Today Judge James Chalfant issued a ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys against Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, challenging many of the District Attorney’s recent policies. The decision was a nearly complete victory for the ADDA.

The Special Directives require prosecutors to violate California law, their oaths of office, and their ethical and professional obligations. The Special Directives violate the Three Strikes law by prohibiting prosecutors from pleading and proving prior convictions in new cases. Prosecutors have a ministerial duty to allege all prior convictions under the Three Strikes law. Respondents refuse to perform this duty. The Special Directives also require deputy district attorneys to wrongly argue that the mandatory obligation to plead and prove strikes is unconstitutional as violative of the separation of powers.

. . . .

The District Attorney’s disregard of the Three Strikes “plead and prove” requirement is unlawful, as is requiring deputy district attorneys to seek dismissal of pending sentencing enhancements without a lawful basis.

Paid subscribers to my newsletter, the Constitutional Vanguard, were ahead of the curve on this one. I put out a newsletter last night with a prediction about the outcome of the lawsuit. Tonight I sent paid subscribers a missive in which I assessed my predictions in detail. You’ll have to subscribe to see whether my predictions were correct, but I’ll give you a little hint: the title of tonight’s missive is Who Is Writing This Newsletter? Patterico? Or Carnac the Magnificent?

(Always trust content from Patterico!)

The extent of the accuracy of my predictions amazed even me. Just think: you too could be getting that kind of insight delivered directly to your inbox. (And if we build up a base of subscribers, we can have exclusive discussions among civilized people.)

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