hello and welcome to kqed newsroom. i'm thuy vu. this week three santa clara county corrections officers were charged with beating a mentally ill inmate to death. on tonight's program we'll talk with the judge who runs the santa clara county mental health courts. we'll also talk with federal judge jeremy fogle about the impact of his ruling on california's lethal injection procedures. first, lawmakers have just a few more hours to pass or kill bills. the state's legislative session ends tonight. john myers of kqed's california politics and government desk has been following the action and joins us now from sacramento. >> hello, twee.

>> belva: >> the governor pushed hard for a bill fighting climate change. what happens with that? >> two words. big oil. big oil and a lot of interest groups like the oil industry have been fighting tooth and nail on this climate change bill. one particular part of it. when the bill began and we should say it was really the marquee bill of 2015, when the bill began it had three parts. more renewable energy, more energy-efficient building, and a 50% cut in petroleum use in cars and trucks in california by the year 2030. that last part, the petroleum part, gone. big oil fought it. they found enough democrats in the state assembly, moderate democrats, who generally were worried about the economic impacts and other elements. that is out. i think it is a very big loss, at least politically, and maybe policy-wise, for the governor. >> a rare big loss for him. this historic fourth term, he's won most of the capitol dogfights. he acknowledged he lost this scrimmage but vowed to try again. what are his chances given the current makeup of the state

legislature? >> i think his chances are pretty good but not so much because of the legislature but because of the power the governor has. the governor has tremendous regulatory authority. people should think about this. there are two ways to make thins happen on the policy front in california. either through new laws and statutes, or regulations which is controlled by the governor's administration. the state air resources board, the governor believes, has an awful lot of power to do a lot of this on its own. he said they're going to be pushing some new standards on low-carbon fuel in california. the oil industry may not like that. i think the governor may find more friends this the legislature ultimately though i think this moderate tone of democrats is something fascinating to watch. the bottom line is i think the governor has a lot of this power on that regulatory front with his own administration and i think we're going to see him use it. >> there's been a lot of frantic activity in activity in this week winding down to the end of the legislative session. what are some of the biggest winners and losers? >> i think if you look at big

winners you certainly would have to talk about these moderate democrats, first of all. they almost have a new moniker here in sacramento. valleycrats. a lot of them are from the central valley. they see issues far differently than their liberal democratic colleague friends in the bay area and in los angeles. i think they're winners politically. i think on the policy front you would have to say people who want gender equity in the workplace won. governor signed recently this law that mandates equal pay for men and women who are doing basically the same job. i think that's a big win. on the loser column, i think transportation advocates feel like they've lost because there had been no movement, no deal on a new way to fund transportation in california. and also really tough losers and very unhappy about it, advocates for the developmentally disabled in california. they wanted new money through the legislature's special work on health care funding. both those issues, transportation and health care, ran headfirst into republicans who did not want to increase taxes and that's where it's

going to end it looks like by the time the gaffe develop goes down. >> what about the racial profiling bill? that made it through in this year of the black lives matter movement. >> i think that's an interesting one, although it is not the bill that the legislative authors wanted. the bill essentially, if the governor signs it into law, that's what we have to watch, the bill essentially says, more data collection and more publicity, more disclosure of data by law enforcement about everybody they have contact with, by race, by ethnicity, it does not go as far as some people wanted. does not address the issue of body cameras for law enforcement agencies. >> which measures has governor brown already vetoed? >> the bills are coming in left and right. he's got time to work on those. there are a couple of ones that he has vetoed looking in particular on enacting new crimes and new penalties for new cripes. the governor essentially saying in a veto message, we've got menty of laws on the books for

everything humans can, do we don't need another one of those. that's an interesting message how far the governor is willing to go into putting new penalties on the books for lower-level crimes. the governor has looked at a lot of other measures that he's not thrilled on in terms of drones and private aircraft flying over people's houses. there was a bill to say you had to leave 350 feet of privacy space. governor said, no, we need to study it more, we don't know the impact. that's a disappointment for privacy advocates. >> the vetoes he has made so far, do they reveal anything broader about his political thinking here? >> the governor has a very famous tendency to zig left and zig right or as he called it the paddle theory, the canoe theory. paddling to the left, paddling to the right. you see that a little bit. the governor still aligns with law and order groups a lot in looking at things. i think he likes to have fairly small movements on a lot of what happens in california. if you look at things like

climate change and water supply he likes to look very big. but in general, the governor gives the legislature what it wants. and i think the next few weeks now will be interesting to see how many of these proposals he's willing to sign into law. >> some of the most emotional debates this session involved the physician-assisted suicide bill. governor brown is a former jesuit seminary student. has he given any signs where he stands on this deeply personal issue? >> no, he hasn't. and i think that is really going to be one of those things to watch. we have seen this proposal which would put california in the category of a handful of other states that have provided a way for terminally ill patients to make their own choices about the end of their life with a physician's help. we've seen that measure stop and start in the legislature and now here on this final day we see it making its final passage and going to the governor's desk. the one thing that we saw from jerry brown's office was a statement by one of its spokes

people recently that said, the governor doesn't believe that the way this has come forward, as a vehicle in the special session of the legislature, that that's the appropriate way to bring this forward. which madet a lo of people think maybe he'll veto it saying, you should have done this the right way, gone through the right committees, the right legislative calendar. but i don't know that that's the case. i think that these are deeper personal issues. and you said it, twee. this is a govern history has a long history in his life of thinking about spiritual issues and life issues. everybody is going to be watching what he does on that one. >> medical marijuana, another big issue. nearly 20 years after california voters sided to legalize it, there's a legislative deal to regulate it. why did it take so long to get to this point? >> great question. think about that. almost 20 years since voters said yes to medical marijuana. but there hasn't been a brought state framework. i think if you talk to people involved in this issue there have been so many different

conflicting priorities. growers of marijuana, distributors of medical marijuana, local governments. we have seen that in the bay area and other parts of california. how they disagree on this. some local governments don't want medical marijuana distributors in their communities. so i think it's been very complicated to get everybody on the same page. i think what you see here, though, is a proposal that creates a new state agency to kind of have a little bit of oversight. i think key to the deal was two thins if i could. it has bipartisan support. there are even some republican law and order assembly members who have signed on to this compromise that was announced late thursday night. and the second thing is 2016 is an election year. we all think a legalization measure for recreational use of marijuana is going to be on the ballot. i think everybody wanted the voters to see that we have a plan for the medical marijuana part of the community before they consider the broader use of marijuana in california. >> that makes sense.

very quickly, what's the time frame for the xorcher to either sign or veto bills? >> a few weeks. over the next two or three weeks you're going to see hundreds come off his desk. sign, veto, it will be interesting to see. >> a sleepless john myers working very hard this week, thanks so much. >> you're welcome. >> john myers of our california politics and government desk. three santa clara county correctional deputies are behind bars charged with killing an inmate in the jail where they worked. 31-year-old michael tyree was in jail for a probation violation and was awaiting transfer to a private mental health facility. according to a sheriff's department investigation on the night of august 26th, county corrections officers rafael rodriguez, matthew ferris, and jara lubren entered tyree's cell. screaming could be heard throughout the pod for several minutes and was accompanied by the sounds of thumping, wall banging, and what sounded like blows to a person's body. the report also noted that tyree could be heard yelling "i'm sorry, i'm sorry, stop."

tyree was pronounced dead less than three hours later. the coroner concluded he died from multiple blunt force injuries and internal bleeding. on thursday, county officials called for the creation of a special commission to examine the local jail system. joining us next is judge steven manly who heads the santa clara county mental health court. that court seeks sentencing alternatives for mentally ill offensivers. manley was the judge who ordered michael tyree to a treatment program. scott shafer has that interview. >> judge manley, welcome. >> thank you. >> i know you can't talk about the michael tyree case in santa clara county but there are a lot of people like him, people with mental illness who are in jail throughout california, throughout the country. what kinds of obstacle dozen they face? >> those who enter the criminal justice system, whether it's in my county or any other throughout california, they face incredible challenges. we have a broken system.

and they do not get the treatment they need. and what happens is so often, they continue to be arrested again and again. and the courthouse becomes like a revolving door. i used to say the jail was a revolving door. but now mentally ill people are so often in the criminal justice system held for longer period of times that it's really the court that becomes a revolving door. and so their challenges are, number one, they are arrest ed for numerous charges. they often receive punishment but they very seldom ever receive meaningful treatment. >> so ewe are in charge of the mental health treatment court for santa clara county. how is your courtroom and what happens there different from another typical courtroom? >> it's very different because it's not adversarial.

we don't have the district attorney and the public defender or defense attorney arguing and fighting about the charges or about what should be done. everyone works in a collaborative way. we have a mental health team in the courtroom that talks to the offenders when they're in custody or when they're out of custody. we have a doctor available in the courthouse to provide interventions if needed. we have substance abuse counselors there right in the courtroom and adjacent to it. so what we're trying to do is intervene with the offender at the earliest possible point. >> give us a sense of the range of mental health problems that the people who come before you have. >> any and all mental illnesses that you could imagine or think of or are known i see on a daily basis. also, every level of offense. starting with the most minor

infractions or misdemeanors, to the very serious felonies. offenders in our program are sent to our program by other judges of my court who the punishment issue is no longer before the court. the issue is not to return these individuals to the streets or to the community without treatment. and to try and help them be successful and stop the rearrests. >> what kind of training, special training, do the people who work in the courtroom, even the people who work -- sheriff's deputies, bailiffs, that kind of thing -- how are they trained to deal with these folks? >> my deputies receive special training and they're carefully selected because it is very difficult to work with the mentally ill, often. particularly in a confined setting. particularly when they're in custody. in our courtroom. they are not only specially trained and specially selected

but there is training for everyone who participates on our team. and that includes training that i need to participate and do participate in. it's one of the greatest problems we have is the lack of training for what i call first responders. fire personnel, police, judges, jails, prisons. we don't have enough training to understand the challenges of the mentally ill. and we're getting so many more of them in the system. >> so santa clara county, your county, estimates that some 48% almost half of the prisoners in the jail, in the county, have some kind of a mental health problem. why are there so many people with mental illness in jail? >> a number of factors. one, we're much better at diagnosing mental illness. another factor is that mental illness can be caused by the use of drugs, street drugs.

and the use of street drugs often by the mentally ill off d offenders, they substitute street drugs for their medications. which is unfortunate but it ends up in an arrest and it ends up in more and more mentally ill people coming into the criminal justice system. finally, i think unfortunately what's happened is that instead of addressing a serious problem as a community and as a society, we're using the courts and the jails as the place we send all the mentally ill, instead of a hospital or a treatment facility. >> how do you determine whether someone who has a mental illness is a potential risk for public safety? in other words, if they're not just as we see often in san francisco with homeless people screaming and yelling, talking to themselves. how do you know whether someone is a risk, at risk of picking up a knife and killing somebody? >> you do a very thorough

assessment. you know their prior history. you know what the mental illness is. you know the circumstances that brought them to you. you have a lot of information. if you don't have all that information, you will not make good decisions. >> how often is a mistake made in that regard? >> in my court, i can't think of any errors in the past i would say at least eight months. errors will be made in this sense. mentally ill people will commit new offenses. but the idea that everyone who's mentally ill is violent is just untrue. there is no evidence to support that. that is all about stigma. we feel uncomfortable around the mentally ill, whether we're a judge or just somebody in the community. we want something done about it. we turn to the courts to take care of it. instead of trying to understand the problem and work with the

mentally ill in the community. so there are very few, if any, who go on to commit violent offenses when they are participating in a treatment program. >> so just one of the many myths that people have? >> yes. >> that exist out there? >> yes. >> if you could change anything, you've had 20 years of experience now with your mental health treatment court. if you could change one or two things about the system starting from the police all the way up to correctional guards in prisons, what would you change? >> i'd start out by having better training about mental illness and working with the mentally ill at all levels. i would work -- i serve on the council for mentally ill offenders. and it's a state body. and we are strongly supporting diversion. that is, why do we need to have every mentally ill offender in a jail? why aren't we making that determination about public safety and treatment at the

front end? and then diverting them into a facility or into a program that is not a jail or a prison. and if we did that, we would cut down the number of people to come in. next, the minute the offender gets to a jail, we should start planning for their release. everyone gets out. if we don't have a plan in place they're going to reoffend and not receive treatment. >> jail or prison not the best place for these offender. >> not at all. >> judge manley, thank you so much for coming in and talking to us. >> thank you. it's been almost ten years since a federal judge ruled california's method for executing death row inmates was deeply flawed. in 2006 judge jeremy fogel said the lethal injection procedure risked violating the constitution's wan on cruel and unusual punishment. since that ruling executions in the state have been put on hold. california corrections officials are now promising to develop a

new lethal injection protocol by the end of this year. over the past decade as pharmaceutical companies have limited the supply of drugs used for such executions other states have faced legal challenges to their lethal injection procedures. earlier this year the u.s. supreme court upheld oklahoma's lethal injection process. separately, two states -- connecticut and nebraska -- banned capital punishment. scott shafer spoke to judge fogle about the impact of his ruling. >> it's been almost ten years since your decision in the morales case stopped executions here in california. i'm wondering what reaction you got from the public, especially just after the decision, but since as well. e-mails, mail, people bumping into you talking to you. what have you heard from the public? >> i haven't gotten much of anything recently. maybe as a result of doing this interview with you i'll get some

more. but back when the case was really live, certainly when i blocked the execution in 2006, i got a huge volume of response. and some of it was positive. most of it was actually quite negative. it was from people who thought that what i was doing was protecting michael morales. what i was called upon to do and what i had to do was to assess whether this particular lethal injection protocol as administered was safe. or whether it would inflict an unconstitutional level of pain. and the framework of the case and the facts of the case, it was a pretty straightforward call that i had to make. it really had nothing to do with how i feel about michael morales. junes have to be ready for that. that's part what was we sign up for, that sometimes we do something because we believe we're compelled to do it by law

and facts of the case, and the public sees it in a different way. which is their right but it's not something anchored in the law and the facts of the case, it's based on their emotional reaction to what they see. >> as you can imagine, proponents of capital punishment, victims of crime, are frustrated, angry that executions are not being carried out in california for the past ten years. what would you say to them? >> i understand their frustration and if i were in their shoes i would feel frustrated. the legal issue in the morales case, purely and simply, always has been, what is a constitutionally adequate means of carrying out executions in california? there's no question in the morales case as to whether executions ought to be carried out in california, whether they're a good thing or a bad thing. i've tried very hard in every case i've ever had to decide the case based on the facts and the law. it's very hard to ignore, particularly when you pick up the newspaper and read about the case the next day or you see it on tv, that people have strong

feelings about capital punishment that end up getting attached to a case like this. >> in june the u.s. supreme court ruled 5-4 oklahoma's lethal injection procedure was constitutional and they've said in the past capital punishment generally is constitutional, and therefore there should be a constitutional way to carry it out. what's the dispute in this case? >> i think where the chief justice is coming from, where the majority in the case you mentioned is coming from, in part is that the constitution specifically refers to capital crimes. if you look at the fifth amendment and other references to capital crimes in the constitution. obviously at the time of the framing of the constitution it was contemplated there would be capital punishment. if you have that point of view it's hard to reach any other conclusion. there's another line of legal thought which is that the constitution isn an evolving

document, conditions change, and that in light of today's standards perhaps capital punishment is no longer constitutional. that's an argument that will rage at the level of courts much higher than the one i sit on. >> these issues are of course life and death issues. do you feel like you should witness an execution? >> i think it's important that people do witness executions. i think one of the unfortunate things that's happened as a result of all the litigation is that in some states, there's been perhaps a tendency or perceived tendency to just go behind the curtain and not make these transparent and public proceedings. i think though neey need to be. i think that's true regardless how you feel about the death penalty. i think it's important people see what we're doing. then they can really form their own opinions. they can come to their own conclusions as to whether this is an appropriate form of

justice or not. >> this issue has been kicked around in the courts for decades and decades. a lot of emotion on both sides. do you think it will ever be resolved? >> well -- i would never say we will never have resolution. i think we are pretty polarized about it. much in the same way that we're polarized about abortion. i think there are some very deeply held and sincerely held moral beliefs on both sides of the issue. and i think people have a hard time really hearing each other. i think most folks would agree, regardless of their views on the issues -- we have issues with arbitrariness, with costs, with some other kinds of uncertainties that we could do better with. >> i know before you were appointed to the bench you worked as an attorney for a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of people with mental illness. i'm wondering how that experience affected you once you got onto the bench? >> i'd say it was the most important professional experience of my life.

it really made me see how the legal system can do good and ill toward people. and how important it is that we learn how to listen to people in court. some people are articulate, some people have articulate lawyers. a lot of people are not very articulate. some people can't express themselves at all or express themselves in ways that scare people. a lot of the thins get missed. somebody can be mentally ill and their rights can be violated, or they could be mistreated by someone, or they can be denied a benefit they're entitled to. i think our society does not do a good job of dealing with people with chronic mental illness. you see people certainly in san francisco there's ample evidence of people who have chronic mental illnesses and just aren't getting cared for. living on the street. then the other place you see them is in the criminal justice

system. because what happens is that people commit crimes or they get in trouble in ways that cause them to come into contact with the police in a criminal sense. then they end up in jail. they end up in prison. and then they don't get proper care there. >> judge fogle, you've been dealing with these issues for years now. i'm just wondering how they've changed you. as a judge but also as a person. >> it's made me more serious in ways. i've always been kind of a serious person. i think it's made me realize how important what we as judges do is. how much rides on it. how much care we need to take to try to get thins right. and also to recognize that we don't get things right all the time. >> and that was federal judge jeremy fogel. thank you for watching. for all of kqed coverage, go to

kqednews.com. for scott shafer, i'm thuy vu. thanks for joining us.

san jose and santa clara county have the 7th largest homeless population in the country. we've seen the sad reality of homeless veterans and people who are mentally ill. but a lesser-known population also exists here. homeless young people. we'll look at the problem and solutions on this edition of equal time. hello and welcome to the campus of san jose state in this edition of equal time. i'm your host, journalism school director bob rucker. it is obvious just by taking a walk through downtown san jose