Today law professors Meg Garvin, John Yoo, and I filed an application to file an amicus brief in the California Supreme Court. We seek to argue that L.A. District Attorney George Gascón cannot ignore the requirements of California's three strikes law. The California Court of Appeals previously granted a preliminary injunction in favor of this position.
The case arises from the following facts: In December 2020, new district attorney Gascón adopted several "Special Directives" concerning sentencing, sentence enhancements, and resentencing that made significant changes to the policies of his predecessor. In essence, the Special Directives prohibited deputy district attorneys in most cases from alleging prior serious or violent felony convictions (commonly referred to as "strikes") under the three strikes law and required deputy district attorneys in pending cases to move to dismiss or seek leave to remove from the charging document allegations of strikes and sentence enhancements.
The Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County (ADDA) is the certified exclusive bargaining representative for approximately 800 deputy district attorneys in Los Angeles County. ADDA sought a writ of mandate and a preliminary injunction to prevent the district attorney from enforcing the Special Directives, arguing they violated a prosecutor's duties to "plead and prove" prior strikes under the three strikes law (Pen. Code, §§ 667, subds. (b)-(i), 1170.12, subds. (a)-(d)); to exercise prosecutorial discretion in alleging and moving to dismiss under section 1385 prior strikes and sentence enhancements on a case-by-case basis; to continue to prosecute alleged strikes and sentence enhancements after a court denies a motion to dismiss under section 1385; and to prosecute certain special circumstances allegations. The trial court largely agreed with ADDA and issued a preliminary injunction enjoining the district attorney from enforcing certain aspects of the Special Directives.
