Friends and family of a transgender woman are calling on officials to place her in a women’s prison after she faced violence and discrimination while being housed in men’s jails for the past year despite SD County Sheriff’s policies about housing transgender inmates according to their gender identity.
In court today, Nikki Yach was sentenced to four years, eight months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy and other charges for her role in a violent altercation at a Pacific Beach Antifa counter demonstration to a pro-Trump rally in the wake of the January 6 insurrection.
Conspiracy charges are typically used to prosecute mobs and organized crime. However, according to the Daily Beast, they can be used against social movements because they just require defendants to be communicating with each other prior to committing a crime, in this case crimes include illegally using tear gas, kicking, punching and hitting people with a baseball bat. Experts worry conspiracy charges can be a political deterrence to social movements because they often double the sentences. The 10 other codefendants from the riot will be tried next year. They are out on bail.
Yach was facing life in prison due to previous convictions she incurred while being unsheltered from the age of 13 to 35. With credit for time spent in jail, changing her plea to guilty meant she may be released two years from now.
Her husband made a statement in the court room that between foster care and jail, Yach has been institutionalized or homeless most of her life. He begged the court to not hold her past against her and most importantly, to make sure her rights as a disabled transgender woman are protected.
“She’s been through enough,” GG Hubbard told Judge Polly Shannon.
Yach has been held in men’s jails the entirety of her incarceration despite stating she was transgender in her intake interview and having the gender marker “F” on the Driver’s License she had when arrested.
In the statement and interviews with the press, her husband GG Hubbard noted that she had received inadequate medical care while jailed and the Sheriff’s Department had not communicated with him when she was placed in the medical ward for her heart defibrillator failing. At the time, medical staff said she needed emergency surgery but failed to schedule such a surgery. Hubbard is constantly worried her heart might fail and he will not be contacted if she dies.
Yach was also initially denied access to her hormone medications and received strange doses or missed doses of her medications entirely when her prescriptions resumed.
One of the reasons human rights activists push for trans people to be placed in the correct gender facility is because sexual assault against trans women in prison is so widespread. According to CNN, 59% of transgender prisoners in California reported being sexually assaulted compared to 4.4% of the general incarcerated population.
Hubbard said Yach was sexually violated by Sheriff’s Department staff. He said when she filed a PREA, she was assaulted in retaliation. The sheriffs department denied a FOIA request for PREA investigation documents to confirm these events.
A friend who had attended many of Yach’s court dates noted that Yach used to always have a light about her but looked diminished and anxious during her sentencing.
Victims submitted statements to the judge and said they were satisfied with Yach’s sentence. The District Attorney’s Office previously moved to keep many of the victims’ names private, which is unusual.
During the sentencing, Deputy District Attorney Mackenzie Elmer argued that the credit Yach received for being in jail for 316 days should be reduced by two days.
A USA Today investigation confirmed many of the victims were members of hardcore white supremacist groups, the Proud Boys, and included a neo Nazi with prior violent offenses.
In justifying her choice to only prosecute Antifa protesters, District Attorney Summer Stephan’s office said Antifa was “overwhelmingly” to blame for the violence.
Legal experts who spoke with USA Today were concerned Stephan’s prosecution had political motivations because facts about the victims wielding knives and a group of far-right extremists cornering a man in an alley and sucker punching him in the face were not included. Witnesses to the alley incident were not interviewed. The experts said in a brawl setting, perpetrators on both sides are typically prosecuted, not just one.
“She’s not violent. This is just political, fascist nonsense,” Hubbard said in his statement to the court.
During her 2018 campaign, Stephan’s website featured a conspiracy theory that Holocaust survivor George Soros was funding Antifa.
It is unclear when Yach will transfer prisons and if she will be placed in a women’s prison in accordance with SB 132, which dictates transgender inmates be housed according to their gender identity. Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 132 into law in 2020.
