Los Angeles County’s lax approach to prosecuting the worst kinds of criminals means that a man convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl eight years ago in a restaurant bathroom will be treated as a teenage female.
Hannah Tubbs, who pretends he is a woman, has an extensive criminal record including violent crimes in multiple states. He is 26 years old.
It should be noted that ABC 7 Eyewitness News in Los Angeles and other news outlets covering the case refer to Tubbs as “she,” “her,” and as female, even though he is a violent sex offender linked by a DNA test to the Denny’s assault and is in fact male.
Will “she” have to register as a sex offender, however? No. Keeping the case in juvenile court, since Tubbs was 17 when he attacked the girl, ensures that.
The case was prosecuted in juvenile court and was not moved to adult court because of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s policy of not prosecuting juveniles as adults. A juvenile judge sentenced Tubbs to two years in a juvenile facility, and says he does not have authority to transfer him into an adult facility.
“This court will not disregard what the legislature has put onto it as a limitation,” the judge said.
If Tubbs had been tried and convicted as an adult, he could have been sentenced to almost a decade in prison.
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger issued the following statement in response to a Jan. 27 placement hearing, also referring to Tubbs as a “she”:
“The outcome of the Tubbs case is unsatisfactory. Judge Barrera’s hands were tied today – due to the fact that the DA’s office failed to file a motion to transfer Tubbs to adult criminal court, which is where she rightly belongs. Instead, we’re left with a 26 year-old individual sentenced to two years in a juvenile facility in isolation, separated by sight and sound from the other juveniles.
To carry out justice, all of the oars in the criminal justice system must be rowing in the same direction. Today, that simply didn’t happen.”
Gascón even acknowledged that Tubbs has been tried as an adult in several other cases.
