Vice President Kamala Harris While serving as San Francisco district attorney, he overturned hundreds of drug convictions and dismissed cases amid an evidence lab scandal involving cocaine use that rocked his office.
Before her run for the White House, Harris' district attorney's office was hit by a scandal in 2010 involving a lab technician with a criminal record who took cocaine home from the evidence lab and possibly contaminated hundreds of other cases. The scandal unfolded as Harris began campaigning to become attorney general of the Golden State.
As lab technician work became unreliable in the weeks after the alleged cocaine theft, the district attorney's chief drug prosecutor sounded the alarm in a 2009 email to a colleague, saying the lab technician had become “every increasingly reliable for obtaining evidence” and that laboratory conditions were “ridiculous”. ” and the drug case is in jeopardy, SF Gate Time reports. Lab technicians often testify when San Francisco prosecutors go to court.
The problem that plagued Harris' office was that the prosecution team did not inform the defense lawyers about the problems involving the coach and cocaine. Since the 1963 Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors were forced to turn over evidence that could exonerate the suspects.
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Then-District Attorney Kamala Harris is seen in this April 2004 file photo (Paul Chinn/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
In Harris' office, however, the team had no written procedures on how to deal with the “Brady factor” or the “Brady effect,” which sparked a months-long scandal in 2010.. Harris said amid the scandal that he was not informed of concerns surrounding the drug lab and technician until February 2010, months after Chief Drug Prosecutor Sharon Wu sent a colleague an email describing the “ridiculous” conditions. ” from the lab in November, SF Gate reported.
Harris is currently running for the White House against former President Donald Trump and has relied heavily on her experience as a law enforcement candidate, citing her years as a prosecutor in Alameda County. San Francisco and as State Attorney General.
Fox News spoke with Digital Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Jack Smith, a former assistant U.S. attorney, who recently released a report on Harris' “crime policy” that highlighted the 2010 DA scandal.
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“I think this shows Kamala Harris’ incompetence as district attorney. This is a basic blocking attack that is expected of the prosecutor to ensure that the rights of criminal defendants are protected and that the community is kept safe. it failed on both of these basic tasks,” Smith said. he told Fox News Digital.
Smith explained that notifying defense attorneys about lab problems and potentially contaminated evidence is “prosecutor 101,” noting that Harris had previously served as a prosecutor for nearly six years and did not yet have Brady policies in place.
“It’s a big deal. It's like every prosecutor's nightmare scenario, being tagged with a Brady violation, because not only does it jeopardize your case, but you are essentially being accused of committing a moral and constitutional crime. Violation too,” he said. .
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris speaks to supporters before a No On K press conference on October 29, 2008 in San Francisco. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“I can’t emphasize this enough, this is prosecutor 101, this is a basic blocking attack that any district attorney should do. It’s incredible that he didn’t have a policy to deal with this type of situation.”
Harris tried to blame the problem on the Police Department, which the lab monitored and initially said would affect about 20 cases. According to the Washington Post, the prosecutor's office ended up dismissing between 600 and 1,000 drug cases in which the offenders were already serving their sentences.
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The lab technician, who was convicted of domestic violence in 2007, eventually retired in March 2010, admitting to police that he had taken drugs from the police lab, according to SF Gate at the time. Police were aware of the woman's criminal history and admitted they made a mistake by not notifying the prosecutor's office about her previous convictions, SF Gate reported.
The technology supervisor informed the authorities that cocaine was missing. Manages technology in several areas. The police department, headed by current Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon at the time, closed the lab after learning of the allegations, SF Gate reported.
In May 2010, a Superior Court judge removed Harris and placed the blame for the scandal squarely on her shoulders.
Harris “failed to disclose information that clearly should have been disclosed,” Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Masullo wrote in a 2010 ruling.
San Francisco is known throughout most of America as a liberal city. (stock)
Amid the scandal, drug suspects urged the judge to dismiss their cases, prompting the prosecution's top narcotics prosecutor, Uke, to testify in court to answer questions about evidence and drug cases. Wu testified that the prosecutor's office had no written guidelines on how to handle Brady material and that Harris relied on the police department to inform him when evidence was incriminating, The Washington Post reported in 2019.
A court transcript between Wu and Masullo shows the judge shocked.
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“It is not the police department that has the affirmative obligation. He's the district attorney. That's who the courts turn to. This is who the community looks to to ensure that all constitutionally required information is provided to the defense. I gather from what you're saying that your office doesn't have it. There is no official way.
“In terms of a written policy, I don’t think there is a written policy,” Wu responded.
Kamala Harris in a photo from when she was San Francisco's district attorney. (Cristina Kosi Hernandez/SF Chronicle for Getty Images)
After pleading guilty to approximately 1,000 drug cases and scandals, Harris was elected Attorney General of California during the 2010 election cycle. He stepped down as prosecutor in January 2011 when he was sworn in as the state's top law enforcement officer.
In 2019, when Harris launched a campaign for president before becoming President Biden's running mate, he took responsibility for the scandal.
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“There are no excuses,” Harris told The Washington Post. “The buck stops with me.”
When asked why he did not implement a Brady policy during his six-year tenure in office, Harris said he worked to implement it for about two years but did not finalize guidelines on the complexity of information for law enforcement personnel, according to the means of communication.
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“I care a lot about creating a Brady policy. … I was saying in my office that we need to have one. It was a great debate,” he told WAPO. “We were working on it and it was very slow. It took a long time.”
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Harris' office implemented a Brady policy after the scandal, which he said was later hailed as “a model” for other district attorneys.
“It took a long time to implement, but I am proud that we implemented a Brady principle in the DA's office that was later called 'a model for other jurisdictions' by the California Supreme Court,” Harris said in a comment to Wall. Street Newspaper. 2019
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