In re Pers. Restraint of Mulamba
| Decision Date | 08 December 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 35087-8-III,35087-8-III |
| Parties | IN THE MATTER OF PERSONAL RESTRAINT OF REUBEN D. MULAMBA |
| Court | Washington Court of Appeals |
FEARING, J. — In 2015, this court affirmed the convictions of Reuben Denis Mulamba (Denis Mulamba) for two counts of assault of a child and two counts of criminal mistreatment of a child. We now grant his personal restraint petition and remand for a new trial on the four charges. We hold that Mulamba was entitled to a jury unanimity instruction on the two charges of assault of a child because of multiple acts of alleged assault against each child presented by the State to the jury. We also hold that the State failed to disclose Brady material to Mulamba when it failed to disclose jail records of the principal witness against him, the witness being the mother of the child victims. These failures constituted constitutional error that imposed substantial and actual prejudice on Mulamba.
Denis Mulamba's personal restraint petition and his earlier convictions arise from his conduct toward the two young children of Ashley Eli: Stanley, born April 15, 2003, and Jane, born February 24, 2007. We use fictitious names, rather than initials, to humanize the children.
In the summer of 2011, Ashley Eli and her two children lived in Moses Lake. Eli then met petitioner Denis Mulamba at a Moses Lake bar. Eventually Eli worked as a nurse assistant at Golden Age Afh, an adult family home and care facility owned by Mulamba's mother.
In August 2011, Ashley Eli began dating Denis Mulamba, who attended Central Washington University, but returned to Moses Lake on weekends to work at Golden Age Afh. In October, Mulamba rented a two-bedroom apartment in Ellensburg. A month later, Eli and Jane stayed at Mulamba's apartment from Monday through Thursday, while Stanley resided with his grandmother in Moses Lake.
Ashley Eli and Denis Mulamba's relationship deteriorated in December 2011 due in part to Mulamba's criticism of Eli for failing to discipline her children. Despite the souring, Eli, who lost employment, and her two children moved into Mulamba's Ellensburg apartment in early January 2012. Eli also failed to find employment in Ellensburg. The arguments between Eli and Mulamba increased, with Mulamba telling Eli he would be happier if she disciplined her children. Mulamba labeled Eli a "bad mom." Report of Proceedings (RP) at 138, State v. Mulamba, No.31314-0-III (Wash. Ct. App.).
On January 13, 2012, after an argument, Ashley Eli sought to leave Denis Mulamba's Ellensburg apartment with her children, but Mulamba commandeered her keys. After police intervened, Eli departed the apartment, but she returned the next day because of belongings remaining inside. She and her children apparently continued to reside in the apartment for weeks thereafter.
The undisputed evidence established grave injuries suffered by Jane and Stanley in late January 2012. Ashley Eli claims that Denis Mulamba caused the injuries, while punishing the children on many occasions. Mulamba claims Eli caused the injuries during her punishment of the children. We relate some of the testimony of both. We interpose some of the trial testimony of Stanley, who blamed Mulamba. The numerous acts of assault generate the issue of jury unanimity posed by Mulamba's personal restraint petition.
In his trial testimony, Denis Mulamba declared unhappiness with Ashley Eli because Eli's daughter Jane often urinated in her pants and on his apartment floor. Eli failed to discipline Jane for this crude behavior.
During trial, Ashley Eli admitted that, during January 2012, she spanked both children, but she denied using a cable to whip them and denied that her spankings harmed them. Eli initially testified that she first learned, on Saturday, January 21, that Denis Mulamba physically punished her children. Later during trial, Eli recounted an incident of January 14 when Jane wet the bed while staying at the Golden Age Afh in MosesLake. Eli then spanked Jane on the bottom with her hand, after which Mulamba complained that the spanking insufficiently punished the child. Mulamba thereafter assumed the punishment of both children. On January 14, Mulamba took Jane to the garage of the adult family home. Eli averred that, despite Mulamba and Jane remaining at length in the garage, she did not know what action Mulamba took and did not notice any marks on Jane thereafter.
According to Denis Mulamba, during the week of January 16, 2012, he fell ill, left the Ellensburg apartment, and went to Moses Lake to visit a doctor. On his return, he spent the majority of his time at classes or the school library in order to avoid Eli and her children.
According to Denis Mulamba, he, Ashley Eli, and the two children spent Saturday, and Sunday, January 21 and 22, in Moses Lake. He testified that, on Saturday morning, he directed Eli to take the children home to Ellensburg after discovering that Jane wet the bed. Apparently Eli did not follow Mulamba's directions to go to Ellensburg. Mulamba denied punishing Jane during that weekend.
During trial testimony, Ashley Eli described several incidents of punishment meted by Denis Mulamba on Stanley and Jane during the weekend of January 21 and 22. On Sunday, January 22, while in Moses Lake at Golden Age Afh, Eli observed Mulamba spank Stanley first with wood and then with a metal bar. She ordered Mulamba to stop when she noticed the spanking caused a bruise on Stanley's buttocks. That same night,during the family's return drive to Ellensburg, Mulamba, according to Eli, threatened to pinch Stanley with pliers. During the trip, Mulamba beat both children with a belt when stopped at a rest stop.
During trial, Stanley averred that Denis Mulamba began hitting him on the back and legs with a belt two weeks after his family moved to Ellensburg. Mulamba once pinched his chest with pliers.
Ashley Eli testified that, sometime during the week of January 23, she went to spank Jane and first noticed bruising on her young body. During that week, according to Eli, Denis Mulamba beat the children with a belt. She did not then protest because her parents punished her siblings with a belt. Eli added that Mulamba later began use of an electric cord or a coaxial cable. Mulamba also forced Stanley and Jane to perform "wall sits." If a child could not hold the sit for two minutes, Mulamba beat him or her and demanded that the child start the wall sit again. Eli insisted that Mulamba ordered the wall sits during three separate nights of the week of January 23. During her testimony, Eli admitted that she gagged each child respectively on one occasion, while Mulamba beat the child, in an attempt to stop the child's crying.
During trial, Denis Mulamba recalled that, on Tuesday, January 24, Jane urinated on the floor of the Ellensburg apartment. According to Mulamba, Eli, not him, punished Jane by insisting that she wall sit and by hitting her on the hands with a wire. He did notinterfere because Jane was not his child. He left to study at the library. When he returned he saw that Eli had shaved her head, an unsettling event to Mulamba.
During trial testimony, Denis Mulamba declared that Stanley, on the evening of January 25, spilled a drink on the couch, and Ashley Eli instructed him to spank Stanley. Mulamba spanked him with the cord of a phone charger. The next day, he spanked Jane on her bottom with a belt after she urinated on the carpet.
Ashley Eli declared that, on January 26, Denis Mulamba threatened to burn Jane with a clothes iron and that he beat the children with the iron's cord. Nevertheless, she never saw Mulamba burn Jane with the iron. She denied burning Jane. Stanley testified that, although he later saw burns on Jane's legs, he never saw Denis Mulamba burn her. Stanley described an incident, during which Mulamba held an iron so close to his body that he felt heat. Mulamba never burned him, however.
The quartet returned to Moses Lake on Friday evening, January 27. Denis Mulamba testified that he worked the graveyard shift at Golden Age Afh on the night of January 27 and did not see Eli or the children until the afternoon of Sunday, January 29. He remembered that Jane appeared in pain that evening, and Eli asked him to retrieve hydrogen peroxide. Mulamba then went to the library, where he remained until almost midnight, and, on his return home, he told Eli to pack her belongings and leave the apartment. He denied seeing Jane's injuries on the evening of January 29.
According to Ashley Eli, on Sunday, January 29, Jane vomited her dinner. An angry Denis Mulamba accused Jane of purposely vomiting. Mulamba coerced Jane to perform a "wall sit," and, when Jane fell from the wall, Mulamba beat her with the coaxial cable. When Eli undressed her daughter for a bath, she discovered bruises blotching the little girl's body and black wounds on the child's legs. At Eli's direction, Denis Mulamba bathed and cleansed the wounds with hydrogen peroxide.
Stanley declared during trial that, on January 29, Denis Mulamba threatened to burn him, but presented him the option of being burned or going outside in the cold without a coat. Stanley chose to go outside.
On the night of January 29, Ashley Eli, with her two children, left Denis Mulamba's apartment for a motel room. On January 31, after smelling sickness and infection on Jane, Eli took the children to Aspen Women's Domestic Violence Shelter. She explained to Aspen supervisor Kathleen Coppin that she and her children needed housing because her boyfriend beat the children. She declined to identify her boyfriend. Coppin discussed the situation with Ellensburg Police Department Detective Tim Weed, after which Coppin drove Eli, Jane, and Stanley to the police station for interviews.
At the Ellensburg police station, Ashley Eli again refused to identify her boyfriend. Kathleen Coppin, who sat near Jane at the station, noticed her experiencing pain. Coppin drove all three...
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