Los Angeles DA George Gascon hit with new lawsuit: ‘Required prosecutors to unlawfully hide the truth’
A group of Los Angeles County deputy district attorneys (DDAs) on Monday filed a new lawsuit against the county and District Attorney George Gascon.
Deputy District Attorneys Peter Cagney, Richard Hicks, Mindy Page and Karen Thorp are accusing Gascon’s office of demoting them from their positions for expressing opposition to his resentencing policies.
“Each Plaintiff was removed from their position as a result of disclosing and/or refusing to engage in illegal activities as directed by their supervisors, including, but not limited to, George Gascon, Joseph Iniguez and/or Diana Teran,” the complaint filed in the LA County Superior Court states.
Plaintiffs allege that they were “subjected to adverse employment actions because they disclosed that the resentencing guidelines and directions they received from their supervisors were violations of the current state of the law, and/or refused to carry out unlawful directives and/or orders given to them by their supervisors.”
The Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys Association (LAADDA), which has filed two lawsuits against Gascon, has argued that several of the DA’s directives violated state law, including one that blocked DDAs from filing strike prior enhancements in new cases and allegedly ordered prosecutors to “dismiss existing charges that [Gascon] personally disagreed with,” as LAADDA Vice President Eric Siddall previously told Fox News Digital.
In 2021, a judge blocked Gason’s policy aiming to block prosecutors from seeking longer sentences for repeat offenders under the state’s Three Strikes Law, which states that defendants convicted of any new felony after being convicted of previous felonies be sentenced “for twice the term otherwise provided for the crime,” or a minimum 25 years if they have two or more prior “strikes,” according to the county. The directive also blocked prosecutors from seeking longer sentences in several other types of cases.
