Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon has suspended a prosecutor for allegedly misgendering a convicted child molester and suspected murderer, and using the wrong name to refer to the convict.
Fox News first reported the news, citing law enforcement sources. Assistant district attorney Shea Sanna served as the lead prosecutor on part of the Hannah Tubbs case. Sanna has argued in the past that jailhouse phone calls show that Tubbs, who identifies as a transgender woman, was attempting to use gender identity to game the justice system — an argument that sources say made others in Gascon’s office uncomfortable. The internal investigation into Sanna’s behavior began last year.
Sanna responded to the suspension on Twitter Friday afternoon. “I was suspended for speaking out against the Gascon Administration,” wrote Sanna. “Misgendering Tubbs while informing them that they were being played is just their excuse for the suspension.”
The child molestation case dates back to 2014, when Tubbs attacked a ten-year-old girl in a women’s bathroom. At the time, Tubbs was two weeks shy of 18 and and went by the name James. Eight years passed before police arrested Tubbs in connection with the attack. DNA evidence allowed police to make the link in the cold case.
After pleading guilty, Tubbs, now 26 and going by the name Hannah, received a sentence of two years at a juvenile facility because Gascon’s office declined to transfer the case to adult court. Gascon thus adhered to one of his day-one directives barring “children” from being tried as adults.
Following the sentencing last year, jailhouse recordings of Tubbs were released in which the convict boasted about the light sentence expected after pleading guilty. Tubbs also made explicit remarks about the victim.
“I’m gonna plead out to it, plead guilty,” Tubbs said in one recording obtained by Fox News. “They’re gonna stick me on probation, and it’s gonna be dropped, it’s gonna be done, I won’t have to register, won’t have to do nothing.”
Gascon responded to the recordings shortly thereafter.
“After her sentencing in our case, I became aware of extremely troubling statements she made about her case, the resolution of it and the young girl that she harmed,” explained Gascon. “If we knew about her disregard for the harm she caused we would have handled this case differently.”
“As a result, we are making minor adjustments to our policies on juveniles and [life without parole] to allow for exceptions in the most extraordinary of cases,” Gascon added.
In an interview with the New York Post last year, Sanna disputed the idea that Gascon only found out about the tapes after the sentencing.
“George Gascon was in possession of all evidence and knew or should have known of every statement made by Tubbs when he said he still believes Tubbs should be tried as a juvenile,” said Sanna. “Gascon knew about all 250 plus jailhouse tapes and removed me from the case the night before the hearing where I was going to play the tapes.”
Tubbs’s victim, now an adult, also condemned Gascon and said the light sentence was unfair and denied her any sense of justice.
Others like Sacramento County district attorney Anne Marie Schubert criticized the “utter failure” of Gascon’s blanket policy that prevented juveniles from being tried as adults, no matter the crime or circumstance, as quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
Last year, Tubbs’s stay in the juvenile facility was cut short after prosecutors in neighboring Kern County filed murder charges. The 26-year-old is accused of beating a homeless man to death in the woods with a rock.
Tubbs has pleaded not guilty to the Kern County charges.