Vince’s Daily Journal – Day 17
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“Of course [VP Harris] took a dim view of people who break the law; she’s a prosecutor, that’s her job!”
This quote is one I heard on NPR this morning from an LA-based biographer of Vice President Kamala Harris, reacting to a comment that, despite professing for sympathy for illegal migrants, she handed over cases of juvenile crime by illegal migrants to immigration for deportation. As the product of generations of immigrants, from the Taaffe/McAloon/McNulty/O’Donnells who came over here fleeing the horrors of An Gorta Mor in Eire, to the Seiferts who were likely escaping anti-Catholic persecution and brutal land policies in Silesia, to the Johnsons, who’s story is far too confusing for this sentence, I have an intensely difficult time commenting on our immigration policies, especially on our southern border where some people are desperately fleeing violence, and some are simply attempting to abuse a broken system. However, I have absolutely NO problem commenting on the SICK belief that a prosecutor’s job is to look down on people who have broken the law.
It is nobody’s job, nor does anyone have the right, to look down on another human being.
That statement needs absolutely no addendums, alterations, or exceptions. However, I will give it some flesh and blood. To take that exact example – that a prosecutor, if no one else, must look down on the person who broke the law – I would like to mention my own federal prosecutor – Carol Kayser. From the beginning of my federal case, she never once treated my family or myself with anything less than compassion and respect. She immediately offered (through my Public Defender Caroline Durham, who also did a wonderful job) an 11C1C plea, which essentially means all parties would pursue an agreed upon sentence – in this case the mandatory minimum. Throughout the process, I made clear that if I was required to say that I knowingly possessed or received the files in question (the law does NOT require this for the defendant to be guilty – possession or receipt is enough, with or without actual knowledge), I couldn’t honestly do so, and when I actually changed my plea, the first time the judge asked the question he asked if I knowingly received them – Ms. Kayser actually intervened for me and had him ask the question again, dropping the word ‘knowingly’ and saving me a trial that would likely have ended with me sentenced to far more time. I also started to break down in that hearing – I’m an emotional person at the best of times – and Ms. Kayser stopped to bring me a glass of water and ask if I was okay. She treated me with more compassion and tenderness than I’ve received from anyone else in the criminal justice system, and she was prosecuting me for a felony sex offense.
So, above all, I want to take this chance to say, Ms. Kayser, thank you for your humanity and your compassion. I keep you in my prayers, and I hope that you can help show other prosecutors that there’s a better way to do the job.
And I hope the rest of the world sees that a mean prosecutor is a bad prosecutor, one who is doing their job poorly – personally not the kind of person I want in charge of more than 150,000 vulnerable men and women who are currently stuck in our federal prison system, let alone the rest of our country.
