• givesomefucks@lemmy.worldOP
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    4 months ago

    So you don’t have to wait 40 minutes again, I googled:

    Kamala firefighter prison

    And got a whole bunch of results…

    The intransigence of this legal work resulted in the presiding judges in the case giving serious consideration to holding the state in contempt of court. Observers worried that the behavior of Harris’s office had undermined the very ability of federal judges to enforce their legal orders at the state level, pushing the federal court system to the brink of a constitutional crisis. This extreme resistance to a Supreme Court ruling was done to prevent the release of fewer than 5,000 nonviolent offenders, whom multiple courts had cleared as presenting next to no risk of recidivism or threat to public safety.

    Despite a straightforward directive from the Supreme Court to identify prisoners for release over a two-year period, upholding a 2009 ruling that mandated the same action over the same timeline, the state spent the majority of that period seesawing back and forth between dubious legal filings and flagrant disregard. By early 2013, it became clear that the state had no intention to comply, leading to a series of surprisingly combative exchanges.

    https://prospect.org/justice/how-kamala-harris-fought-to-keep-nonviolent-prisoners-locked-up/

    Especially with Lemmy being so much smaller, you really shouldn’t just wait for someone to do it for you. “Teach a man to fish” and all that.

    • UsernameHere@lemmings.world
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      4 months ago

      That article says Harris was acting on behalf of Govenor Jerry Brown as defense attorney. So just like OJ Simpson’s lawyers had to defend him because that’s their job regardless of their feelings. Lawyers can’t make decisions for their clients. They just argue on their behalf in court.

      The call to relocate the overpopulated prisoners to the firecamps was not made by Harris but other lawyers that worked in the same office. They only suggested it as a temporary solution after the Supreme Court wouldn’t accept their solution to build another prison to address the overpopulation.

      The Supreme Court suggested Govenor Jerry Brown release nonviolent prisoners to address the overpopulation. To be clear, this includes sex offenders, white collar criminals and arsonists just to name a few “non-violent” crimes.

      Any decisions Harris made in this role were her job as a lawyer defending the previous attorney general’s decisions Govenor Jerry Brown. At least that’s what the article says. I can’t verify any of the claims because I don’t see any citations for them. But maybe that’s because I read it on mobile.

      • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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        4 months ago

        AGs are elected in California. She wasn’t a Jerry Brown employee.

        • UsernameHere@lemmings.world
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          4 months ago

          Attorney generals represent the state and state agencies in federal court. In this example Jerry Brown was the govenor and Harris was representing him in federal court because that is the job of an attorney general.

          • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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            4 months ago

            Jerry Brown is not the state and not her boss. Elected AG’s regularly just accept rulings they believe are just, whether or not their governor wants them to. Brown in no way got to dictate what she would do.

            • UsernameHere@lemmings.world
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              4 months ago

              He was the govenor of California at the time. It is an attorney generals job to defend the govenor in court. Whether or not to accept a ruling is the choice of the defendant, not the attorney general.