LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon wants the California Supreme Court to decide whether he has the authority to bar his prosecutors from seeking harsher punishment for repeat offenders.
After being elected in 2020 on a pledge to radically change how the country’s largest prosecutorial office addresses crime, Gascon issued a “special directive” forbidding his deputies from using a defendant’s previous convictions for serious or violent felonies to obtain longer prison sentences.
Under California’s Three Strikes law, enacted in 1994, people convicted of repeated felonies are subject to longer prison terms, as much as 25 years to life for so-called third strikers.
