Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney (DDA) Shea Sanna filed a lawsuit against DA George Gascón on Aug. 13 alleging that the DA engaged in workplace retaliation against him over criticizing, among other things, Gascón ’s handling of a child molester case.
The lawsuit states that it all began when Sanna was assigned to the case of James Tubbs, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl at a Denny’s bathroom in Palmdale on New Year’s Day 2014 and is a suspect in two other cases of child sexual assault, one of them with a four-year-old girl. One of Gascón directives was that minors could only be charged with “the lowest possible criminal code section that corresponds with the alleges conduct, mandating a maximum of one count charged per incident, and importantly, preventing the filing of motions to transfer youth to the adult court system, regardless of aggravating circumstances,” per the lawsuit. And because Tubbs was a few days away from turning 18 at the time of the sexual assault, the directive applied to his case, and the most Sanna could ask for was a two-year sentence in a Secure Youth Track Facility (SYTF); he was successful in that regard.
The lawsuit alleges that Sanna, who is represented by the Dhillon Law Group, was ordered by Gascón Special Advisor DDA Alisa Blair and Chief DDA Sharon Woo in Jan. 2022 not to argue in court for Tubbs to be housed in a county jail. At this point, Tubbs was going by the name “Hannah”; the lawsuit alleges that this was a part of a ploy by Tubbs and his father to get Tubbs more favorable housing by having Tubbs pretend to be a transgender woman. Tubbs was ultimately sentenced to two years in a juvenile facility.
Subsequently, Sanna sent Tubbs’ rehabilitation team recordings of Tubbs’ jailhouse calls with his father which he believed showed the disingenuous nature of Tubbs’ claim to be transgender and signaled that he was going to play the recordings in court. A day later, Sanna was pulled from the case, which the lawsuit claimed was retaliation from Gascón’s office.
In Feb. 2022, Gascón initially defended his office’s handling of the Tubbs case, but a few days later acknowledged that Tubbs “gamed the system” and “if I had to do it all over again, she would be prosecuted in adult court.” Gascón, the lawsuit alleges, had the Tubbs recordings in his possession even before he initially defended his office’s handling of the case. Gascón’s reversal, according to the lawsuit, was because that the media got ahold of the Tubbs recordings and he wanted to get out in front of it before anything was published about the recording. Once national coverage came about of the matter and sparked public outrage against Gascón’s handling of the matter, “Gascón perceived Sanna as disloyal and sought to make an example out of him as a cautionary note to the many district attorneys who disagreed with his inflexible policies,” the lawsuit alleges.
That same month, Sanna told other DDAs that Blair was sabotaging cases, pointing to an instance in which he claimed she had worked to secure convicted murderer Andrew Cachu’s release from prison six years into a 50-year sentence, per the lawsuit. Sanna sent recordings of phone calls in which Cachu’s mother excitedly told him that “the district attorney is on our side — THAT IS CRAZY!” When Sanna’s complaint went nowhere, he went public with a post on X that stated to Blair, “Will they be discussing your administration’s policy of sabotaging cases and covering it up? If so, I’m aware of some emails and recordings they could use in their presentation.”
About a week later, Sanna learned that a complaint was filed against him on Blair’s behalf, the reason given was that he misgendered Tubbs when they discussed the case virtually in January. But the lawsuit notes that, despite Sanna’s concerns that Tubbs’s identification as a transgender woman was not genuine, it was actually Sanna’s direct supervisor, Deputy-In-Charge Andre Holmes of Antelope Valley’s Juvenile Office who accidentally referred to Tubbs with male pronouns. And in April, Woo filed a complaint against Sanna alleging the same thing as Blair.
In May 2022, Tubbs was charged with murdering a man in Kern County; it was alleged he hit the victim’s head with a rock and threw the body into a river. Tubbs plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter in Nov. 2023 and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. But Gascón, according to the lawsuit, was “livid” that Tubbs was charged because he knew that Sanna was instrumental in making that happen and thus “it furthered the narrative that Gascón’s policies were ineffective and supported Sanna’s position that Tubbs was a dangerous individual that should have been tried as an adult initially.” “The day Tubbs was charged with murder, Gascón’s office immediately began calling Sanna’s department nonstop,” the lawsuit alleges. “It became so hectic that Sanna’s Deputy-in-Charge, Andre Holmes, asked Sanna to transport boxes 50 miles away to Santa Clarita just so Sanna could escape the fray.”
The lawsuit proceeds to claim that a couple months later, Sanna was told by Christine Diaz-Herrera, an attorney at Sanders Roberts LLP, that she would be investigating the complaints against him; the lawsuit notes that the Sanders Roberts is representing Gascón’s office in pending litigation. Diaz-Herrera told Sanna she was looking to see if he “made false representations about pending Los Angeles County criminal court cases via social media and the news media from 2021 to present” and “the appropriateness of [his] language regarding defendants,” per the lawsuit. Also in July, Holmes was asked by Gascón’s office to complete an evaluation of Sanna in three days, which Holmes said “was an unusually short amount of time to draft an evaluation,” the lawsuit states.
Sanna was informed in Feb. 2023 he was suspended for five days without pay for misgendering Tubbs; Holmes said he did not know that Sanna was being suspended and “that he would have expected Sanna to have been issued multiple warnings,” the lawsuit states.
Sanna found himself suspended again in June 2023, this time for 10 days without pay, because a complaint had been filed against him for saying in Oct. 2021 that when three defendants assaulted and robbed a victim they acted like hyenas attacking their prey; an anonymous DDA, later revealed to be Blair, alleged that Sanna’s “hyenas” remark was racist. But the lawsuit notes that Blair was not present in the courtroom at the time that Sanna made it, and that those who heard the remark did not interpret it as being racist. The suspension was later reduced to five days after witnesses came out in support of Sanna.
Further, the lawsuit alleges that Sanna has been demoted and his salary was reduced and was passed over for promotions despite receiving exemplary evaluations from his supervisors and receiving a perfect score on the exam for promotions. The lawsuit notes that prosecutors who received lesser evaluations and scores were promoted over Sanna.
“For the past two years, Gascón has tried to silence me,” Sanna claimed in a statement. “He has suspended me without pay, threatened my livelihood, attacked my credibility, tarnished my reputation, demoted me, investigated me, and harassed me, all so I would obey him; so I would stay quiet; so I wouldn’t speak up on behalf of those most affected by his misguided political policies.”
The DA’s office told The Journal that they do not comment on pending litigation.
The Los Angeles Times reported in July that “20 prosecutors have accused Gascón of workplace retaliation” and that there are “more than a dozen” civil lawsuits against the DA. In March 2023, a jury concluded that the DA engaged in retaliatory behavior against DDA Shawn Randolph, a 30-year prosecutor, and that the DA owed her $1.5 million. Randolph alleged that because she felt that Gascón’s directive on juveniles was illegal and unethical, Gascón transferred her from being head of the juvenile division to the parole division. At the time, Randolph was prosecuting a 17-year-old male who allegedly killed his sister and girlfriend and then set an apartment on fire in an attempt to destroy the evidence. The DA’s office has also previously forked over $1 million in a settlement agreement to since-retired prosecutor Richard Doyle who similarly alleged workplace retaliation.
The July L.A. Times report included a statement from Gascón denying that he engages in workplace retaliation but didn’t comment on any specific cases; the report also noted that Gascón’s “allies have argued that the transfers are well within his discretion to rotate people into different positions in the office.”
“Yet another L.A. County Deputy DA is suing George Gascón for retaliation — the record 21st prosecutor to sue the county over Gascón’s unfair practices,” Nathan Hochman, who is running against Gascón for Los Angeles DA, posted on X. “When I’m DA, I will fight crime — not my own prosecutors.”
Yet another LA County Deputy DA is suing George Gascon for retaliation — the record 21st prosecutor to sue the county over Gascon's unfair practices. When I'm DA, I will fight crime — not my own prosecutors. #GasconMustGo #HochmanForDAhttps://t.co/ad2Kiky5e4
— Nathan Hochman (@NathanHochmanDA) August 14, 2024
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