Diaz was convicted in 1984 of rape and attempted rape. He was paroled in 1993, became a registered sex offender, and began the work of proving his innocence. It took 19 years for his conviction to be reversed -- and two more years for the State of California to grant him compensation for the time he was wrongfully imprisoned.
Diaz's battle with Harris' office began in 2012 when a judge reversed his conviction. As state attorney general, her staff vigorously resisted his claim for compensation and tried to make him re-register as a sex offender, despite a formal ruling in April 2013 that he was innocent.
The Diaz case is one of a series of battles Harris' prosecutors waged -- in both the offices of San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general -- to resist innocence claims, often using technical timeliness or jurisdictional arguments, lawyers and innocence advocates say.
"The goal is justice," said Gerald Schwartzbach, Diaz's lawyer. "The goal isn't just rules, regulations and procedures. They penalized an innocent man with technical arguments. To me that's fundamentally contradictory to the whole purpose of the criminal justice system."
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After Diaz's conviction was vacated in September 2012, Harris' office sent him a letter telling him that he no longer had to register as a sex offender, as he'd been doing since his parole in 1993. "The DOJ has updated its records and a notification concerning this termination action has been sent to the law enforcement agency that last registered you," said the document on Harris' letterhead.
Diaz then filed for compensation, a standard practice in states to pay wrongfully imprisoned people, for some of the earnings they missed.
Both the state compensation board and attorneys working for Harris vigorously challenged Diaz's right to any money, arguing that he hadn't obtained a formal judgment of acquittal -- and that the court that reversed his conviction lacked proper jurisdiction.
The following April, Diaz says, Harris' office told him that, in fact, he must continue to register as a sexual offender -- although by that time he had obtained a formal judgment of innocence -- because he'd been released on parole before he filed the petition to vacate his conviction.
Filled with legal citations and precedents, the letter concludes: "Therefore, you are required to continue to register as a sex offender in California." The letter is signed by a staff member in the sex offender tracking program "For Kamala D. Harris."
That barred Diaz from coaching his children's sports teams, he said in an interview, and was a problem when he was looking for work. It also meant that he would continue to be subject to unannounced police visits to his home, as had been happening for 19 years, he added.
Diaz said he believes Harris' office was trying to intimidate him out of seeking compensation.
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