Kamala Harris' Record as a Prosecutor Comes Under Scrutiny

Conservatives opposed to Kamala Harris are focusing on her role as a former prosecutor and California Attorney General, especially the case of a man on death row for murdering four people and her stance on marijuana.

Harris denies any wrongdoing in the case of Kevin Cooper, a Black man convicted in California of murdering four white people in 1983 and sentenced to death. He has maintained his innocence but lost at least a dozen appeals. He remains on death row in San Quentin State Prison.

Now that Harris has entered the presidential race as the presumptive replacement for President Joe Biden, pro-Trump commentators are highlighting her role in the Cooper case.

Trump supporter, Jacob Faber, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday that the Cooper case should dissuade people from voting for Harris.

"To all Kamala Harris supporters, just look up Kevin Cooper. Respond with what you please. But I bet you don't look it up first. Because if you do, it must affect your words of anger to people that think little of her," he wrote.

Attorney Bill Shipley, who was a federal prosecutor and now represents January 6 suspects in court, wrote on X that the Cooper case should be highlighted.

"I think a lawsplainer is in order about Harris' efforts as AG to prevent an appeals court from considering DNA evidence that would have exonerated a man on death row."

"Her office litigated aggressively against allowing that evidence to be considered in federal litigation to say his execution date. The details are fuzzy but I'm going to refresh my recollection and bring everyone the story," he wrote.

The campaign to exonerate Cooper received a major boost with a lengthy investigation in The New York Times by journalist Nicholas Kristof in 2018.

"This is the story of a broken justice system. It appears that an innocent man was framed by sheriff's deputies and is on death row in part because of dishonest cops, sensational media coverage and flawed political leaders—including Democrats like Brown and Kamala Harris, the state attorney general before becoming a U.S. senator, who refused to allow newly available DNA testing for a black man convicted of hacking to death a beautiful white family and young neighbor," Kristof alleged.

"This was a failure at every level, and it should prompt reflection not just about one man on death row but also about profound inequities in our entire system of justice...in 34 years at The New York Times, I've never come across a case in America as outrageous as Kevin Cooper's," he wrote.

Cooper's case also received renewed attention in 2018 with Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinstein and then-Senator Kamala Harris calling for DNA testing of evidence—a reversal of Harris's position when she was California attorney general.

Cooper had been imprisoned in Chino, California, in 1983 and was serving a sentence for burglary but escaped two days before the murders took place.

Three members of one family—Doug and Peggy Ryen and their 10-year-old daughter Jessica—and an unrelated 11-year-old boy named Christopher Hughes were killed.

They were stabbed 143 times with an ice pick, an ax, and a knife, according to The Los Angeles Times, and the bodies were discovered by Hughes' father.

The Ryens' 8-year-old son Joshua was slashed across the throat but survived.

Newsweek has asked Kevin Cooper's attorney for comment.

On January 13, 2023, a special counsel appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom strongly rejected Cooper's claims of innocence.

"The evidence of Cooper's guilt is extensive and conclusive," it stated, but Kristof disagreed, quoting Thomas R. Parker, a 30-year law enforcement veteran who was deputy head of the F.B.I.'s office in Los Angeles, who said, "The evidence was planted, he was framed, the cops lied on the stand."

Separately, the conservative news site Right Angle News accused Harris on X of jailing Black men for marijuana while she was a prosecutor in California.

"The American people do not want a president who incarcerated black men on simple marijuana charges and then gloated about smoking marijuana in her college days," it wrote.

Like other conservatives, Faber also rounded on Harris' alleged role in jailing people for marijuana offenses.

"Just like how she let people be sentenced to prison knowing full well that the marijuana tests were giving false positives. Never disclosing that fact to defense attorneys. That's not the BLM supporter we have seen," he wrote.

Newsweek sought email comment from Harris' campaign on Wednesday.

The Reuters news agency reported on July 23 that Harris was neither fully conservative nor liberal as a prosecutor and state attorney general.

It stated that she "started her political career as a California prosecutor who blended criminal justice reforms with a tough stance on some crimes."

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.