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.”