Kamala Harris’s Offices Fought Payments to Wrongly Convicted
- Advocates criticize Harris’ record resisting innocence claims
- Prosecutors used technical arguments to block compensation
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Jose Diaz was exonerated after serving almost nine years in a California prison for two sexual assaults he didn’t commit. But the office of then-Attorney General Kamala Harris wasn’t ready to let him off the hook.
Diaz was convicted in 1984 of rape and attempted rape. He was paroled in 1993, became a registered sex offender, and began the work of proving his innocence. It took 19 years for his conviction to be reversed -- and two more years for the State of California to grant him compensation for the time he was wrongfully imprisoned.