Santa Clara Jail Deputies Who Admitted to Fatal Beating Will Be Freed

The three former Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies who admitted to beating a mentally ill man to death in his jail cell nearly a decade ago will walk free Tuesday under a recently negotiated plea deal, closing one of the final chapters of a case that led to reforms and stricter oversight of the local jail system.

At a sentencing hearing in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San José, Jereh Lubrin, Matthew Farris and Rafael Rodriguez heard from Judge Benjamin Williams that their time served in jail and prison, as well as credits for things such as good behavior, satisfied their current sentences of 11 years.

All three former corrections officers were convicted of second-degree murder in 2017 for the killing of Michael Tyree, but those convictions were overturned on appeal in 2022 after a change in state law.

The men have been on home detention since the summer. Following their court hearing on Tuesday, they could turn in their ankle monitors and begin a two-year period of parole.

Tyree, who was in custody on a minor drug charge and awaiting the availability of a psychiatric treatment bed, was found dead in his cell by jail staff on Aug. 27, 2015, with his body bruised and covered with vomit and feces. He died of massive blunt-force trauma that caused his liver and spleen to rupture.

Matthew Braker, the supervising deputy district attorney for the office’s homicide unit, said Tyree’s sister, Shannon Tyree, couldn’t be in court for sentencing because she finds reminders of her brother’s death too traumatic.

“She told me that she still, to this day, on occasion … awakens to the nightmare of her brother screaming for help inside of that jail cell,” Braker said.

He said much of the media coverage of this case has focused on what happens to Lubrin, Farris and Rodriguez, and not much is said about Tyree. Braker gave an emotional statement in court on behalf of Tyree’s family.

“Michael Tyree was 32 years old when he was savagely and violently beaten to death inside that jail cell. He had a sister, Shannon. He had a girlfriend. He had a small child, and he had many friends,” Braker said.

He was also mentally ill, Braker said, noting that illness had “wreaked havoc” on Tyree’s life in the last year and a half, leading to him ending up in a jail cell awaiting treatment.

“And these three defendants were entrusted by our community with protecting him and ensuring that he arrived in court and justice was done for his case,” Braker said. “And they violated that trust in the most brutal and savage way.”

The former deputies, given an opportunity by Williams to make comments in court on Tuesday on their own behalf, all declined.

Lubrin, Farris and Rodriguez were each initially sentenced in 2017 to 15 years to life in prison for his death. After their convictions were overturned, the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office tried to appeal to the California Supreme Court but was rejected. Authorities were weighing whether to take the case to a new trial, but they ultimately came to a plea agreement proposed by attorneys for the deputies.

Each man pleaded guilty to a charge of voluntary manslaughter in August, admitting in open court that they personally assaulted or aided and abetted the assault of Tyree, causing his death, and that they did so with “conscious disregard for human life.”

As part of the plea deal, each man would be sentenced to the maximum term for the crime: 11 years in prison, followed by two years of parole, including time they already served.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s office claimed in August that although the deal offered the men a lesser felony conviction, it would not result in “substantially less time in prison” because the men were already set to have parole hearings in November — and had performed well in prison and completed self-improvement and educational classes.

Even if denied freedom in November, Rosen’s office said the men would have another parole hearing in 18 months and would be “virtually guaranteed a grant of parole at that time.”

The sentencing comes after roughly nine years of legal proceedings connected to Tyree’s killing, which ultimately led to the formation of civilian oversight for the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office and raised broader questions about the treatment of people with mental illnesses in the county’s jail system.

Lubrin, Farris and Rodriguez were initially convicted in part under the “natural and probable consequences” standard of California law that allows a person to be found guilty of murder if they participated in a dangerous crime during which an accomplice committed murder.

The standard required that the killing be a predictable outcome of the original crime, such as a violent robbery or, in this case, the alleged deadly beating of a prisoner. Under the prior law, juries could convict someone of murder even if the defendant had not directly killed the victim, so long as that person’s murder was the natural or probable result of the defendant’s actions or inactions.

In 2018, state Senate Bill 1437 invalidated the “natural and probable consequences” standard, leading to the eventual reversal of the three deputies’ convictions in an appeals court.

Rosen’s office said it would have been a challenge to secure murder convictions against each deputy in a new trial because Tyree was killed “inside a small jail cell with no cameras and no witnesses.”

Braker said Tuesday that the court, through the sentencing and resolution of the case, has shown the deputies more mercy than the men ever showed Tyree.

He said it’s the hope of Tyree’s family that Lubrin, Farris and Rodriguez never forget Tyree.

“That they remember every day what they did to him, and how they ended his life, and that they commit their future each and every day to making amends, to trying to do some good in the world and affecting some lives in a positive way,” Braker said. “Because that is the only way … that there is some glimmer of a chance that there can be some closure and something positive out of this terrible tragedy.”

KQED’s Julie Small and Katie DeBenedetti contributed to this report.