Does the Attorney General have any authority or authority to prevent the filing of an accusatory pleading?

It is clear to us, however, that it is not simply the filing of an accusatory pleading which is at issue here. Rather, as the Attorney General freely admits, the prosecutor's office helped prepare and approved the guidelines. Yet those guidelines purport to control the court's discretion--indeed, the municipal court judge here made it clear that he felt bound by them. Esteybar, however, may not be dismissed so lightly; it stands for the proposition first announced in People v. Tenorio, supra, 3 Cal.3d 89, 89 Cal.Rptr. 249, 473 P.2d 993, that once the decision to prosecute has been made, the process which follows, including sentencing, is exclusively a judicial function.

In the superior court, relying upon People v. Padfield, supra, 136 Cal.App.3d 218, 185 Cal.Rptr. 903, the district attorney argued that nothing in the diversion statute gives an individual defendant the right to be considered for diversion, and the statute in fact merely authorizes the creation of local programs and permits local communities to develop criteria, as none were set forth in the statute. The court in Padfield, however, did not consider the separation of powers argument raised before us. Here, the district attorney again cites Padfield and, like the Attorney General, argues that "[t]he prohibition against allowing wobblers to divert is merely an extension of the charging process and hence remains within the traditional zone of the District Attorney's discretion." And, the argument continues--without citation to authority--"[t]he prosecutorial determination that an accused is ineligible for diversion is an executive decision, not a judicial act."