Power trip by guards alleged
Prosecutors’ closing statement portrays deputies as abusive, clinical in overseeing inmates
SAN JOSE — Prosecutors on Tuesday painted a sadistic portrait of three jail deputies charged with fatally beating mentally ill inmate Michael Tyree two years ago, saying they were clinical when they closed the door on the man’s cell, leaving him to die.
“Then they turned off the lights, literally and figuratively, on Mr. Tyree,” deputy district attorney Matt Braker said.
Braker used the dark imagery to set the tone for his closing arguments in the high-profile murder trial of Santa Clara
County correctional deputies Jereh Lubrin, Matthew Farris and Rafael Rodriguez, who are trying to avoid life in prison in Tyree’s Aug. 25, 2015, death at the Main Jail.
“Power, and the abuse of power,” Braker said. “That is what this case is about, and why this happened.”
Lubrin’s defense attorney, Judith Odbert, began her closing arguments by assailing the credibility of Juan Villa, another mentally ill inmate who is a purported victim in two related counts of assault under the color of authority, and a key witness in the murder charge involving Tyree. One alleged assault occurred minutes before the Tyree encounter, and another reportedly occurred a month prior on July 25, 2015.
“He’s not reliable and he’s not credible,” Odbert said, adding that the July allegation crumbles under scrutiny and testimony by investigators. “I do not believe the prosecution has proved this count beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Mistrial denied
While Braker presented his entire closing, Odbert only had time to argue the July 2015 assault charge Tuesday. She is expected to address the August 2015 allegations Wednesday morning, and the other two defense attorneys — Bill Rapoport for Farris and Matt Pavone for Rodriguez — are expected to follow.
Odbert did make an unsuccessful motion for a mistrial on the contention that Braker improperly associated Lubrin to textmessage evidence involving only Farris and Rodriguez. Judge David A. Cena swiftly denied it and admonished the jury to not factor those implications.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office — the latter tasked with having arrested its own deputies — have alleged that the three deputies, and particularly Lubrin, exhibited a pattern of abusive behavior and targeted the most defenseless inmates, including Tyree and Villa, who is the victim in an additional assault charge.
Both men were known to be mentally ill, and prosecutors say both were allegedly targeted during a round of cell checks in response to assorted misbehavior hours before Tyree died.
“They went into that cell with the intent of meting out some justice or punishment,” Braker said.
Correctional deputies are trained to try to avoid hitting inmates in the head. But Tyree sustained cuts and bruises to his eyebrow, cheek, chin and the soft tissue under his skull, consistent with being hit with a blunt object or slammed up against a cell wall.
Defense attorneys for the deputies have argued that Tyree’s injuries can be explained in other ways, including that he fell and hit his head on his in-cell sink in a possible suicide, and that other internal injuries were the result of medics’ efforts to revive him. They also challenged the credibility of inmates like Villa whose testimony about a screaming and agonizing Tyree fueled Braker’s contention that the defendants coolly carried on after Tyree was fatally injured.
“They left him in his cell alone to die,” he said.
Suspicious behavior?
Braker also revisited the testimony and evidence he says supports the defendants’ conviction on second-degree murder, including what he deemed unusual and suspicious behavior after Tyree’s death was discovered — including timely Google searches about the consequences of certain injuries — physical evidence on Tyree’s body, and text messages of purported abuse that have been argued as incriminating, “banter” or inconclusive.
“That’s what this crime is: conscious disregard for human life,” he said.
All three defendants were stoic at Monday’s hearing before Cena, periodically taking notes on a legal pad and quietly consulting with their attorneys during Braker’s closing.
If convicted, Farris and Rodriguez, both 28, and Lubrin, 30, could be sentenced to life in prison. They are free on $1.5 million bail each and on paid administrative leave.
Their arrests spurred a top-to-bottom audit of the county jail operation run by the Sheriff’s Office and a host of reforms by a civilianled commission born from the outcry over Tyree’s death.
That broad review has also led to the arrest of nearly a dozen correctional deputies on charges of abuse toward inmates and other misconduct.