In The Association of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County v. George Gascón, as District Attorney, voters elected George Gascón as district attorney of Los Angeles County in November 2020. The next month, he adopted “Special Directives” on sentencing, sentence enhancements, and resentencing.

The special directives, which amended his predecessor’s policies, did the following:

• generally prohibited deputy district attorneys from alleging prior serious or violent felony convictions, commonly known as “strikes,” under the three strikes law or sentence enhancements;
• required deputy DAs in pending cases to move to dismiss or to seek leave to remove allegations of strikes and sentence enhancements from charging documents.

ADDA – the certified exclusive bargaining representative for Bargaining Unit 801, comprising around 800 deputy district attorneys in the county – asked the court for a writ of mandate and a preliminary injunction to stop Gascón from enforcing the special directives.

ADDA argued that the special directives violated the following duties of a prosecutor:

• to plead and to prove prior strikes under the three strikes law;
• to exercise prosecutorial discretion in alleging and in moving to dismiss, under section 1385 of the Penal Code, prior strikes and sentence enhancements on a case-by-case basis;
• to keep prosecuting alleged strikes and sentence enhancements after a court has denied a motion to dismiss under section 1385;
• to prosecute certain allegations...

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