How -- If At All -- Did Kamala Harris Help Frame A California Man For Murder When She Was The DA of San Francisco

He was framed, there is no doubt about that -- but what did Harris know and when should she have known it if she didn't?

When you crow in your campaign ads about how personally involved you were as a prosecutor in taking down drug cartels, sexual predators, fraudsters, blah, blah, blah … it becomes appropriate to inquire whether you had the same level of involvement and knowledge of a young man convicted and sent to prison for 50 years on a murder where he was quite plainly framed by law enforcement.

Maybe you haven’t heard the details of the story of Jamal Trulove.

The City and County of San Franciso paid him $13.1 million in 2019. He served 6 years in prison for a 2007 murder. He was prosecuted and convicted while Kamala Harris was District Attorney for San Francisco. After his conviction was overturned on appeal, he was acquitted in a second trial in 2015. Four years later he was paid $2.13 million for each year Kamala Harris had him in prison for a murder he did not commit.

She wants to claim credit for what she sees as her successes as DA. So how about we impose a little accountability for one of her “failures” — which seems like a polite way to describe what happened.

Trulove was convicted of the murder of Seu Kuka in the Sunnyvale public housing project in San Francisco on July 23, 2007.

Let’s note a curious aspect of the case right at the start — on September 10, 2013, the California Court of Appeals for the First District issued an opinion that affirmed Trulove’s conviction. That same court later granted a motion for rehearing, and on January 6, 2014, reversed Trulove’s conviction and remanded the case back to the Superior Court for a new trial.

The same issues were presented in each hearing on the appeal — including “outrageous misconduct” on the part of the prosecutors working for DA Harris. What led to the reversal was the Court’s reconsideration of whether Trulove received “ineffective assistance of counsel” in light of the failure of his defense counsel to take any steps in response to the "outrageous misconduct.”

In a previous unpublished opinion, we affirmed the judgment, except that we reduced the conviction to second degree murder. We then granted defendant's petition for rehearing and received additional briefing from the parties. On rehearing and reexamination of all of the issues, we reverse, based on one of defendant's several appellate claims, that being that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his trial counsel did not take any action in the face of highly prejudicial prosecutorial misconduct.

Did I mention these prosecutors worked for Harris?