Gascón retaliated against prosecutor for exposing trans sex offender’s deception, lawsuit claims – Pasadena Star News

A veteran Los Angeles County prosecutor claims he faced retaliation from District Attorney George Gascón for revealing misconduct in the high-profile case of child abuser Hannah Tubbs, who began identifying as a transgender woman after her arrest in 2014 for the sexual assault of a 10-year-old Palmdale girl.

Assistant District Attorney Shea Sanna, 36, said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Aug. 13, in Los Angeles Superior Court that Gascón and his administration pressured him to suppress information about Tubbs’ use of gender identity as a ploy to obtain more favorable treatment in prison. and retaliated against him when he refused to comply.

The suit, which also names Los Angeles County as a defendant, claims Sanna faced further retaliation after reporting and resisting Gascón’s unethical directives.

“For the past two years, Gascon has tried to silence me,” Sanna said in a statement. “He suspended me without pay, threatened my livelihood, attacked my credibility, tarnished my reputation, demoted me, investigated and harassed me, all to listen to him; so I would sit still; so I would not speak for those most affected by his misguided political policies.”

Sanna, who has worked for the district attorney’s office since 2018, was suspended for five days without pay in February 2023 for wrongdoing Tubbs. In October 2023, he was demoted and transferred to the Santa Clarita office, resulting in a reduction in pay and less significant cases, the suit states.

Tubbs was just two weeks shy of her 18th birthday when she was arrested after DNA evidence showed she sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl in a women’s bathroom stall at a Denny’s restaurant in Palmdale on New Year’s Day 2014.

She was sentenced to two years in a juvenile facility after Gascón’s office refused to send the case to adult court.

In a statement, reformer Gascón reiterated that he believes juveniles should not be tried as adults, but said he learned from the Tubbs case that sometimes adjustments are warranted.

In an unrelated case, Tubbs was charged with murder in Kern County for allegedly beating a fellow survivalist to death with a rock in 2019. She pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and was convicted in December 2023 to 15 years in prison.

Revealed phone call to father

Sanna received the Palmdale sexual assault case against Tubbs on October 28, 2021.

Less than a month later, Tubbs called his father from a Los Angeles County jail, indicating that he planned to claim to be transgender in order to obtain favorable housing in a juvenile facility for women, according to process.

“In the recordings, Tubbs and his father laughed and joked about his transition and his chosen name, Hannah,” the suit states.

Tubbs reportedly informed his father that although it might be difficult, he needed to refer to him by that name in court and use female pronouns. At all other times, Tubbs’ acquaintances used male pronouns when referring to her during jailhouse phone calls, the suit says.

Tubbs was convicted of sexual assault in Palmdale on November 30, 2021.

After the hearing, the bailiff and custodial staff advised Sanna that a search of Tubbs’ property bag revealed that she had not taken any of the hormone tablets she had been given to assist with gender transition, because each one remained undisturbed in the foil packaging.

“Hands were tied”

Because of a directive from Gascon ending the practice of sending juveniles to the adult court system, Sanna’s hands were “tied,” prompting him to request that Tubbs be sentenced to a maximum of two years in a facility for young people secured, it is shown in the process.

Sanna claims she was blocked from presenting the court with 256 prison calls detailing Tubbs’ alleged cheating and portraying him as a racist, deviant and dangerous sexual predator.

Sanna was removed from the Tubbs case on February 1, 2022, a day after he allegedly emailed jailhouse call records to Chief Deputy Frank Santoro and Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Gowan.

The case was assigned to Gowen, who did not review the records before creating a report for a multidisciplinary treatment hearing based largely on representations from Tubbs, his attorney and his father, the lawsuit states.

“The court did not ask questions, which Gowen likely would not have been adequately prepared to answer, and sealed the report,” the lawsuit states.

Sanna admitted that in April 2022, after he was removed from the Tubbs case, he asked Larry Droeger, the District Attorney’s office director, for permission to alert the court to Tubbs’ deception.

“My question to you now is this,” Sanna wrote to Droeger, “what do you expect me to do when, as a prosecutor sworn to uphold ethical obligations, I am on the sidelines, barred from reporting to the court about a matter about which I have relevant material information?”

Critical to other cases

Sanna has been an outspoken critic of Gascón’s handling of other cases, including one involving convicted felon Andrew Cachu, who was released from prison in 2021 after serving just six years of a 50-year sentence years in prison when former special assistant DA Alisa Blair refused to call witnesses during a disposition hearing.

Cachu was initially tried in adult court, even though he was less than two months shy of his 18th birthday when he shot and killed Louis Amela, 41, outside a Palmdale restaurant in March 2015 However, under changes to the law since then, he was entitled to a retroactive transfer hearing to determine whether his conviction should be in juvenile or adult court.

While waiting in jail for his case to be resolved, Cachu was told by his mother Bertha Cachu in a telephone conversation that Blair had agreed to intervene on his behalf.

“This is Gascón’s special counsel,” Bertha Cachu explained to her son in a recording of the call obtained by the Southern California News Group. “Oh my God! She’s gonna come to your case. Did you hear that, man? She’s good. She’s the one I’ve been emailing back and forth with.”

Originally published: August 13, 2024 at 6:26 p.m