Hannah Tubbs, a convicted child molester who received a relatively lenient sentence for a juvenile offense in California, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and lesser charges related to the brutal death of a friend.
The 27-year-old faced charges of first-degree murder, threatening a witness, robbery, and assault in Kern County, California, but ultimately agreed to a 15-year prison sentence in exchange for her guilty plea.
California Legal and Correctional Decisions Await
Court documents reveal that Tubbs fatally assaulted Michael Clark with a rock in April 2019. At the time, both Tubbs and Clark were part of the same survivalist transient group. Tubbs’s father mentioned that Clark had briefly lived at their home.
It’s noteworthy that Tubbs started identifying as female only after being arrested in connection with a cold case child sex assault investigation. This change in gender identity reportedly allowed her to be placed with juvenile girls while awaiting trial.
Initially held in the Kern County Jail’s men’s facility on a $1 million bond, state correction officials will now decide whether Tubbs will serve her sentence with male or female inmates.
After Clark’s death, Tubbs allegedly threatened her other friends, Josef Buffaloe and Brittany Hill, to prevent them from speaking about the attack.
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Tubbs’s Manslaughter Plea Fuels Ongoing Debate
In phone conversations from the jail that were obtained, Tubbs expressed her happiness with Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon’s rules, which prevented her from being registered as a sexual offender and resulted in a comparatively mild sentence.
Tubbs was previously serving a sentence for assault with a deadly weapon in Kern County when L.A. prosecutors requested a custody transfer to address a 2014 sexual assault case involving a 10-year-old girl in Denny’s restaurant bathroom.
However, under Gascon’s direction, the case remained in juvenile court because Tubbs was 17 years old at the time of the attack, just days away from legal adulthood.
Tubbs’ case has raised questions about the treatment of serious offenses and the effectiveness of justice system policies. As she pleads guilty to manslaughter, her story continues to spark debate about sentencing and the handling of violent offenders in the legal system.
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