In campaign mode, Kamala Harris doesn’t refer to herself as a politician, but a prosecutor.

Her rise in Democratic politics began in California’s courtrooms. Voters elected her first as San Francisco’s district attorney and then as the state’s attorney general.

She battled multinational corporations on behalf of Californians, but also oversaw the wrongful conviction of someone who was later stabbed in prison. As the state’s lawyer, she refused to defend California’s gay marriage ban, but did the opposite on the death penalty, defending the state’s policy despite her personal opposition to it.

When she first ran for president five years ago, in a time of rising skepticism about policing, she pitched herself to Democratic primary voters as not merely a prosecutor but a progressive prosecutor. Today, in a general election campaign that may hinge on winning over independents concerned about crime, she’s largely dropped the modifier. Her record as a prosecutor draws criticism from both sides: The left has criticized her for having been too tough, even as the Trump campaign charges that she was “soft as CHARMIN.”

These nine cases — some successes, some stumbles — helped define the complicated law enforcement legacy of the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee:

1. Harris faces first test when a cop is killed

The shooting of a police officer on a poorly lit street in San Francisco in 2004 would haunt Harris for decades.

Officer Isaac Espinoza and his partner were in plainclothes when they approached a man in their unmarked vehicle on April 10. Espinoza, 29, stepped out and flashed a light at David Hill, according to accounts of trial testimony.

Hill fired several rounds from an AK-47. Two struck Espinoza, killing him. Espinoza’s partner was injured, and Hill was accused of first-degree murder, along with other charges.

San Francisco Police Officer Isaac Espinoza was shot and killed while working undercover in 2004. Photo via San Francisco Police Officers Association’s X account, the platform formerly known as Twitter

The newly elected DA, Harris, declined to pursue the death penalty against Hill – consistent with her position while she campaigned for the office, but offensive to many who attended Espinoza’s funeral.

“This is not only the definition of tragedy, it’s the special circumstance called for by the death penalty law,” former Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the mourners, provoking a resounding standing ovation.

The decision immediately pitted Harris — the first woman, first Black and first Asian American district attorney in San Francisco history — against the police.

“Isaac paid the ultimate price,” said San Francisco Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes at the funeral. “And I speak for all officers in demanding that his killer also pay the ultimate price.”

After eight weeks of testimony, jurors convicted Hill of second-degree murder and attempted murder. They rejected the charge of first-degree murder, not finding the act premeditated, and Hill’s conviction and life sentence were upheld in 2011.

In her 2009 book “Smart on Crime,” Harris wrote: “The broadly held assumption that simply increasing the penalty for any crime will automatically deter more people from committing the crime is a myth. We have to understand why long sentences alone are not sufficient to rock the crime pyramid for many types of crimes.”

2. Harris’ office convicts the wrong man — a $13 million mistake

Actor Jamal Trulove was a contestant on VH1’s “I Love New York 2,” a “Bachelor”-style dating show in which 20 men competed for the affections of a failed reality show contestant.

A viewer who happened to have witnessed a fatal July 2007 shooting at San Francisco’s Sunnydale housing project saw the show and told police she was convinced: Trulove, she said, had been the shooter.

The witness, Priscilla Lualemaga, had initially identified a different man as the shooter. When police showed her a photo lineup, and told her the shooter in that lineup, Lualemaga said Trulove “looks like the guy who could have shot” the victim.

But after the show aired, Lualemaga said she was certain.

Jamal Trulove during an interview on the music podcast The Art of Dialogue. Image via screenshot of The Art of Dialogue’s YouTube Channel

When the case went to trial in 2010, the DA’s office put both Lualemaga and her sister in witness protection, citing alleged threats.The jury convicted Trulove of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to 50 years to life.

But on appeal, a ballistics expert testified that Lualemaga — the only eyewitness to testify that Trulove was at the scene — could not have observed the shooting from the direction she was facing, given the rounds’ trajectory.

“The prosecutor wove these points into the very fabric of her closing argument, going so far as to urge the jury to have the same ‘courage’ as Lualemaga and find defendant guilty,” wrote appellate court judges. “There was no evidence of any threats or other actual danger presented by defendant, his friends, or his family to Lualemaga or her family…”

Trulove was acquitted in March 2015, and went on to a role in the film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco.”

A federal lawsuit he filed after his release — noting he was stabbed in prison when he failed to give his cell’s bottom bunk to a gang leader — cost the city and county of San Francisco $13 million.

In a new podcast interview, he recounted his conviction: “I’ll never forget, when I turned around and I looked, and I seen Kamala Harris — we locked eyes this one time, and she laughed — she literally just kinda busted out laughing,” said Trulove, who’s endorsed Donald Trump.

3. Harris vs. the mentally ill woman shot by police, then prosecuted

The Espinoza case left Harris on shaky ground with the San Francisco Police Department — tension she sought to soothe via a monthly spot in the police union newsletter. In October 2008, here’s how her office presented a case in which police responded to a mentally ill woman in crisis:

“When police were called to the defendant’s home, she allegedly attempted to assault the responding officers with a knife. The police subdued the defendant by shooting her several times.”

Put another way: Police repeatedly shot a schizophrenic woman. And then Harris prosecuted her — but the jury balked.

In August 2008, Teresa Sheehan, then 56, was living in a group home for people with mental illness. When one of the home’s workers attempted to check on her, Sheehan replied with threats and said she had a knife.

A worker summoned police. Two officers knocked on Sheehan’s private room and eventually used a key to open her door. She grabbed a knife with a five-inch blade, the officers would later testify, and said “I am going to kill you. I don’t need help. Get out.”

Teresa Sheehan during Christmas in 2013. Photo courtesy of Patricia Sheehan

The officers later testified that they retreated but, worried that Sheehan might climb out of her window and to a fire escape, they opened the door again. One pepper-sprayed Sheehan and, when she didn’t drop the knife, the other shot her twice. The first officer also shot her.

She survived, and a jury acquitted her of making criminal threats and deadlocked on assault, though 11 of 12 jurors voted for acquittal. Sheehan sued San Francisco, settling for $1 million.

“If (Harris) actually looked at it and said, ‘This is a righteous case, I want to go after a mentally ill woman who was shot,’ then you question that decision,” Laurie Levenson, a criminal law professor at LA’s Loyola Law School told CalMatters. “If she didn’t know about it, then you question her management skills.”

4. Harris vs. a ‘predatory’ for-profit college

When a 2013 U.S. Justice Department investigation turned up evidence that the for-profit Corinthian Colleges were targeting “isolated” people who were “unable to see and plan well for the future,” while falsely promising prospective students job placement rates as high as 100%, it caught the eye of Kamala Harris. As California’s new attorney general, she sued them, alleging false advertising and deceptive marketing.

The Santa Ana-based company had purchased several private for-profit colleges that were in financial trouble, including at least three in California. By 2010, it had enrolled more than 110,000 students at 105 campuses.

Soon a number of Corinthian students told the U.S. Education Department that the schools weren’t placing them in jobs at the rates Corinthian had promised, leaving them saddled with student debt. The Office of Federal Student Aid forced the schools to stop any mergers, purchases of new schools or offering new programs.

Harris said the schools were targeting some of California’s most vulnerable prospective students.

“The predatory scheme devised by executives at Corinthian Colleges, Inc. is unconscionable,” Harris said in 2013. “Designed to rake in profits and mislead investors, they targeted some of our state’s most particularly vulnerable people — including low income, single mothers and veterans returning from combat.”

In March 2016, Harris won a default judgment against Corinithian for $1.1 billion; the company never answered Harris’ legal complaint and its lawyers didn’t appear in court on the day of the verdict.

In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education discharged $5.8 billion in student loan debt to 560,000 borrowers who paid to attend Corinthian Colleges.

5. Harris vs. big banks in the mortgage meltdown

Harris’ entry into the national spotlight came at the tail end of the Great Recession in 2011, when as California’s attorney general, she rejected a settlement offer from five major mortgage lenders — one other states agreed to.

It could have jeopardized the deal, but her brinkmanship worked: The banks kicked in a lot more, allowing California to collect about $20 billion, from an initial settlement offer of $4 billion.

The agreement meant Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. collectively reduced $12 billion in principal on loans or offered short sales to about 250,000 California homeowners who owed more on their mortgages than their houses were worth.

The story of that negotiation and settlement became a key part of Harris’ political narrative, especially during her first candidacy for president in the 2020 Democratic primaries.

But the shine has somewhat worn off that victory in the years since.

A recent Wall Street Journal analysis of the settlement found that, though Harris wanted to use the settlement money to reduce mortgage principals, about half the settlement went to banks that wrote off the mortgages on homes that had already been abandoned. Each Californian with a defaulted mortgage got a check for $1,400, which the state suggested it could use to help pay a month’s worth of rent.

Another $4.7 billion was used to reduce debt on second mortgages, often home equity credit lines. Only about $4.5 billion was used to lower debt on primary mortgages.

At the time, Harris told the New York Times that in a homicide case, “you’re talking about something where the body’s cold. So the conversation is about punishment, it’s about restitution. This was not that. Every day there are homeowners in California who will either receive relief so they can stay in their home, or will be in the foreclosure process and potentially lose their home. And that always weighed heavily on my mind.”

6. When Harris defended the death penalty she opposes

When Julia Miller’s husband found her body on Aug. 25, 1992, she had been bound with a telephone cord and stabbed to death. She had two knives still in her neck. There were pieces of three other knives near her body. There was a rag stuffed in her mouth.

Evidence immediately pointed to Miller’s daughter’s boyfriend, Ernest Dewayne Jones, who had already served six years in state prison for raping his previous girlfriend’s mother.

Pamela Miller, Juila’s daughter, told the court “That bastard needs to be sentenced to death.” A judge agreed and Jones was sent to California’s death row. But Pamela Miller told an LA Times reporter that the sentencing was pointless because of how rarely executions were carried out.

Nearly 20 years later, while Jones awaited execution, a federal judge overturned the sentence, declaring California’s death penalty was unconstitutional because of the “inordinate and unpredictable period of delay” before execution.”

Harris — despite her own personal opposition to the death penalty, and over the objections of death penalty opponents — went to court to defend it. “I am appealing the court’s decision because it is not supported by the law,” Harris said in 2014, “and it undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.”

She prevailed, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Jones’ death sentence. In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium on executions, shuttering San Quentin’s death chamber.

7. When Harris refused to defend a same-sex marriage ban

For 29 days in early 2004, San Francisco issued more than 4,000 marriage licenses. Then-mayor Newsom had decided to allow same-sex couples to marry three weeks into his first term; the number of people calling City Hall temporarily knocked out its phone lines.

The weddings were, technically, against the law. Newsom’s office expected an immediate injunction after the first wedding, but it didn’t come for a month. Among those who officiated weddings during that 29-day blitz was the city’s district attorney, Kamala Harris.

“One of the most joyful (moments of my career) was performing the marriages in 2004. Truly joyful,” Harris told The Advocate earlier this year.

The California Supreme Court nullified all of the marriages in April 2004, and voters then approved Proposition 8 to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

When same-sex couples challenged the ballot measure all the way to the nation’s highest court, then-Attorney General Harris refused to defend it, saying it was unconstitutional. “The Supreme Court has described marriage as a fundamental right 14 times since 1888,” Harris said in 2013. “The time has come for this right to be afforded to every citizen.”

Later that year, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California, Harris officiated the first wedding.

8. Cheap prison labor, defended by Harris’ office

Harris read a news story one day in 2014 and discovered that attorneys at the state Justice Department she was heading had argued against the release of minimum-security prisoners because of their value to the state labor pool.

That, at least, is how she explained it in an interview with Buzzfeed News.

“I will be very candid with you, because I saw that article this morning, and I was shocked, and I’m looking into it to see if the way it was characterized in the paper is actually how it occurred in court,” Harris told BuzzFeed News in a 2014 interview. “I was very troubled by what I read. I just need to find out what did we actually say in court.”

The inmates working in prisons as groundskeepers, janitors and cooks earned between 8 and 37 cents per hour.

A federal judicial panel overseeing California’s overcrowded prison system had ordered the state to increase the sentence reductions minimum-security inmates earned for participating in rehabilitation and education programs.

But California Justice Department attorneys had a different view, arguing that prisons needed cheap inmate labor to keep functioning.

“Extending 2-for-1 credits to all minimum custody inmates at this time would severely impact fire camp participation — a dangerous outcome while California is in the middle of a difficult fire season and severe drought,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in a September 2014 filing.

The argument, later disavowed by Harris, was part of her office’s frequent conflicts with the three-judge panel overseeing the prison system.

Harris’ attorney general’s office “continually equivocated regarding the facts and the law,” the three-judge panel wrote in 2013. “This court would therefore be within its rights to issue an order to show cause and institute contempt proceedings immediately.”

The judges said they didn’t do so because that might further delay the state’s release of nonviolent prisoners.

9. Harris, her laywers and a fake confession

A Kern County prosecutor invented two lines of incriminating testimony in a defendant’s 2013 deposition and sent the faked transcript to the defendant’s public defender.

The phony lines read like a confession from defendant Efrain Velasco-Palacios, and would have changed the potential charges of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child to penetrative sex with a child — meaning a conviction could trigger a life sentence.

When the public defender discovered the fabrication, he successfully argued to get the case dismissed.

Then, Harris’ Justice Department appealed.

Their argument: The charges shouldn’t have been dismissed because, while the prosecutor did fake the lines, he didn’t physically assault Velasco-Palacios.

“Dismissal is an appropriate sanction for government misconduct that is egregious enough to prejudice a defendant’s constitutional rights,” the California Court of Appeals found in 2015. “On appeal, however, the People dispute that (the prosecutor’s) misconduct was outrageous or conscience shocking in a constitutional sense, as it was not physically brutal.”

The appellate court justices said it found “no support” for that argument.

“If Harris really thinks that knowingly producing a fraudulent document to secure an illicit advantage isn’t ‘outrageous,’ then perhaps she slept through her legal ethics courses,” wrote Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, in 2015.

Robert Murray, the prosecutor who filed the false transcript, would later describe his actions to the State Bar Court as a joke and a prank. It recommended a two-year suspension. Murray now works at the Office of the Inspector General and has had an active law license since 2018, according to the state bar website.

In her 2009 autobiography on her years as a prosecutor, Harris wrote about the kind of crimes that motivated her.

“In nearly twenty years as a prosecutor, the last six as the elected District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco, I have spent a lot of time moving between the bright spotlight that shines on certain aspects of our criminal justice system and the darker places that the public doesn’t see,” she wrote. “I have prosecuted the manipulative predators who commit sexual assaults on children. I have prosecuted conduct that is so destructive that my first and only priority has been to remove the perpetrator from free society for as long as humanly possible. Sometimes, forever.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

California’s top air quality regulator yesterday urged the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency to “immediately” approve the state’s regulation phasing out diesel trucks.

Air Resources Board Chair Liane Randolph was among more than 250 people who signed up to speak at a virtual hearing focusing on whether the EPA should grant California a waiver that allows the state to enact its regulation. The hearing was expected to last 12 hours.

Adopted in 2023, California’s mandate is the first in the world to ban new diesel trucks and force a switch to zero-emission big rigs, garbage trucks, delivery trucks and other medium and heavy-duty vehicles. No new fossil-fueled medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks would be sold in the state starting in 2036. Large trucking companies also must convert fleets to electric or hydrogen models by 2042.

The diesel ban is one of the most far-reaching and controversial rules that California has enacted in recent years to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases.

Trucking companies, agricultural groups and others told the EPA that the rules would harm the economy and the deadlines would be nearly impossible to achieve, while environmental and community groups, clean energy companies and at least one major retailer, Ikea, spoke in favor of the measure.

For more than 50 years, California has had the authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own emission standards for trucks, cars and other vehicles. But the EPA must grant a waiver for each specific rule that California adopts before it can be implemented.

One deadline in the state rule — regulating drayage trucks that operate at ports — was supposed to kick in this year. But the air board has delayed enforcing the measure until it receives an EPA waiver.

A spokesperson for the EPA declined to say when a decision on the waiver would be issued.

The waiver request is one of several that California regulators are hoping the EPA will act on before the November election. Supporters of California’s climate rules worry that a return of former President Donald Trump to the White House could block future approvals.

Randolph told the EPA that diesel trucks contribute “significantly” to the state’s air pollution and greenhouse gases so moving California’s fleets from diesel to electricity or other zero-emissions options is critical to improving public health and meeting the state’s climate goals.

Andrea Vidaurre, a co-founder of the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, a community group based in San Bernardino, said zero-emission trucks are needed to clean up air pollution in the Inland Empire, which is home to warehouses and freight industries.

“It is the only way that we’re able to actually bring some relief to the communities that are living in some of the … deadliest pockets of air pollution in the nation,” she said. “We don’t see any other way.”

But trucking companies say zero-emission big rigs can be twice the price of a diesel version, take hours to charge, can’t travel the range that many companies need and lack a sufficient statewide network of chargers.

Matt Schrap, chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Association, which represents operators of drayage trucks at California’s major ports, called the rule “unprecedented” and “ill-conceived.” The rules would hit truck drivers hard and would be impossible to implement, Schrap said, given the state does not have the charging network needed to meet the demands of electric trucks.

“It’s not that anyone in our industry is opposed to advanced technology,” Schrap said. “But we are very concerned about how this rule will be implemented, because it has real world impacts, not only on businesses, but the end-use consumer.”

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has to follow specific rules for when it rejects a California waiver: California’s decision would have to be “arbitrary and capricious in its finding” that its standards protect public health. Or the state does not need the rules to “meet compelling and extraordinary conditions” or they violate the Clean Air Act’s provisions about technical feasibility.

For decades, the EPA has granted California waivers to set its own ambitious, technology-forcing standards for cars, trucks and other sources. Only one waiver was initially denied — a 2008 rule setting greenhouse gas emission standards for cars — and that decision was quickly reversed and the waiver granted.

An electric delivery truck is displayed during the Zero Emissions Convoy in Bakersfield on Feb. 23, 2023. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

The former Trump administration took aim at the state’s special status to enact stricter air pollution standards — one of the more significant environmental battles of the Trump era. The Biden administration in 2022 reversed the moves.

“The previous Trump administration tried to remove California’s waiver, and that is the avowed goal of Donald Trump today,” Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Davis, told CalMatters ahead of the hearing. “So gaining the waivers before November is important.”

Earlier this year, truck engine manufacturers reached a deal with California over the rules. But trucking companies still oppose them. When California passed the ban last year, a top trucking industry executive predicted economic chaos and dysfunction and said the mandate is likely to “fail pretty spectacularly.”

Mike Tunnell, a senior director for the American Trucking Associations, urged the EPA at the hearing “to investigate the facts surrounding the deployment of zero emission trucks” because the industry thinks the regulation violates the provisions of the Clean Air Act about feasibility of technology. He said the state “did not understand nor account for the economics and the infrastructure requirement that make it infeasible to implement the regulation on California’s timeline.”

Shifting the state’s fleets off diesel — which has been a highly efficient powerhouse for heavy-duty vehicles for decades — is one of California’s biggest moves to cut greenhouse gas emissions and clean up smog and soot. It’s particularly important for low-income communities burdened by freight traffic.

“California still has the worst air quality in the nation,” air board chair Randolph told the EPA at the hearing. “The climate crisis also continues to accelerate in California, with coastal erosion, extreme weather, high temperatures and wildfires that are aggravating the air quality challenges that we already face.

The rule would transform the commercial trucks operating on California’s roads, affecting around 1.8 million vehicles, including those used by the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, UPS and Amazon.

Some big companies, including Pepsi, have rolled out electric fleets. Amazon earlier this year announced that it deployed 50 heavy-duty electric trucks in Southern California as well as hundreds of electric vans nationally.

Businesses other than trucking companies were mixed in their commentary. IKEA testified in support of the waiver, while the Western Growers Association, which represents California farmers, argued the requirements could prove burdensome for farmers in California.

Sales of new electric trucks, buses and vans in California doubled last year compared to the previous year, with one out of every six sold in the state emitting zero carbon, according to state data.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said California was ”moving away from dirty polluting big rigs and delivery fleets – cleaning our air and protecting public health.”

Sperling of UC Davis said the rule is an important policy. But he said the purchase requirements “are problematic because they are complicated and impact thousands of companies” and that’s made the rules “politically and administratively problematic.”

California in 2020 passed its first rule ramping up sales of zero-emission trucks and buses and three years later, the EPA, under the Biden administration, granted California its waiver to enforce the measure.

The new rules add onto that by banning diesel truck sales:

• By 2036, truck manufacturers will only be allowed to sell zero-emission models of heavy-duty and medium-duty trucks.
• Large trucking companies in California must convert their fleets to electric models. Timelines vary based on the type of truck, but companies will have to buy more over time until all trucks are zero-emissions by 2042.
• Drayage trucks, which carry cargo to and from the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland, have one of the strictest timelines: All must be converted to electric models by 2035 and new sales beginning in 2024 were supposed to be zero emissions.
• The gradual conversion to zero emission models only applies to fleets that are owned or operated by companies with 50 or more trucks or $50 million or more in annual revenue, and federal agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service. Included are trucks weighing 8,500 lbs or more and delivery van vehicles.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

On July 13, 2024, at home in Fieldbrook, the world lost one of the biggest-hearted people we all knew. Ron, mostly known to all as Duke, was the oldest of the five Costa boys. He was born to Fred and Joan Costa (Clark) in Arcata on May 13, 1953. In his last days, Duke was surrounded by his family. Throughout these days, he had a constant flow of visiting cousins and friends, making his final days much brighter. You could tell he felt the love just by looking at his face. His family was a valued and cherished aspect of his life. Duke never married but had a longtime partner, Lindy, whom he cares deeply for. Duke’s longtime friend and confidant Vickie Combs was also by his side in his last hours. We will appreciate her care and comfort to Duke forever. Her demonstration of the true meaning of love unconditionally will be forever remembered and valued for a long time. As a family, we appreciate everything she has done.

After high school, Duke entered the United States Navy. He proudly served on the USS Midway during the Fall of Saigon. After serving in the military, Duke returned to Fieldbrook and began working at Joe Costa Trucking. Over the years, he drove truck for Wayne Bare and Morris Logging.

In his youth he was often seen playing basketball, riding his motorcycle, and eagerly anticipating the annual Redwood Run. We don’t want to forget the fun times he talked about at the Sacramento Mile and the San Jose Mile. He cherished the group bus trips to Reno, the annual Costa Gin Fizz breakfast, and football season. Always cheering for his favorite team the Raiders. The stories from these events often led to loud laughter, a testament to his joy in these experiences.

Duke’s and his brothers were unwavering loyal to each other. The boys always had each other’s back. The last few months of Duke’s life, we spent many evenings talking about stories from their childhood that would get us all laughing so hard. Their bond was unbreakable, and shared memories brought them even closer in Duke’s final days.

In the last decade of his life, Duke made a conscious effort to prioritize his health. Swimming became his favorite activity, and he could be found in the pool almost every day of the week, a testament to his determination and resilience. He would be seen in the dark of the morning arriving at the pool and often being the first person to HealthSport. Swimming, walking laps, and attending aerobics class became the start of his days. He loved the mornings when he got to choose the music for swim class. When Duke could not participate in his morning swimming, he expressed how he missed his morning routine and friends. The people he met at the pool became his great friends. One friend in particular was Sal. Duke and Sal shared many great conversations during their long mornings at the pool. The swim group was so wonderful when it came to reaching out to Duke when he could not attend classes. A few of them even stopped by in his final weeks.

Duke was proud of his hard work changing his health and always encouraged others to get their health in order.

Ron “Duke” is survived by his three remaining brothers, Ross (Kelli), Rodney (Sandy), and Rocci (Laura), as well as numerous nieces, nephews, cousins and his Aunt; Janice Bertolini. He is preceded in death by his parents, Fred and Joan Costa, younger brother Robin, grandparents, many Aunts and Uncles plus all the friends he missed dearly.

The family would like to express our deepest gratitude to Hospice of Humboldt for its unwavering support during this challenging time. The staff was exceptional, and we will never be able to thank you enough for all your guidance and assistance in the last few months. Please support this organization whenever you have the opportunity.

The family will have a private event to honor our beloved Duke later this year then he will be placed at his final resting place, at his request, at Ocean View Cemetery. Duke had such a love for all animals, and most days, between ESPN shows, he would watch Animal Planet. In lieu of flowers, Duke would want donations to your local animal shelter to show your love and support for something he cared deeply about. If not the animal shelter, then the Fieldbrook Volunteer Fire Department, which was also a big help for Duke several times in the last few months of his life.

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Daniel John Smith, December 1959-June 2024. “Pug,” as some knew him in his younger years. Big Dan the BBQ Man, or just Big Dan.

He was born in Burney, Calif. to Elizabeth and John Smith. He grew up in a small town with his grandparents, parents and sister, Katherine. As a kid Dan would help his grandfather out in his restaurant prepping potatoes, mostly. From there he would grow to have a knack for BBQing.

When Dan got older he joined the Army and served our country well. Dan lived a life full of adventures. He had jobs including fishing and crabbing in Alaska, Washington and California; mechanical jobs; cooking in various places in the off-season; spending the last 25 years working with Bob, lumbering redwoods here in Arcata.

He loved his community. Going to Crabs games was one of the many things he loved to do besides cooking, fishing, hunting, shooting pool and being known to have some drinks at the local bars.

Big Dan loved to cook. He would cook for everyone. He would cook for birthdays, weddings or just because. He had a heart of gold and some of the best barbecue around.

He is survived by his sister Katie and nephew Zach, Jesse Adams, and Tabatha Riley.

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An apocalyptic plume of smoke, known as a pyrocumulus cloud, filled the sky above the Boise Fire near Orleans on Tuesday, reaching heights over 16,000 feet, according to air resources assigned to the blaze. The fire-induced cloud could be seen throughout the region. 

“Looking up the hill from my yard [near Pearch Creek], I could see the flames underneath the plume of smoke,” longtime Orleans resident Mark Dondero told the Outpost during a phone interview this afternoon. “The fire is burning in a part of the Boise Creek Drainage that has never been logged and there is no historical record of fire there. Once the fire jumped from the south side of the creek to the north side, it just ran up the hill through all that dead fuel which led to this big plume of smoke.”

“I used to be a wildland firefighter myself, and these fires have gotten more frequent and more intense over the past 20 years,” Dondero added.

The Boise Fire has doubled in size since Tuesday morning. As of this writing, the fire is listed at 8,617 acres with zero percent containment. The fire has prompted evacuation orders and warnings for some residents along the Humboldt-Siskiyou county line. (A complete list of evacuation notices can be found at this link.) No structures have been destroyed.

Fire activity ramped up in the Boise Creek Drainage after the inversion layer lifted, prompting growth on the eastern edge of the fire, according to a Wednesday morning update from Incident Command. “Despite the fire activity, crews were able to continue firing off the Antenna Ridge Road to deepen containment to provide protection for Orleans.”

Members of the Mid-Klamath Watershed Council (MKWC) and the Salmon River Restoration Council (SRRC) have been working as community liaisons to improve communications between the incident command and residents living near the fire perimeter. 

“Through the community liaison program, we’re reaching out to community members to better assess their needs and concerns, and we’re giving that information back to the fire team,” SRRC Community Liason Bona Fries told the Outpost. “These communities have a lot of fire and knowledge and a lot of knowledge of this area, so we’re making sure that all of the information is being given to the fire team so that they can work more efficiently. We don’t want them to have to go reinvent the wheel when we already have a lot of information that can just be shared.”

Asked to describe the current situation in Orleans, Fries said many residents “are feeling deja vu,” referring to the 2023 SRF Lighting Complex and 2020 Red Salmon Complex that burned in the Six Rivers National Forest in recent years.

“All of these communities just had a big fire and already did all this prep work around their places, and now they’re having to do it again,” she continued. “It’s hard to be motivated to do something that you just did and put the rest of your life on hold to protect your home. It can be overwhelming.”

As destructive as the SRF and Red Salmon complexes were, the fires have created a much-needed buffer for communities surrounding the Boise Fire. 

“What we typically see when these fires move into those recent burn scars is they really slow down because there aren’t fuels to carry the fire,” Fries said. “The Boise Creek drainage hasn’t seen fire in 100-plus years and the fuels are thick. What happened [on Tuesday] was expected due to the heavy fuel load. And we knew that as soon as the fire got established on the opposite side of the Boise Creek Drainage to the north, it had the potential to do exactly what it did yesterday.”

The Incident Command team will host a virtual community meeting on Thursday at 2 p.m. There is not currently a link available for the meeting, but it will most likely be streamed live on the 2024 Boise Fire Facebook page. Other links relating to the fire can be found here.

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PREVIOUSLY:

• Humboldt Ranchers and Farmers Left Scrambling After Closure of Redwood Meat Co., the Region’s Only USDA-Certified Slaughterhouse and Processing Facility
• In Lawsuit, Minority Shareholders of Redwood Meat Co. Accuse Their Father and Cousin of Fraud, Embezzlement, Document Shredding and More

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In the midst of being sued by members of their own family for alleged fraud and embezzlement, the majority owners of Redwood Meat Co. sold their shares of the recently shuttered business to notorious Arcata rancher Raymond F. Christie, whose trial on felony animal cruelty charges was delayed in December 2022 due to his ill health.

John “Punk” Nylander and his nephew Ryan Nylander sold their 82 percent stake in the business to Christie last Tuesday, Aug. 6, despite a temporary restraining order issued the previous week that prohibits them from selling or transferring any Redwood Meat Co. assets or taking any actions that require shareholder approval.

In a declaration to the court, Sacramento attorney Stuart L. Smith, who’s representing Christie, argued that last week’s sale of company stock was completely legal per the terms of a 40-year-old shareholder buy-out agreement that was signed by the company’s then-owners. Smith only recently became aware of this particular document.

“Under the terms of the operative transactional documents, John Nylander sold his entire 444 shares and Ryan his entire 378.75 shares to Mr. Christie for fair value,” Smith says in his declaration. “Consequently, Mr. Christie is the majority owner of Redwood Meat Company Inc, having acquired eighty-two (82) percent of its outstanding shares.”

In their recently filed lawsuit, the minority shareholders — Stephanie Nylander, Rachel Nylander Flores and Russel Nylander, who collectively own about 5.4 percent of the business — argued via their attorney, Cyndy Day-Wilson, that their dad (John Nylander) and cousin (Ryan) were attempting to sell the business without their knowledge or required shareholder approval.

The suit further alleges that, facing $900,000 in debt to the IRS, their family members were looking to offload the business after years of criminal mismanagement, including breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment and document shredding.

The next hearing in this case is scheduled for Friday morning. The plaintiffs are seeking a preliminary injunction to prohibit Redwood Meat Co.’s shareholders from selling any company assets, including stocks, until the court case is settled. Of course, since John and Ryan Nylander already sold their stake in the business, such an injunction would be akin to closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, as the saying goes. But Day-Wilson may ask the court to invalidate the transaction.

Locals likely remember Ray Christie as the rancher convicted of numerous misdemeanors for dumping more than 250 dead cows in open graves near state waters on his Arcata Bottoms farm. His 2019 trial on felony animal cruelty charges was declared a mistrial when one of the 12 jurors refused to convict him. A retrial was indefinitely postponed in 2022 due to Christie’s worsening medical issues, including a cancer diagnosis, a heart condition and vascular issues.

Christie also stood trial in 2009 for allegedly raising roosters for cockfighting and possessing dozens of cockfighting implements. That trial also resulted in a hung jury, and the charges were ultimately dropped.

The latest court filings — some of which were posted online last week by John Chiv — include a declaration submitted to the court by local attorney Dustin Owens, who is representing Redwood Meat Co., the business, but not John or Ryan Nylander.

In his filing opposing the preliminary injunction, Owens argues that such an order would be “improper as a matter of law” and would “prevent the Company, arguably, from reopening or conducting any business whatsoever which would no doubt result in the absolute destruction of the Company’s value.”

Redwood Meat Co. is worth at least $1.5 million, according to Owens, who bases that figure on the recent stock transfer to Christie. 

“The annual cash flow for the Company in 2023 was $719,219.68 according to the Company’s general ledger,” Owens writes.

He goes on to say that Ray Christie has big plans for Redwood Meat Co.

“Mr. Christie intends to aggressively restructure the company, rehire key employees and other staff that were furloughed, and reopen the Company so that it may profitably operate,” he writes in his brief to Judge Timothy Canning.

Owens argues that the preliminary injunction shouldn’t be granted because the plaintiffs can’t possibly succeed on the merits of the case, in part because they’re trying to prevent a deal that already took place.

“Injunctions have no application to alleged past wrongs that have already occurred,” he argues.

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PREVIOUSLY in Ray Christie:

• (VIDEO) Drone Flight Reveals Mass Open Grave of Cattle Carcasses in Arcata Bottoms
• Mass Open Cattle Grave Bulldozed; Location of Carcasses Now Unknown
• Cops Raid Notorious Ranch in the Arcata Bottoms; Rancher Ray Christie Arrested at the Scene
• More Than 250 Dead Cows Found on Ray Christie’s Properties, Says HCSO; Numerous Other Alleged Violations Discovered
• Humboldt-Del Norte Cattlemen’s Association Calls Ray Christie’s Ranch ‘Horrific,’ Says Anyone Convicted of Animal Abuse Should be Punished to the ‘Greatest Extent Possible’
• Rancher Ray Christie Held to Answer for Three Felony Charges of Animal Abuse; Four Charges Dropped After Investigating Deputy’s Testimony Was Compromised
• Judge Reverses Own Decision in Christie Animal Cruelty Case; Arraignment Set For Next Month
• Calling State Law ‘Unconstitutional,’ Attorneys for Rancher Ray Christie Ask Judge to Throw Out Case Involving Hundreds of Cattle Carcasses Found on His Land
• CHRISTIE TRIAL: Hung Jury Declared After One Juror Out of 12 Declines to Convict Accused Rancher
• RETRIAL: Following Hung Jury, Rancher Ray Christie Will be Retried on Four Felony Counts in February, Prosecutor Says
• Arcata Rancher Ray Christie Set to Face Second Animal Cruelty Charges in January
• CHRISTIE CASE: Defense Presents Aggressive Case for Charges to be Dismissed, Based on Allegations of Police Evidence Tampering
• CHRISTIE CASE: Rancher Battling Cancer as Second Trial Looms
• Second Ray Christie Trial Postponed Due to Defendant’s Deteriorating Health
• Trial of Arcata Rancher Ray Christie Delayed Yet Again, as the Accused’s Medical Problems Worsen

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If you’ve walked along the waterfront in the last week or so, you may have noticed a big ol’ ship docked in Humboldt Bay. That was the Ocean Guardian, a survey vessel that’s been busy helping offshore wind developers map the ocean floor off the coast of Eureka.

RWE announced in June that it would begin initial site surveying for the Canopy Offshore Wind Farm, one of two floating offshore wind projects slated for the Humboldt Wind Energy Area (WEA), located approximately 20 miles west of Eureka. Before environmental review and site planning can begin, offshore wind developers and researchers need a clearer picture of the alien world that lies beneath the ocean’s surface.

RWE has been using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) designed by Norway-based subsea surveying company Argeo to map the seabed within the Humboldt WEA, where water depths range between 2,400 to 3,200 feet. You can think of an AUV as an underwater drone. It is a self-propelled underwater robot that uses multibeam sonar, side scan imaging and sub-bottom profiling to map the ocean floor below. 

Through this process, RWE will assess the best locations for installing floating wind turbines and electric transmission lines and help developers “better understand biodiversity, habitats and other environmental factors to ensure responsible planning and design” within the Humboldt WEA.

Asked for a progress report on the site surveying process, Canopy RWE spokesperson Ryan Ferguson said the Ocean Guardian has been out at sea for more than a month. (You can check out the vessel’s path on this map.) If you saw it docked in Humboldt Bay last week, that’s because the crew had to stock up on fresh food and other necessities before heading back to the ship’s home port in Washington.

The vessel is in the final stage of the initial survey work. “Our team will now spend the next couple of months processing, reviewing and interpreting the data,” Ferguson said.

Before the site surveying began earlier this summer, a couple of folks from the RWE Canopy team sat down with EcoNews Report host Tom Wheeler to talk about the site surveying process. You can find the full interview at this link.