Politifact updates article on Gabbard charges against Kamala (Lockups for pot actually dropped 83%)

[Princetonian]

168. Do The Mercury News and SF Chronicle Debate Fact Checks and NY Times "make things true"?

Harris is consistently on the wrong side of social justice in the cases I have documented here:

Reply 2: https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=236405

Reply 15: https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=236536


No amount of rhetorical nonsense is going to fool anyone but the most partisan.

The Mercury Press and The San Francisco Chronicle concur on 1974 as the correct updated number.

"A department spokesman said 1,974 people were admitted to prison for marijuana and hashish charges during that time period."

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/08/01/democratic-debate-kamala-harris-tulsi-gabbard-joe-biden-fact-check/

On Thursday, a department spokesman told The Chronicle that 1,974 people were admitted for hashish and marijuana convictions during that period."

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Fact-checking-the-Democratic-debate-attacks-14275081.php

Does the New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Nicholas Kristof's expose "make things true"?

The attack: Gabbard said Harris “blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from Death Row until the courts forced her to do so.”

The context: Gabbard is referring to the case of Kevin Cooper, a Death Row inmate convicted of quadruple murder in 1983. Harris, during her tenure as attorney general, declined to use advanced DNA testing in the widely publicized case.

Last year, after the New York Times published an investigative piece on Cooper’s case, then-Sen. Harris backtracked, saying, “I feel awful about this,” and that she hoped the governor would order the testing. In February, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered new tests. The results are pending.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Fact-checking-the-Democratic-debate-attacks-14275081.php

From Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Nicholas Kristof, here are excerpts from the expose that forced Harris to backtrack:

"One Test Could Exonerate Him. Why Won't California Do It? Was Kevin Cooper Framed For Murder?"

In 1983, four people were murdered in a home in Chino Hills, Calif. The sole survivor of the attack said three white intruders had committed the murders. Then a woman told the police that her boyfriend, a white convicted murderer, was probably involved, and she gave deputies his bloody coveralls. So here’s what sheriff’s deputies did: They threw away the bloody coveralls and arrested a young black man named Kevin Cooper. He is now awaiting execution.

<snip>

The test tube miraculously contained the blood of two or more people. This indicated that the sheriff’s office may have used the test tube of Cooper’s blood to frame him, and then topped off the test tube with someone else’s blood.

Cooper’s lawyers ask above all for new “touch DNA” testing — capable of detecting microscopic residues... As state attorney general, Kamala Harris refused to allow this advanced DNA testing and showed no interest in the case (on Friday, after the online publication of this column, Senator Harris called me to say "I feel awful about this" and put out a statement saying: "As a firm believer in DNA testing..."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/17/opinion/sunday/kevin-cooper-california-death-row.html

Gabbard is right. Harris owes Kevin Cooper an apology.

"Harris' district attorney's office violated defendants' rights by hiding damaging information"

As DA, the buck stopped with Harris. More evidence from the SF Chronicle Debate Factcheck that backs up Tulsi Gabbard's claims:

'San Francisco Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo... said Harris’ district attorney’s office violated defendants’ rights by hiding damaging information about the technician and was indifferent to demands that the office account for its failings. “The District Attorney failed to disclose information that clearly should have been disclosed,” the judge wrote in a court order. Plus, Harris’ office did not have a written policy about informing defendants if there were any problems with evidence or witnesses. The scandal led to 1,000 cases being dismissed.'

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Fact-checking-the-Democratic-debate-attacks-14275081.php?psid=glXZf

This is why Harris cannot refute Gabbard's claims.