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San Francisco County, CA November 4, 2003 Election
Smart Voter

Restoring Professional Management to the District Attorney's office

By Kamala Harris

Candidate for District Attorney; City of San Francisco

This information is provided by the candidate
For the past eight years, chaos has reigned at the Hall of Justice. The spectacular failure and confusion of the recent "Fajita Gate" indictments, where the District Attorney filed charges first and examined the evidence later, is the most recent example of an office that independent journalists have correctly called "pathetic", "out of control" and "a national embarrassment."

In fact, fistfights, sexual harassment lawsuits, high staff turnover, low staff morale and unethical leadership have marked the current District Attorney's term in office. Some of the highlights (or lowlights):

  • Prosecutorial misconduct, including having the entire DA's office disqualified by a Superior Court judge from handling a high-profile gang murder case because the DA refused to abide by a gag order, resulting in a mistrial, and the District Attorney being thrown out of court for violating judicial proceedings.
  • High staff turnover, with an unprecedented six Deputy Chiefs in 7 years, preventing consistent leadership and direction in the office, and 14 veteran prosecutors fired in one day.
  • Unethical practices, including the use of official District Attorney letterhead to make a personal plea for leniency for a suspected LSD drug lord and an investigator who ran the District Attorney's re-election campaign while still working part-time for the City.
  • Unprofessional conduct, including an incident involving a prosecutor and his female colleague which resulted in a sexual harassment lawsuit, and the DA himself involved in a fistfight with a political crony in a local bar.

It goes without saying that restoring professionalism in the District Attorney's office starts at the top. As District Attorney, I will institute the kind of professional standards I learned working eight years for the Alameda County District Attorney's office, one of the most respected offices in the nation. These include:

  • Zero tolerance for political, criminal and ethical misconduct for all the attorneys in the DA's office.
  • Restoring the fundamental codes of ethical prosecutorial conduct, especially charging cases only when the evidence exists to convict.
  • Rigorous training and re-training programs to ensure that attorneys and investigators are taught the most up-to-date prosecutorial practices.
  • Attracting, hiring and retaining the best and brightest lawyers in the city, with a renewed emphasis on diversity and diversity training to ensure that all the city's communities are represented.

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