KEVIN COOPER CASE In February, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered new DNA testing in the 1983 murder case of Kevin Cooper. Cooper came within hours of execution in 2004 after being charged with the murders of an adult couple and two children. Harris opposed the testing when she was the state’s attorney general. She has since said she supports DNA testing and encouraged Newsom to approve Cooper’s request. She did not offer specifics on why she did not approve the testing during her tenure. In response to a request for comment, Harris’s campaign pointed to a past statement where the senator called a New York Times columnist last year, telling him, “I feel awful about this.” The testing is not yet complete. Whether Gabbard’s claim that the testing “would” have exonerated him remains an open question. Harris defended her criminal justice record Wednesday night. “As elected attorney general of California I did the work of significantly reforming the criminal justice system of a state of 40 million people, which became a national model of the work that needs to be done, and I am proud of that work.”
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Harris also
failed to hold police and prosecutors accountable for misconduct. In Orange County, where a sprawling jailhouse informant scandal has robbed countless people of their right to a fair trial, her lack of meaningful oversight has contributed to a crisis of legitimacy that
continues to upend the county’s criminal justice system.
In 2015, when called upon by the Legislative Black Caucus to support bills that would have mandated that all police officers wear body worn cameras and that the Attorney General’s office investigate lethal officer-involved shootings, she
declined. She championed a law that went after the parents of
chronically truant children, laughed when asked if
marijuana should be legal, and supported a system that locks up people who are too poor to post exorbitant money bail. These policies were part and parcel of a system of mass incarceration that has deeply harmed poor people and communities of color.
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