In Search of Elusive Justice

The girl on the witness stand was a 14-year-old runaway with a bad attitude and a foul mouth. She wore too much makeup and showed too much skin. Although she had cleaned up for her courtroom appearance, she still came across as hard and hostile. Kamala D. Harris, then assistant district attorney for Alameda County, was trying to convince a jury that the girl was the victim of a gang rape.

"Look, I know you don't like her," Harris recalls telling jurors. "And I know you don't want her to play with your children. But the penal code was not created to protect Snow White. This kid is a child who needs to be protected from predators who are going to pounce."

Harris won the conviction but lost the victim. The girl vanished, and a sketchy report suggested that she was selling sex in San Francisco. Harris and a district attorney's inspector launched a search.

"We never found her," Harris says.

That was 10 years ago. Harris, now the district attorney for San Francisco, is sharing grim stories on a sunny day inside a white-linen bistro on the Embarcadero called the Delancey Street Restaurant, the namesake operation of a nonprofit that helps ex-cons lead law-abiding lives. In this oddly apt setting, the tale of the victim who got away sinks in as a parable about the gap between a just verdict and the elusive nature of true justice. Tourists have no clue that their waiter, a few years earlier, would have sooner mugged them than serve the smoked trout. But they notice Harris and know she must be somebody, what with the warm greeting from Delancey workers and a few patrons.

These days, Harris (no relation to this writer) can't help but make an entrance. She is a striking 39-year-old single woman with a radiant smile who is known for her intellect, work ethic and, as one attorney puts it, "the aura of her personality." Her dramatic campaign to become San Francisco's top law-enforcement official has made her a rising political star. While San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has made international headlines with his high-profile, polarizing embrace of gay marriage, Harris may have the brighter future. At the Democratic National Convention, Harris served on the platform committee as an appointee of Chairman Terry McAuliffe, and she was a guest of honor at a reception hosted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. Harris also addressed the black caucus, one of a group of women that included former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and Sen. Hillary Clinton.