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The California Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal regarding the overturned convictions of three former sheriff’s employees who murdered an inmate who had mental illness in the Santa Clara County Jail.
On Wednesday, the court granted the petition by the state Attorney General’s Office that is seeking a reversal of an Appeal Court opinion, which overturned the second-degree murder convictions of former correctional officers Matthew Thomas Farris, Jereh Catbagan Lubrin, and Rafael Rodriguez. The three men were found guilty in 2017 for the beating death of Michael Tyree.
Tyree, 31, was booked into county jail on July 11, 2015, for an alleged violation related to his probation for a misdemeanor drug possession that was being monitored in the Santa Clara County Superior Court’s mental health court and a petty theft charge. He was placed with the general jail population instead of the acute psychiatric ward, according to court records.
The former jail guards were each sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
Their attorneys appealed the conviction, claiming the primary legal theory prosecutors used had been invalidated in 2018 by changes in state law. A state Court of Appeal judge overturned the convictions because Senate Bill 1437, which passed in 2018, declared invalid the “natural and probable consequences” theory. The court decided that the law is retroactive.
A natural and probable consequence is one that a reasonable person would know is likely to happen if nothing unusual intervenes. An aider and abettor under the theory is liable for the natural and reasonable consequences of any act that he knowingly aided or encouraged.
SB 1437 amended the felony murder rule and the natural and probable consequences doctrine to ensure that murder liability isn’t imposed on a person who is not the actual killer, did not act with the intent to kill or was not a major participant in the underlying felony who acted with reckless indifference to human life.
During the men’s criminal trial, the original court gave the jury two alternative theories regarding second-degree murder. The first involved implied malice murder in which each defendant acted with malice aforethought to cause Tyree’s death. The alternative theory involved a second-degree murder based on an aggravated assault or an assault under color of authority during which a person in each defendant’s position would have known that murder was a “natural and probable consequence” of such an assault.
The state Attorney General’s Office had argued during the appeal that the jury was also instructed with a still-valid theory of second-degree murder liability — implied malice murder — and any error arising from the trial court’s instructions on the natural and probable consequence theory was harmless.
On Aug. 23, the Court of Appeal further denied the Attorney General’s petition for a rehearing after the initial Appeal opinion.
On Wednesday, Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Associate Justices Goodwin Hon Liu, Leondra Kruger, Joshua Groban, Martin Jenkins and Patricia Guerrero granted the hearing before the state’s highest court. Associate Justice Carol Corrigan was absent from the court’s session.
The court has deferred further action in the case until consideration and disposition of a related issue in another case or until the court orders the hearing to resume.
