Black Man Wrongfully Convicted by Kamala Harris’ Office Recalls Harris Laughed at Him in Courtroom

“She wanted to be present for a celebration of a conviction,” recalls the man who received a fifty year sentence for a crime he did not commit.

While the campaign website of Kamala Harris, presumptive Democratic nominee for U.S. President, still lacks a policy platform section, her approach to criminal justice was called out in an interview by an individual directly impacted by her past. 

Throughout her legal career—including her tenure as San Francisco’s District Attorney and California’s Attorney General—she has marketed herself as a ‘progressive prosecutor’ committed to rehabilitation over incarceration; one who, according to her own book The Truths We Hold, “[looks] out for those overlooked,” “[speaks] up for those who aren’t being heard,” and “[shines] a light on the inequality and unfairness that lead to injustice.”

At least, that’s what she wants voters to think. Her involvement in the prosecution of Jamal Trulove, an innocent black man, tells a starkly different story.

In 2007, Trulove's life was turned upside down when he was wrongfully convicted for the murder of his friend, Seu Kuka, who had been fatally shot in San Francisco. At the time, Harris served as San Francisco's District Attorney and, as such, was present at the hearings announcing verdict and sentencing in Trulove’s case. Despite no physical evidence and flagrant prosecutorial misconduct, Harris's office pursued the conviction with vim and vigor. According to VICE’s comprehensive breakdown of the case from 2019, Harris "even briefly locked eyes with Trulove at one of the proceedings, offering what seemed like a ‘smirk,’ he said.”

“I’ll never forget when I turned around and I looked and I see Kamala Harris—we locked eyes this one time—and she laughed. She literally just, like, kind of busted out laughing,” recalls Trulove in a recent video interview with The Art of Dialogue. 

“She was well aware about my case and she was there to set her presence, to almost take pride in getting a conviction” Trulove said in another video interview with VICE. “She wanted to be present for a celebration of a conviction… That’s what it felt like.”

The state’s case “hinged almost entirely on the testimony of bogus, compromised eyewitness,” writes VICE’s Chris Roberts. “The appellate court also found that Linda Allen, Harris’ prosecutor in the case, had lied when she told Trulove’s first jury that the eyewitness feared for her life for testifying against him. In press reports following the conviction, Harris went on record praising the eyewitness’s bravery.”

Roberts also points out that Harris’ office awarded the alleged eyewitness more than $60,000 in housing and relocation benefits.

Fortunately for Trulove, the appellate court found upon appeal that the misdeeds of Harris’ office tainted the trial and led to a gross miscarriage of justice. In 2014, Trulove was acquitted of all charges, but not before losing more than six years of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit.

During his time behind bars, Trulove was shanked in the stomach by an inmate and witnessed the murder of another.

Harris, meanwhile, has largely evaded accountability for her role in Trulove's ordeal. She has never publicly apologized, nor has she acknowledged the misconduct of her subordinates. Instead, Harris has continued to cultivate an image which is not consistent with the reality of her record. Her critics are quick to point it out.

“She is a chameleon; she pretends to be one thing in front of one audience, she pretends to be something different in front of another audience,” said Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, in a recent interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. “She’s not running a political campaign—she’s running a movie. She only speaks to voters behind a teleprompter; everything is scripted; she doesn’t have her policy positions out there; she hasn’t answered why she wanted to ban fracking, but now she doesn’t; she wanted to defund police, but now she doesn’t; she wanted to open the border, but now she doesn’t. She should have to answer for why she presents a different set of policies to one audience and a different set of policies to another audience… This is a fundamentally fake person.”

In the ten years since Trulove was acquitted, Harris has managed to avoid public scrutiny for her handling of the case. But that hasn’t deterred Trulove from speaking out about it—warning the public about the dangers of placing someone like Harris in the highest office in the land. 

“She abused her power at every level of government,” Trulove wrote in an Instagram post earlier this week. “What makes you think she’s not going to abuse it if she becomes president?”