COSTA MESA UNPLUGGED:

We begin pushing words together on a Tuesday when — in a few hours — the Costa Mesa City Council will convene an in-the-vault (read: closed session) huddle. The subject: what to make of the City of Costa Mesa vs. Benito Acosta train wreck.

I know. This paper’s pages probably don’t need another autopsy on the spectacular disintegration of the city’s case against Acosta in the courtroom of Judge Kelly MacEachern. When you drop a hammer on your toe, the last thing you need is another boob describing how you managed to color your toe purple.

But the temptation is just too fetching. Both the color and the pain should teach this city a lesson in the hazards of dubious prosecutions and, seemingly, sloppy lawyering.

Let’s spare ourselves the nuts and bolts of what got us here, save for the summary that Acosta — a bit of a flinty, intemperate activist — got muzzled by Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor during the council’s first meeting of the 2006 calendar year.

Whether the mayor rightly shut down Acosta isn’t the debate here. Neither is the question as to whether Acosta did anything to prompt several Costa Mesa police officers to treat him like a football in a rugby scrum. Right or wrong, that stuff happened.

But where the trial of Acosta is concerned, who screwed up remains murky on one front and certain on another.

The former first: Either Dan Peelman — an attorney with Jones & Mayer, the law firm contracted to serve as Costa Mesa’s legal counsel — is a slipshod lawyer and the city would do well to find its attorneys elsewhere, or Judge MacEachern is into psychedelic rulings completely detached from any basis in law.

For the record, MacEachern dismissed the city’s case against Acosta more than a third of the way into the trial, ruling that Peelman’s failure to be sworn in as a public prosecutor violated Acosta’s constitutional and due process rights. She cited Article 20 of the California Constitution as the basis for her ruling.

That section says that “members of the legislature, and all public officers and employees, executive, legislative, and judicial, except such inferior officers and employees as may be by law exempted, shall, before they enter upon the duties of their respective offices, take and subscribe the following oath or affirmation.”

Some legal wonks who’ve microscoped MacEachern’s ruling think she may have booted this one. The argument goes that Peelman’s status as the assigned deputy of Kimberly Barlow, Costa Mesa’s sworn city attorney, puts him in the box where “inferior officers and employees as may be by law exempted” live.

If true, then Peelman should be rescued from the indignity of suspended haplessness. And the blowback on MacEachern should be the overturning of her ruling, a demerit all judges hate. Presumably, that council huddle we mentioned at the top is to kick around whether Costa Mesa should take the judge’s ruling to a higher authority.

In the meantime, Peelman’s feet remain shackled in clown shoes. And they should stay there if MacEachern’s ruling proves sound.

Now, the obvious blunder in this matter goes to the Costa Mesa City Council. Its decision to prosecute Acosta — even after the Orange County District Attorney refused to try the case “in the interests of justice” — was misguided, if not malicious.

The DA’s choice to beg off the case should have told this city’s elected leaders they had no case; that they should let it go. At least three of the five council members couldn’t and didn’t.

So now Goat Hill is lighter in the wallet and has a throbbing toe. And, apparently, clown shoes are in fashion.

BYRON DE ARAKAL is a former Costa Mesa parks and recreation commissioner. Readers can reach him at [email protected].