Vice President — and recently anointed Democrat nominee for president — Kamala Harris again has dusted off her prosecution credentials to create a “law and order” distinction with her legally challenged Republican opponent. It is more complicated and serious than that for the vice president.

Harris has numerous public safety and criminal justice problems. Will the mainstream media commit her to answers about them?

A huge one is Harris’ position on the death penalty.

Harris has long been publicly opposed to the death penalty. In 2003, during her first run for San Francisco district attorney, Harris pledged to never seek to impose California’s death penalty, despite it being the law of the land.

One year later, an AK-47-wielding gang banger murdered police officer (and father of a 4-year-old) Isaac Espinoza. Harris did not speak with Espinoza’s window, nor did she even wait for the memorial service to announce she would not seek the death penalty for the first cop killer in San Fran in 10 years. The decision was so outrageous that U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein used her eulogy at Espinoza’s funeral to blast Harris’ decision, declaring “[t]his is not only the definition of tragedy, it’s the special circumstance called for by the death penalty law.”

In response to the broad fallout, Harris penned a column reminding readers that, “I’ve been (opposed) my entire life and still am,” and used the tired and false claim that the death penalty was about “revenge” and “an eye for an eye.” Neither of those strawman claims is true. Harris clearly and boldly announced, “For those who want this defendant put to death, let me say simply that there can be no exception to principle.” No exception.

This unequivocal language about the death penalty creates the most significant issue for a person seeking to be not a legislator — but the president.

Consistent with that “principled” position, Harris cheered Gov. Gavin Newsom, when — in March 2019 — he derailed law and order by declaring a moratorium on the death penalty. “I applaud Newsom for his decision to place a moratorium on the death penalty. As a career law enforcement official, I have opposed the death penalty because it is immoral, discriminatory, ineffective, and a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Strong language. Immoral. No exceptions.

Here is the issue for Harris: the president alone possesses the power to seek the death penalty, to stop seeking the death penalty, and to seek clemency for those previously sentenced to death.

There are 44 men (no women) currently on federal death row. Some of those horrific cases are well known.

Despite pledging not to seek the death penalty during their 2020 campaign, the Biden-Harris Justice Department successfully pursued a death sentence in 2023 for white supremacist Robert Bowers for his 2018 mass murder of 11 Jewish congregants (and injuring five police officers) at Tree of Life Synagogue in swing state Pennsylvania.

In 2017, white supremacist Dylan Roof was sentenced to death for his mass murder of nine Black parishioners at a Charleston, South Carolina church.

In 2015, Dzokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death for the Boston Marathon bombing, which killed three, including an 8-year-old boy.

If elected, Harris could support clemency or take other action to upend these death sentences, as well as the other 41. As a matter of principle, without exception, she must. What rational answer could Harris give that would permit the imposition of a penalty that is, “immoral, discriminatory, ineffective, and a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars?” For her exception-less principle to be more than political opportunism, Harris must intervene in pending federal prosecutions seeking the death penalty.

In May 2022, less than one year after Biden-Harris Attorney General Merrick Garland declared a moratorium on the death penalty, white supremacist Payton Gendron murdered 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York supermarket. This past January, Biden’s authority was used to seek the death penalty. Harris must be asked if she objected to that decision, and if so, to whom and how strenuously.

Gendron’s trial is scheduled for September 2025, only eight months after the new president is sworn in. America deserves to know if Harris will prevent her DOJ from seeking death, and if not, why wouldn’t she? Why is Gendron’s case or any of the others “an exception?”

So favorable is Harris to offenders, she wants to have a “discussion” about allowing death row inmates to vote in elections. This issue is only one of many that call into question Harris’ commitment to law and order. As troubling as her position on the death penalty is Harris’ 2020 support for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a fund used to bail out of jail accused murderers, rapists, and sex offenders.

While none of this addresses the issues raised by the cases being pursued against the Republican nominee, these are legitimate issues and questions that demand sober, clear, laugh-less, coconut-reference-free answers. Will America get them?

George Brauchler is the former district attorney for the 18th Judicial District and is a candidate for district attorney in the newly created 23rd Judicial District. He has served as an Owens Early Criminal Justice Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. Follow him on Twitter(X): @GeorgeBrauchler.