Kamala D. Harris is a lifelong public safety and civil rights leader, and is currently serving as a U.S. Senator from California. Her new book is The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.From the transcript of her interview with NPR's Rachel Martin:
MARTIN: You have been criticized by some on the left side of your party over the death penalty, for defending the death penalty after opposing it as district attorney for San Francisco then as attorney general defending it. How do you explain your position? How do you defend it to progressives who say it's immoral, it's ineffective?--Marshal Zeringue
HARRIS: So to be clear, I am personally opposed to the death penalty. I have always been, and I remain opposed to the death penalty. I believe, for a number of reasons, that it is a flawed system both in terms of the way that it has been applied historically, which is disproportionately against people of color and poor people, I know that it is a system for which the defenders would say it creates some deterrent. But in my experience, when somebody is about to pull the trigger of that gun, they're not sitting there thinking about whether it's going to be life without possibility of parole or the death penalty.
MARTIN: But you still think there's a place for it?
HARRIS: No. I don't. But as attorney general of the state of California, I had a constitutional responsibility to represent my clients. And one of my clients happened to be the California Department of Corrections and...[read on]