A 26-year-old transgender woman who sexually assaulted a young girl will serve her sentence in a juvenile detention center because she was not yet 18 at the time of the incident, a California judge ruled Thursday.
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Hannah Tubbs was 17 when she assaulted a 10-year-old child in a fast food restaurant near Los Angeles. The facts date back to 2014, but she was only charged last year.
Judge Mario Barrera said he had no choice but to sentence her to two years in a juvenile center unless the Los Angeles district attorney transferred the case to adult court.
“I want to be clear. This transfer request is entirely at the discretion of the prosecutor, “said the judge, quoted by the Los Angeles Times newspaper.
The two-year sentence is the maximum penalty for an individual convicted as a minor, he stressed.
If the defendant had been tried in adult court, the sentence could have been more severe.
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon has had a policy since taking office not to bring juvenile defendants to adult court, believing their brains have not finished developing.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Gascon would also have worried about the fate that awaited Hannah Tubbs in a classic prison as a transgender woman.
In the United States, prosecutors have jurisdiction over a given geographical area and some, like Mr. Gascon, are elected by universal suffrage. The Los Angeles prosecutor won at the end of 2020 and his reformist policy made him a person hated by conservative circles, who accuse him of laxity and organized, in vain, a petition to obtain his dismissal.