An actor who was falsely convicted of murder by then-district attorney of San Francisco Kamala Harris, said he plans to vote for former President Donald Trump, citing “the economy, the border, and inflation” as reasons.
Jamal Trulove, who appeared in the film The Last Black Man in San Francisco, told the New York Post that life under Trump “was good” in comparison to life under the Biden-Harris administration. Trulove, who previously endorsed Harris in 2020, cited “the economy, the border and inflation” as reasons he’s voting for Trump.
“When we took at what our life was like when Trump was in office we felt like life was good compared to right now,” Trulove told the outlet. “We wasn’t in no wars, right now we’re in wars. Illegals wasn’t coming in, but they’re coming in now.”
Trulove added that he could not see himself “voting for a woman who had something to do” with him “being framed for murder.”
In a recent interview on the Art of Dialogue show, Trulove said that he would “never forget” turning around and seeing Harris, who was serving as the district attorney of San Francisco at the time, “locked eyes” with him, and she “bust out laughing” as his guilty verdict was announced.
Trulove was wrongly accused of murdering Seu Kuka and was initially sentenced to serve 50 years in prison.
“I never forget when I turned around and I looked and I seen Kamala Harris, you know, we locked eyes there this one time, and she….. and she laughed,” Trulove said. “She literally just, like, kind of bust out laughing, almost as if she was pointing at it, like, ha, ha, ha, ha. That’s how I felt though.”
“We ended up losing. We ended up losing,” Trulove said on the show. “And, after I lost, I got convicted, whether the sentence came in, you know, obviously, the courtroom is full. I know who this lady Kamala Harris is. People in the projects knew who she was because she was a black district attorney, and we thought that we had a black district attorney in office. And, who we perceived to be black.”
Trulove added that the black community thought Harris would be “a little more favorable” to them.
“Now, during my trial, I didn’t even think of this lady, just in general,” Trulove continued. ” I just knew that she was the head DA, they never came and tried to talk to me or anything of the sort, right. It was strictly, ‘You did this, we’re charging you, you’re going down.'”
In his interview with the outlet, Trulove added that he supported Harris in 2020 because he had been “pressed by executives and a lot” of his advisors.
“I put my difference aside only because I was being pressed by executives and a lot of my advisors, because I had I had contracts to do my documentary and obviously, I do film, and so forth and so on,” Trulove explained.
Jamal Trulove and Chaz Ebert attend the Celebration of Black Cinema at Landmark Annex on December 02, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Randy Shropshire/Getty Images for the Celebration of Black Cinema)
After serving six years in prison, Trulove was acquitted of murder by a jury in 2015.
In 2019, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to approve a $13.1 million settlement for Trulove, according to NPR News.
The settlement for Trulove reportedly came after he “sued in January 2016.”
He sued in January 2016. In April of last year, a jury in Oakland found that two police officers on the case, Maureen D’Amico and Michal Johnson, deliberately fabricated and failed to disclose exculpatory material.
“And trust me I’m not done with them by a long shot!!” Trulove wrote in a post on X at the time. “After what these cowards of the law did to me, I will lit my freedom ring through every platform I get to show what injustice really looks like. Me!”