’s office suggests that 24 percent of marijuana arrests led to marijuana convictions under Harris, compared with 18 percent of arrests under Hallinan.
Conviction rate aside, only 45 people were sentenced to state prison for marijuana convictions during Harris’ seven years in office, compared with 135 people during Hallinan’s eight years“Our policy was that no one with a marijuana conviction for mere possession could do any (jail time) at all,” said Paul Henderson, who led narcotics prosecutions for several years under Harris.
In other words, she prosecuted people for weed but sought lesser sentences. Laws after she left office lead to distorted interpretations of what happened after she left.
Honest, I hope she prosecuted them all properly. It's not a DA's job to just let people off the hook when they legit break the law. If you want to change the law, you should probably become a Senator or something.
Regardless, it seems like she went fairly light on them for a prosecutor in the 00s. Since then we've had more progressive prosecutors but that wasn't really a thing at that time.
I get what you're saying, and I'll be voting for the democrat nominee regardless. However, a large part of a DA's responsibility is to exercise discretion in which cases to prosecute and which sentences to recommend. From the article:
Harris had wide latitude to decide which marijuana cases to prosecute and what sentences to seek
Certainly, and I would hope she was reasonable about it, particularly when it came to sentencing for people like first time offenders. Which cases to prosecute should just be the ones with strong evidence of guilt though. Not something like "I think marijuana laws are wrong so I won't prosecute those."
Not about the substance of the article, but something that the right can't comprehend is that people can grow and change their opinions. And can advocate for different policies than they supported or acted on in the past. It's okay to have been wrong. It's okay to have made mistakes. It's okay to grow and change. Maybe if they realized that they would be happier people.
They seem to think that everyone changes their opinion the way J.D. Vance does: by just becoming a serial liar.
Wow, fashion has sure changed.
"My X-MEN, to me!"
Paywall
Paywalled
https://12ft.io/https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/11/kamala-harris-prosecuting-marijuana-cases/
Just edited the post to add. Weird formatting but just scroll past the photos