Prosecutor of molester receives suspension
Deputy district attorney is accused of misidentifying gender of trans woman in 2014 Palmdale sex case
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón has suspended the former lead prosecutor in the widely publicized case of child molester Hannah Tubbs, who began identifying as a transgender woman after her 2014 arrest for the sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl in Palmdale.
Deputy District Attorney Shea Sanna, 34, whose fiveday suspension ends today, is accused of misidentifying Tubbs' gender and “deadnaming” her.
“In a case strategy meeting and in a department email you intentionally and repeatedly misgendered a transgender individual who had a case pending in juvenile court,” Joseph F. Iniguez, who is Gascón's chief of staff, wrote in a Feb. 22 suspension letter to Sanna. “Your conduct was unprofessional, made your co-workers uncomfortable, and reflected poorly on yourself and the department.”
Iniguez alleges that during a
Jan. 26, 2022, staff meeting, Sanna claimed Tubbs was using gender identity as a ploy to gain more favorable jail treatment and used the wrong pronoun in describing Tubbs.
Sanna said Monday that he doesn't remember speaking during the staff meeting. However, he acknowledged that in April 2022, after he was removed from the Tubbs case, he asked Larry Droeger, a bureau director for the District Attorney's Office, for permission to present evidence in court from 256 jailhouse phone calls, some of which detailed Tubbs' deception.
“My question to you now is this,” Sanna wrote to Droeger. “What do you expect me to do, when, as a prosecutor who took an oath to abide by ethical obligations, I am on the sidelines, prohibited from notifying the court of a matter as to which I have relevant material information?”
In another email to Droeger, Sanna said Tubbs, who was arrested in 2019, is a “master manipulator” who is documented referring to herself as a man, has refused to take estrogen or wear a bra, and “demonstrates a lack of sincerity” in claiming to be transgender.
“Hannah Tubbs was made up on Jan. 5, 2022 after speaking with his attorney,” the email says. “Tubbs has talked openly about working the system.”
Sanna said he wanted to present information about Tubbs to prevent fraud from being perpetrated in court.
“It wasn't like I was running around the office being transphobic or misgendering,” he said.
Tubbs, who was just two weeks shy of her 18th birthday, was arrested after authorities said DNA evidence showed she sexually as
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