Kamala Harris oversaw more than 1,900 marijuana convictions as San Francisco district attorney, new data obtained by the Bay Area News Group shows.
U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks at the AARP Presidential Forum at the Waterfront Convention Center in Bettendorf, Iowa on Tuesday, July 16, 2019.
East Oakland Pride Elementary School principal Jacqueline Perl, left, walks across a playground with California Attorney General Kamala Harris on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2014, in Oakland, Calif. Harris has sponsored legislation to help local school districts and communities address California's elementary school truancy crisis.
But Harris’ history of prosecuting marijuana cases as San Francisco district attorney is more nuanced than those debate-stage confrontations indicate, according to new data obtained by the Bay Area News Group and interviews with more than a dozen former prosecutors, defense attorneys, criminal justice experts and activists who’ve been following her career.
Still, advocates wonder why it took so long for the California senator to come out in support of marijuana legalization. She actively fought a ballot measure for recreational pot in 2010, co-authoring an opposition argumentof her plans to reform the criminal justice system.
The comparison between arrests and convictions isn’t necessarily one-to-one, however — not everyone convicted of marijuana offenses was arrested for pot in the first place. Solis, who led the public defender’s office misdemeanor division for part of Harris’ tenure, agreed that her office only rarely prosecuted people for low-level, simple possession.
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