Actor and filmmaker Jamal Trulove has spoken out about his experience with Kamala Harris following his 2010 wrongful conviction for murder.
In a recent YouTube interview on the channel The Art of Dialogue, Trulove recounted the day he was convicted of first-degree murder, a charge for which he was later acquitted and awarded $13.1 million from San Francisco. He described seeing Harris, then the San Francisco district attorney, in the courtroom.
“When they came with the verdict guilty … I turned around, and I looked, and I saw Kamala Harris,” said Trulove, who starred in the 2019 film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.”
“We locked eyes this one time, and she laughed.”
Trulove, who was sentenced to 50 years in prison, expressed his shock at Harris’ reaction. “She literally just, like, kind of busted out laughing,” he said.
The filmmaker said that before his trial, he and others in his community had hoped Harris, a Black district attorney from the East Bay, might be sympathetic to their concerns. But it didn’t work out that way.
Jamal Trulove on Kamala Harris laughing at him when he was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison for murder.
— The Art Of Dialogue (@ArtOfDialogue_) August 12, 2024
🎥 The Art Of Dialogue/YouTube) pic.twitter.com/u0qL9pKqxu
“It was strictly: ‘You did this, we are charging you, you’re going down,'” Trulove recalled. The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Trulove’s wrongful conviction.
Trulove — who rose from public housing to pursue an entertainment career, including a run on VH1’s reality show “I Love New York” in 2007 — was framed by police in a case of mistaken witness identification for the fatal shooting of Seu Kuka. He spent nearly seven years behind bars before the conviction was overturned. He was acquitted of all charges after he filed an appeal for a second trial in 2015.
Trulove says he will vote for Donald Trump in November. According to public records, he does not appear to be registered to vote.
“And if you’re wondering if I’ll be voting for Kamala ‘Laugh-and-Lie’ Harris, fuck no!” Trulove said in a recent YouTube video posted to his own account. “Donald Trump! Big Trump! I’m rockin’ with Trump!”
Harris has drawn extraordinary levels of support, consolidating partisan energy in the wake of President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race. The vice president raised more than $12 million at a Fairmont hotel fundraiser Sunday hosted by House Speaker Emerita Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
Trump and vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance, as well as a host of right-wing surrogates within and outside the Republican Party, have been seeking to paint Harris as a far-left San Francisco liberal. She has also drawn opposition from progressives and individual critics who describe her background in criminal justice as hard-line and self-serving.