SAN JOSE — The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office has announced that a new development is expected Tuesday in the infamous murder case against three former jail guards who were convicted in the 2015 beating death of mentally ill inmate Michael Tyree.
The office did not specify what will occur at a scheduled court hearing Tuesday afternoon for Jereh Lubrin, Matthew Farris and Rafael Rodriguez, who have been held in the state prison system since 2017. But the county Superior Court calendar lists the proceeding for them as a disposition hearing, which typically involves some kind of resolution to the case.
The three men have been in legal limbo since a state appellate court overturned their murder convictions in 2022 because of a legislative change that invalidated one of the theories that jurors were allowed to consider in reaching their 2017 verdict. The court’s ruling was upheld by the California Supreme Court a year later, leaving the district attorney’s office to decide whether to re-file the original murder charges, seek different charges, reach a plea agreement, or dismiss the case.
Tyree’s death was a landmark event in the county, prompting a massive top-down civilian audit of the county jails and ongoing scrutiny of South Bay custody operations. It also inspired the establishment of county-run civilian oversight over the jails, and clashes over the watchdog’s access to sheriff records, coupled with the sheriff’s office handling of subsequent jail inmate mistreatment cases, helped fuel a civil grand jury corruption trial that prompted the retirement, resignation, and formal expulsion of previous longtime sheriff Laurie Smith.
On Aug. 26, 2015, the 31-year-old Tyree was being held in the county Main Jail in San Jose while waiting for a bed to open up at a residential treatment center. Authorities say Lubrin, Farris and Rodriguez beat Tyree in his cell inflicting severe injuries including trauma to his spleen, small bowel, liver, face, skull and the front and back side of his body.
Lubrin, Farris, and Rodriguez — now 37, 36 and 35 years old respectively — were convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced by Judge David Cena to 15 years to life in prison. A year later, the state Legislature passed Senate Bill 1437, which amended state law to invalidate the legal argument known as “natural and probable consequences.” One of SB 1437’s objectives was to alleviate murder convictions for people who had peripheral roles in a crime but who were being punished the same as someone who committed deadly violence.
In August 2022, a three-judge panel from the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Three overturned the correctional deputies’ murder convictions after finding that trial jurors were told, in accordance with law at the time, that they could consider natural and probable consequences in reaching their decision.
Their ruling stated that SB 1437 applied retroactively — since the convictions were actively under appeal — and because there was no record to prove whether jurors factored the invalidated theory in their verdicts, the convictions were invalid themselves. The ruling was appealed to the California Supreme Court, which upheld the decision to overturn the convictions and send the case back to Santa Clara County.
The Fourth District panel’s ruling did acknowledge that murder convictions might still be secured against Lubrin, Farris and Rodriguez under an “implied malice” theory, which argues that the deputies knew that their actions had potentially deadly consequences and proceeded anyway. But that would have to be argued at another trial, since implied malice must be assessed for each defendant, unlike natural and probable consequences, which allowed jurors to collectively assign blame.