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The death penalty. One of Harris’ most pronounced shifts was over the death penalty. During a 2004 inauguration speech after her election as San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris vowed to ...
Her office successfully defended the death penalty in court and Harris argued she was obligated to uphold the law as the state’s top attorney — even as she refused to enforce a referendum that ...
Opposition to the death penalty peaked in 1966, with 47% of Americans opposing it; [4] by comparison, 42% supported the death penalty and 11% had "no opinion." The death penalty increased in popularity throughout the 1970s and 1980s, when crime went up and politicians campaigned on fighting crime and drugs; in 1994, the opposition rate was less ...
That’s too bad — people on all sides of the capital punishment debate can agree that, if it is to be used at all, the death penalty should be applied fairly and evenhandedly and in a way that ...
Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982) – The death penalty is unconstitutional for a person who is a minor participant in a felony and does not kill, attempt to kill, or intend to kill. Tison v. Arizona , 481 U.S. 137 (1987) – Death penalty may be imposed on a felony-murder defendant who was a major participant in the underlying felony and exhibits ...
Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said she has "a mixed record". [19] As the district attorney of San Francisco, Harris opposed the death penalty, refusing to request it for a man charged with the murder of a police officer. This decision was controversial and criticized by Senator Dianne Feinstein. [20]
ANTI-DEATH PENALTY. Harris, 59, in 2003 became the first woman elected as San Francisco's top prosecutor after campaigning in part on a pledge not to seek the death penalty.
Pulley v. Harris, 465 U.S. 37 (1984), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not require, as an invariable rule in every case, that a state appellate court, before it affirms a death sentence, proportionally compare the sentence in the case before it with the penalties imposed in similar cases if requested ...