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Wrongfully convicted man calls Kamala Harris ‘opportunist at the highest degree’ after he spent 20 years in jail

One of her final acts as San Francisco DA was to send the case of Caramad Conley, now 50, back to trial after he was cleared of a 1989 double murder
PUBLISHED AUG 20, 2020
Caramad Conley (San Francisco Police Dept), Kamala Harris (Getty Images)
Caramad Conley (San Francisco Police Dept), Kamala Harris (Getty Images)

A man who had to spend around twenty years in prison including the notorious Pelican Bay due to a wrongful conviction has called Kamala Harris an “opportunist at the highest degree". Harris, who Joe Biden chose as his running mate last week, has worked as the San Francisco District Attorney (DA) between 2003 and 2010. At that time, she reportedly oversaw several prosecutions that ended with a wrongful conviction, including that of Caramad Conley.

According to reports, under one of her final tasks as San Francisco DA, the 55-year-old - known for tough-on-crime policies - had to send the case of Conley back to trial after he was given clean chit in the 1989 double murder case of Charles Hughes and Roshawn Johnson. By then, the man had already spent his 18 years behind bars, two stints in the notorious skull-shaped Pelican Bay Supermax facility in Crescent City, California.

However, when Harris finally left to take her responsibilities as California's Attorney General, her successor first released Conley from jail. Speaking with DailyMail.com, now the 50-year-old man said: “I think they're all opportunists. I think she's an opportunist at the highest degree just like the rest of them. They do certain things because it's going to advance their careers – there's no doubt about it.”

“I would hope she's learned from those mistakes. That's all I can ask from her. Because you did ruin a life, you know. A few lives. A lot of lives. You've done that. I think most politicians do that by the way that they vote. None of their hands are clean. But I do hope that she realizes the things she's done wrong.” Conley added.

Giving a glimpse of his early days as a youngster, Conley said: “I wanted to be a police officer when I was young. We were raised to respect authority. But my first actual experience came as a teenager and this was just me and a couple of friends deciding to go to the store. An undercover police officer was trying to sell one of my friends some drugs – none of us did that. My friend assaulted the guy and all of a sudden, all these police officers came running out of everywhere.”

Continuing further, he stated, “I was sitting in the car watching this stuff unfold. They dragged us out the car. There were about eight of us. They laid out on the ground and this one officer literally did football drills on our heads. Just came running through while we were laying there stepping on everybody's head. It was crazy. So that was my first shift towards, wait a minute, police aren't cracked up what they're supposed to be like. Going on, I didn't have any real encounters with police and until my situation happened and then I was like, oh yeah, these people are corrupt.”

The Daily Mail reported that three years after the drive-by shooting of Johnson and Hughes, Conley was charged with murder and attempted murder over a false testimony by a man called Clifford Polk. At the trial also, the prosecution case majorly rested on Polk's testimony, which resulted in a life sentence for Conley with no parole. “I spoke to the judge at my trial, after everything. I asked him and I said, all I was expecting from the beginning was fairness and impartiality. That's it. I didn't get that from the jury and I'm appealing to you to be fair and impartial. He just threw the book at me. That's how I ended up with all that time,” Conley said.

But in 2003, a ray of hope came for him when the Innocence Project contacted him in jail. And subsequently, in 2010, Conley's case returned back to the court before being dismissed without prejudice by a judge in December 2010. And since the case was dismissed without prejudice, it led the path for a retrial. Harris, who was about to leave and take over as California's Attorney General, sent Conley's case back to court. According to Conley, he could have easily walked “out of the prison”, if “Kamala had not played those games”.

“Had Kamala not played those games, I would have walked out of the prison I was in straight home. So when I was brought back to the county, I was like, ok, so we're going to go back through this for the next six months, they're going to be waiting time, doing all sorts of other stuff and playing these games. I was totally prepared for that other stuff. What I wasn't prepared for, I didn't know Kamala was going out of the office and the new DA was coming in. It was the new DA who came into office – the first order of business was to dismiss my case outright,” he added.

However, Conley said he has decided to forgive Harris and “believe in second chances”. “I definitely believe they can change, their views can change, their positions can change. I believe all that. I don't believe her record as a DA should necessarily have any bearing on her career as a senator because it's a different set of rules. But she's an opportunist like the rest of them politicians are. What she did locally, I think she was bred that way by that political culture – none of their hands are clean. But I also believe in second chances,” he concluded.

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