Kyle C. Barker
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SAN FRANCISCO IS PAYING FOR JAMAL TRULOVE’S WRONGFUL CONVICTION. WILL KAMALA HARRIS?
Police and prosecutors framed a father of four in a 2007 murder case with local and national political implications.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris speaks during a television interview after the second night of the first Democratic presidential debate on June 27, 2019 in Miami.Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Kyle C. BarryJul 02, 2019
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After a jury convicted Jamal Trulove, then 25, of first degree murder in February 2010, then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris praised the “brave witness who stepped forward from the crowd.” Harris was then running for attorney general of California and in her campaign bragged about her high conviction rates as the San Francisco DA. Harris echoed what her deputy prosecutor Linda Allen said repeatedly to the jury: Priscilla Lualemaga, the only eyewitness to testify at trial about the July 2007 homicide of Seu Kuka, did so at great risk of retaliation. “She’ll never get her life back,” Allen said, adding that Lualemaga testified knowing that “maybe [she’ll] get killed over being a witness because she saw someone else kill someone.”
Lualemaga’s identification of Trulove as the shooter who killed Kuka on a sidewalk in San Francisco’s Sunnydale housing project was the critical evidence against him. For prosecutors to win, the jury had to believe Lualemaga’s claim that just before 11 p.m. on July 23, 2007 she saw the shooting from a second-floor window when the street below was shrouded in darkness.
The jury also had to believe Lualemaga saw the shooter despite a poor vantage point of the crime scene; her failure to pick Trulove from a photo wall she had viewed with police for hours; her evolving memory of the shooting over time; and the benefits the prosecution provided to Lualemaga and her family that would eventually total over $60,000 in living expenses. Yet the prosecution argued that Lualemaga’s testimony was credible because it came at profound personal risk.
But there was no evidence corroborating the prosecutor’s suggestion that, as a court of appeal later described it, there were “assassins lurking on defendant’s behalf.”
There was also no physical or forensic evidence that inculpated Trulove, and no other witnesses said he was the shooter. Trulove insisted from the beginning that he was innocent.
The case’s glaring flaws didn’t matter: in October 2010, Trulove, then a young father, aspiring actor, and hip-hop performer who had appeared on the VH1 reality television show “I Love New York 2,” was sentenced to 50 years to life.
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San Francisco Is Paying For Jamal Trulove’s Wrongful Conviction. Will Kamala Harris?
But yeah this really goes into the details