SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT (publ. 9/5/2015, pg. A4)
Because of incorrect information from a source, stories about the death of Santa Clara County Main Jail inmate Michael Tyree misstated the nature of the offense that landed him in jail. He was jailed on a probation violation for a previous minor drug charge.
SAN JOSE — The investigation into the apparent beating death of a mentally ill inmate entered its seventh day as the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office neared a decision on whether to recommend that criminal charges be filed against three correctional officers who had restrained him.
Officials said nothing new Wednesday about the case of 31-year-old Michael James Tyree, whose body was found the morning of Aug. 27 in a sixth-floor cell at the Santa Clara County Main Jail. Potential charges could range from involuntary manslaughter to murder, according to a source.
The cause and circumstances of Tyree’s death remained under tight seal by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, but sources familiar with the investigation have told this newspaper that the inmate was “aggressively” handled by the corrections officers, who have been unofficially identified as Jereh Lubrin, Matthew Farris and Rafael Rodriguez.
Legal experts are not surprised at the pace of the investigation, saying thoroughness is especially crucial in a case facing heavy public scrutiny, such as an in-custody death that led to what the Sheriff’s Office acknowledged was the unusual action of placing three corrections officers on administrative leave.
“I would be surprised if charges are filed quickly in something that’s going to be heavily based on forensic evidence,” said legal analyst and former Santa Clara County prosecutor Steven Clark. “You need to be careful in coming to conclusions, and make sure you have all your forensic and medical evidence lined up.”
Tyree apparently suffered serious internal injuries consistent with being hit with a firm object, which could have been a fist, foot or weapon, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation, who added that officers did not report their use of force to jail authorities immediately, as required, or seek medical care for him. They purportedly said afterward that they were trying to get him to take his medication.
The possibility remains that even if the use of force is substantiated, it could be deemed justified.
J.P. Ott, who is married to Tyree’s sister and lives in Florida, would only say, “I just hope that if these guards are guilty of using excessive force that no other prisoners are put in jeopardy again.”
All three officers have been with the agency less than three years, and a source told this newspaper that one was the subject of multiple excessive-force complaints. They were also the subjects of search warrants served over the weekend. Neither Farris, Rodriguez nor their representatives could be reached for comment Wednesday.
Lubrin, reached Wednesday afternoon at the two-story East San Jose home he rents from his parents, told reporter from this newspaper that “whatever they said, it’s not true,” before declining to comment further on the advice of his attorney.
But his 55-year-old father, Dwight Lubrin, said his son wouldn’t harm anyone, unless provoked and forced to defend himself.
Asked if he was aware Tyree had allegedly suffered injuries, Dwight Lubrin said he didn’t know that because he’s not paying attention to the news.
“I don’t believe them — I know my son,” he said.
The father told this newspaper that his son, who works the graveyard shift, said that “something happened with an inmate,” and that “I was part” of the shift when the inmate died.
He said his son also told him he was making rounds of the inmates and when he reached Tyree’s cell, the inmate was sleeping. Lubrin said he believes other correctional officers were with his son at the time, per the norm. He said Tyree’s wall “was covered with feces” and that his son tried to wake Tyree up, but that the inmate did not respond. He said his son, and he believes the other officers, tried to revive Tyree by administering CPR.
The father said a group of Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies showed up unannounced early Saturday morning at the parent’s home with a search warrant. The family was “shocked” by the investigators who searched everywhere for his son — in closets, bathrooms, bedrooms, but were unaware he no longer lived there, he said.
Once they went to the son’s house, they took his uniform, and told him they were not there to arrest him, but investigating, Dwight Lubrin said.
Several inmates who were also housed on the same floor reported seeing the three correctional officers go into his cell and then hearing him scream, “don’t,” “please, stop,” “help,” and “I’m sorry,” before falling silent after the officers left, according to a relative of one of the inmates.
At the time he died, court records show Tyree was homeless and awaiting to be transferred to a mental-health facility, three days after he appeared in a special mental-health court where he pleaded no contest to petty theft.
The jail has come under fire as recently as last year for its handling of inmates.
In a 2014 report, a program run by the county Office of Human Relations found “reports of unnecessary rough handling and verbal insults occur regularly, although with caller acknowledgment that only some correctional officers are unnecessarily rough. Many of the reports come from inmates with mental health problems or in sections where security cameras are few or nonexistent.”
There was no camera inside Tyree’s cell, sources said.
Lawyers in the County Counsel’s Office said they could not immediately determine how much the county has paid out in legal settlements involving the jails.
But in 2001, according to court documents, the county paid $110,000 to settle an excessive force lawsuit filed by Shehabeddin Elmarouk, who claimed guards had severely beaten him, twisted his scrotum and put him in an unnecessary, risky chokehold. At that time, jail officials agreed to make some policy changes, including better documentation of use of force by guards and clearer instructions in general about use of force.
The last use of force incident at the county jail to generate this level of controversy was in July 1995 when five correctional officers put a blanket over the head of inmate Joseph Leitner as they forcefully carried him to the eighth-floor psychiatric ward. Leitner, who was manic-depressive, fell into a coma from lack of oxygen and remained in a vegetative state until his death a decade later.
Like Tyree, Leitner was in jail for minor offenses, in his case misdemeanor public nuisance charges.
A grand jury chose not to indict the officers in Leitner’s death, but they were initially fired before winning back their jobs after years of challenges that ended with an arbitrator rejecting the terminations.
Staff writers Eric Kurhi and Julia Prodis Sulek contributed to this report.
