LA Times: Kamala Harris defends her record as prosecutor: 'It matters who is in those rooms'

[TexasTowelie]

Kamala Harris offered perhaps her most vehement justification yet for her prosecutorial career on Saturday, saying she sought to reshape a criminal justice system that many minorities consider fundamentally biased against them.

“Why is it that we should only be on the outside of the system?” she told an audience of 650 at a gala for the South Carolina National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. “Isn’t there a role for us to play being on the inside, where the decisions are made?”

The speech marked an attempt by the Democratic senator from California to find firmer footing in talking about her law enforcement record, which she has struggled to defend in the early months of her presidential campaign.

“In this election, regarding my background as a prosecutor, there have been those who have questioned my motivations, my beliefs and what I’ve done. But my mother used to say, you don’t let people tell them who you are. You tell them who you are,” Harris told a rapt crowd, adding, “Self-appointed political commentators do not get to define who we are and what we believe.”

Read more: https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-2020-kamala-harris-south-carolina-20190608-story.html

[TruckFump]

1. I'm a retired lawyer and I live and practiced law in Calif.

Kamala Harris was not merely a good prosecutor, she was an excellent one. In fact, she is one of the best cross-examiners I have ever had the privilege to watch. Good attorneys are born and made excellent by law school and learning the ropes after admission. Law school and passing the bar is not that hard to do -- being an excellent trial attorney is a gift that few get. Kamala has that gift. She is scary good. My office did criminal defense work and for me to hold that opinion about any prosecutor means something because the criminal defense attorneys I know think of most prosecutors as cloned in the image of Nancy Grace -- unreasonable, tell you literally they have chosen to be on the side of God, and, most of all, not to be trusted. Kamala is not one of them.

JMHO -- but my law office did have published opinions in criminal law.