Summary
California Court of Appeal case to review whether the District Attorney of Los Angeles County, George Gascon, has the unilateral authority to dismiss sentencing enhancements from pending criminal cases. In December 2020, Gascon replaced Jackie Lacey as District Attorney. On the day he took office, he issued a series of Special Directives. Special Directive 20-08, entitled "Sentencing Enhancements/Allegations" required all Deputy District Attorneys to orally amend the charging documents in pending cases to dismiss previously alleged sentencing enhancements based solely on the new office-wide blanket policy. The trial court refused to dismiss Nazir's firearm enhancement allegations because the only reason for doing so given by the prosecuting attorneys was the Special Directive. In the trial court's opinion, dismissal was unwarranted because California law requires an individualized consideration of a defendant's case and therefore the Special Directive alone was insufficient in and of itself to justify dismissal of Nazir's firearm enhancement allegations. CJLF joined the case upon the request of the Court of Appeal to argue that prosecutorial discretion, albeit broad, is not without limit. Once prosecutors invoke the jurisdiction of the court by filing charging documents, California law prohibits prosecutors from unilaterally dismissing those charges. The decision whether to dispose of previously alleged charges and/or enhancements is purely a matter of judicial discretion. Because the sole basis given by the prosecuting attorneys in this case was the Special Directive, the trial court properly utilized its statutory discretion when it denied their motion to dismiss due to a lack of case specific reasons that would justify such a dismissal.
The Court of Appeal agreed and held that the decision to dismiss a previously alleged sentencing enhancement is a matter of judicial discretion. The Court of Appeal sent the case back to the trial court for an individualized determination of whether this is an appropriate case to dismiss the enhancements in light of Special Directive 20-08 among other factors.
