A 26-year-old violent predator who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl will serve a two-year sentence at a juvenile facility despite being an adult with a lengthy criminal record, a California judge ruled Thursday.
Hannah Tubbs, who used to identify as male and went by the name James Tubbs when the crime was committed, pleaded guilty to molesting a child in a Denny’s restaurant bathroom in Palmdale, California. At the time, Tubbs was two weeks shy of turning 18. Tubbs grabbed the girl by the throat and groped her until someone else walked into the bathroom.
Tubbs got away but was charged for an unrelated crime in 2019. DNA testing led to the arrest in January 2021 for the sexual assault of the girl.
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In the interim, Tubbs had been charged with battery, drug possession, and probation violations in Idaho and Washington. In Kern County, California, Tubbs was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a minor but wasn’t prosecuted.
Tubbs, who began identifying as a woman after being arrested, will be released in less than a year and will not have to register as a sex offender.
The light punishment puts a spotlight on Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon‘s refusal to seek the transfer of juvenile defendants to adult court. The controversial DA has argued the brains of juveniles aren’t fully developed and that they should be rehabilitated in treatment facilities and not locked up with other adults.
Tubbs committed the sexual assault before the reform-minded Gascon was elected in 2020 but was prosecuted after.
Tubbs’s punishment isn’t sitting well with Superior Court Judge Mario Barrera, who said he was “extremely limited” in the sentence he could impose. Barrera said prosecutors with Gascon’s office never filed a motion to have Tubbs’s case transferred to an adult court, where Tubbs would have likely faced a much longer prison sentence.
“I want to be clear,” Barrera said Thursday. “The filing of a transfer motion is entirely within the discretion of the district attorney.”
Prosecutors pleaded with Barrera to transfer Tubbs to an adult jail, saying the law gives the judge the power to do so. Barrera declined, saying the court has no authority to transfer a person who commits a crime as a juvenile.
“This court will not disregard what the Legislature has put on to it as a limitation,” he said.
Because the case remained in juvenile court, Tubbs won’t be required to register as a sex offender.
LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger called Thursday’s placement hearing “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,” she said in a statement. “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,” Barger continued.
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Calls to Gascon’s office for comment were not returned.
