An appellate court in 2022 overturned murder convictions for three former correctional deputies in the beating death of Michael Tyree, leaving prosecutors to decide on whether to seek a second tria…
Jereh Lubrin, Matthew Farris, and Rafael Rodriguez, former Santa Clara County correctional deputies, are shown at their preliminary hearing in February 2016. The three were convicted of murder in the jail beating death of Michael Tyree in 2015, but on Aug. 1, 2022, a state appellate court reversed their conviction, citing revised state law that invalidated the legal theory on which they were convicted.
The office did not specify what will occur at a scheduled court hearing Tuesday afternoon for Jereh Lubrin, Matthew Farris and Rafael Rodriguez,. But the Santa Clara Superior Court calendar lists the proceeding for them as a disposition hearing, which typically involves some kind of resolution to the case.because of a legislative change that invalidated one of the theories that jurors were allowed to consider in reaching their 2017 verdict.
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 prosecutors.
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.
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