Democratic presidential candidate and California Sen. Kamala Harris told Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night that the death penalty is “flawed” and that she would welcome a debate with President Donald Trump on the topic.
Harris said that she has always opposed the death penalty, but the senator actually has a confusing record on the issue. She defended capital punishment as California’s attorney general in 2014.
Harris: Death penalty “flawed”
As district attorney, Harris sought life without parole in 2004 for a gang member who killed police officer Isaac Espinoza. Maddow brought up the case on Wednesday and said that capital punishment would likely be an issue for her in the presidential race if she ends up squaring off with Donald Trump, who is an enthusiastic supporter of the practice.
But Harris defended her decision in the cop killer case to Maddow and said that top-ranking Democrats at the time wanted to take her off the case because she would not pursue the death penalty. One of those Democrats was Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
“There were…high-level elected Democrats who said the case should be taken away from me because I would not seek the death penalty, but I did what I believed was the right thing to do,” Harris said. “And the killer of that officer will be in prison for the rest of his life.”
Still, Harris said that the death penalty is “extremely flawed” and that she has “always” been opposed to it.
“Listen, we are talking about a system that creates a final punishment without any requirement that there be DNA to prove it. If there is DNA, it may prove it, but you don’t need DNA,” Harris lamented. “It is a system where it has been fundamentally proven to be applied to African-American and Latino men and poor men disproportionately for the same kind of crime.”
Harris went on to argue that the death penalty is not a deterrent against violent crime.
“Nobody ever stood there and was about to pull the trigger and then decided, ‘Hmm. Is this going to be life without the possibility of parole or the death penalty?” Harris said. “The death penalty is flawed and I welcome that debate if it is necessary.”
Nuanced record on death penalty
While Harris touted her decision in the 2004 case, her record as a “progressive prosecutor” has come under scrutiny from the leftsince her announcement earlier this week that she is running for president in 2020 over her criminal justice record, which critics say marks her as overzealous and tough-on-crime.
A scathing piece in the New York Times accused Harris of bowing out at times when she should have taken action to reform the criminal justice system and upholding wrongful convictions. The piece also notes that Harris defended the death penalty as attorney general despite personally opposing it.
While Harris declined to pursue the death penalty in the 2004 case, she later appealed a federal judge’s ruling in 2014 that the death penalty is unconstitutional, “arbitrary,” and “cruel and unusual punishment.” Harris argued forcefully in defense of capital punishment at the time, challenging the idea that the death penalty was “arbitrarily imposed” and noting that voters rejected a proposition to abolish it in 2012.
Having served in the Senate for less than a full term, Harris will likely be picked apart on her criminal justice record when the race heats up. It looks like she will have some tough questions to answer from the right and the left.
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