How a ‘Life-Changing Moment’ as San Francisco DA Shaped Kamala Harris’ Approach to Politics
Less than four months after she was sworn in as San Francisco’s district attorney in 2004, Kamala Harris was facing a crisis.
For the first time in years, a San Francisco police officer had been killed in the line of duty. His name was Isaac Espinoza, and he had been shot by a 21-year-old man armed with an AK-47.
There was “a lot of pain,” Debbie Mesloh, who worked in the DA’s office at the time, says in the above excerpt from The Choice 2024: Harris vs. Trump, which premiered on Sept. 24 and is now available to watch online. “These are very small communities and so, you know, it was just a very difficult chapter. Kamala was really hurting, too. She’s a member of law enforcement. She’d served alongside with SFPD.”
As the excerpt explores, Harris had made a campaign promise not to seek the death penalty if she was elected as DA. She stuck to her vow. Prior to Espinoza’s funeral, she announced that she’d be seeking life in prison without the possibility of parole for his alleged killer.
“It is the will, I believe, of a majority of people that the most severe crimes be met with the most severe consequences, and that life without the possibility of parole is a severe consequence,” Harris said.
“There was a lot of pressure on her to do the politically popular and expedient thing, and to seek the death penalty against the killer, and she held her ground. She held onto her principles,” says Gil Duran, a former senior adviser for Harris.
But the blowback was intense.
“She would go into the Hall of Justice, and if cops saw her they would turn their back on her,” Harris biographer Dan Morain says. “She was being shunned, really shunned.”
As the excerpt explores, San Francisco’s police chief, police unions and police officers were critical of Harris’ decision — and they weren’t the only ones. In her remarks at Espinoza’s funeral, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a powerful player in California politics, said that this should have been a death penalty case.
It was a dramatic moment: “The entire church, filled with uniformed San Francisco police officers, stands up and roars their applause,” says Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle. “Sitting in the church is Kamala Harris, just months into her new job.”
Espinoza’s murderer, David Hill, received three life sentences. But the Espinoza shooting was “a life-changing moment” for Harris, Scott Shafer of KQED says. The experience would have a lasting impact on her approach to prosecution — and politics.
Harris went on to forge alliances with the police, increase her office’s conviction rate and threaten parents with jail if their kids missed too much school.
“She became more unwilling to cross law enforcement, to be more defensive of law enforcement in ways that really angered some progressives in California,” Shafer says.
The Espinoza experience also helped to spark what observers say was another shift: Harris became “known for being a little bit more cautious politically,” according to Jamilah King of Mother Jones.
“Over the course of the next decade, you see her sort of back up and be a lot more deliberate when it comes to making decisions that could potentially come and haunt her down the road,” King says in the excerpt.
The Choice 2024 is the newest installment of FRONTLINE’s election-year series The Choice, which has brought viewers in-depth, interwoven biographies of the two major-party U.S. presidential candidates since 1988. This year’s edition investigates the lives and characters of Harris and Donald Trump as they seek the presidency, drawing on interviews with those who know the candidates best — and revealing key moments that shaped how each would lead the United States.
For the full story, watch The Choice 2024: Harris vs. Trump:
The documentary premiered on Sept. 24, 2024. It is available to watch on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, the PBS App and PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. In tandem with the premiere, FRONTLINE published more than 30 extended interviews conducted by filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team as part of the ongoing FRONTLINE Transparency Project, which makes our source material available to the public.
The Choice 2024: Harris vs. Trump is a FRONTLINE Production with Kirk Documentary Group, Ltd. The director is Michael Kirk. The producers are Michael Kirk, Mike Wiser, Vanessa Fica and Philip Bennett. The writers are Michael Kirk and Mike Wiser. The reporters are Vanessa Fica and Brooke Nelson Alexander. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.
This story has been updated.
