Kamala Harris’s Offices Fought Payments to Wrongly Convicted

by | Oct 15, 2019

Kamala Harris’s Offices Fought Payments to Wrongly Convicted

by | Oct 15, 2019

Kamala Harris is a monster.

[Innocent convict] Diaz’s battle with Harris’ office began in 2012 when a judge reversed his conviction. As state attorney general, her staff vigorously resisted his claim for compensation and tried to make him re-register as a sex offender, despite a formal ruling in April 2013 that he was innocent.

The Diaz case is one of a series of battles Harris’ prosecutors waged — in both the offices of San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general — to resist innocence claims, often using technical timeliness or jurisdictional arguments, lawyers and innocence advocates say.

“The goal is justice,” said Gerald Schwartzbach, Diaz’s lawyer. “The goal isn’t just rules, regulations and procedures. They penalized an innocent man with technical arguments. To me that’s fundamentally contradictory to the whole purpose of the criminal justice system. …

The California attorney general’s office under Harris resisted the innocence claim of Daniel Larsen by arguing that he hadn’t filed his petition for release in a timely fashion, and also contested his request for compensation after he was exonerated. Larsen had been sentenced to 27-years-to-life for possession of a knife under California’s “three-strikes” law.” 

Scott Horton

Scott Horton

Scott Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com and host of the Scott Horton Show from ScottHorton.org. He is the author of four books. He has conducted more than 6,000 interviews since 2003. Scott lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Larisa Alexandrovna Horton.

View all posts

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Our Books

cb0cb1ef 3fcb 417d 80d8 4eef7bbd8290

Recent Articles

Recent

Anti-War Blog – The Genocide of Regime Change

Anti-War Blog – The Genocide of Regime Change

There was a study in April, 2024 that showed the IDF attacks between 7th October and 22nd November of 2023 on hospitals, schools and water infrastructure in Gaza were not “random.” The IDF response to the 7th October terrorist attack was absolute. Revenge on a people....

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This