August 20, 2020
Convicted child murderer Nashika Bramble was deprived of her constitutional right to a fair trial when the District Court excluded testimony of a renowned cult expert that was specific to her case — an error compounded by denying as “hearsay” the writings of a codefendant, according to a recent appeal, which seeks to have her convictions reversed.
Bramble is serving two life sentences after having been convicted last year of two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her daughters, Makayla Roberts, 10, and Hannah Marshall, 8.
The girls died on a Norwood area farm in 2017, where they, Bramble, and other members of a small, end-times “cult” had been living since that May.
On the orders of purported cult leader Madani Ceus, the children had been kept in Bramble’s vehicle on the property for weeks or months, with no food provided since that July; their partly mummified bodies were discovered that September.
As an adult in a position of trust — their mother — Bramble had failed basic duties to the girls, yet acted quickly to save herself once Ceus turned on her, prosecutors said at trial.
But in the Aug. 13 appeal, Bramble’s attorney said testimony specific to how Bramble functioned within the group and the specific cult dynamics were critical to her being able to give a full defense and to having the jury understand her state of mind.
Instead, the trial court only allowed expert witness Janja Lalich, Ph.D., to testify about cult principles generally, and improperly excluded Lalich’s expert opinion and discussion of cults in specific relationship to Ceus’ group, the document argues.
There is no question Lalich was qualified as an expert and her “case-specific opinion” offered information the jury was entitled by case law and procedural rules to consider, attorney Lauretta A. Martin Neff wrote.
Without that specific testimony, “lay jurors would be tremendously disadvantaged in attempting to understand Bramble’s failure to rescue her daughters from death. … Dr. Lalich’s testimony ‘filled the gap.’”
Lalich’s case-specific testimony would have placed what happened in context and explained Bramble’s state of mind, as well as her “inexplicable behavior as a mother,” Martin Neff said.
Bramble joined Ceus’ group in 2015. At that time, Ceus and her husband, Ashford Archer, were co-leaders and taught an apocalyptic belief system that, according to trial testimony, included waiting in an apartment in the South without food, for the end of the world.
When that did not occur, “the family” began traveling, fetching up at a Grand Junction truck stop in May 2017 where they encountered Frederick “Alec” Blair, who owned a farm in Norwood. Blair found the group compelling, and invited them to live on his property.
Some time after the group had ensconced itself on Blair’s property, Ceus was the sole leader, both mother and father, and God — Yahweh — according to trial testimony.
Other members were afraid of Ceus’ power to “reap” their souls and were conditioned to obey her by the time she reportedly ordered Hannah and Makayla to be confined in their mother’s vehicle on the farm, and not given food she had prepared, Bramble’s appeal brief says.
Ceus’ control was so extensive, that she even decided others’ intimate relations, the appeals brief says, citing trial testimony. She controlled the tasks assigned, family structure, banishment, punishment and money. Only she could be called “mother” and “attachment to natural parents was not tolerated,” Martin Neff wrote.
Per the appeal document, Ceus banished a former member, and told the others she had “harvested his soul.” Blair then assumed that man’s place as “Ra.”
Ceus’ control was so complete, that she ordered Blair and Bramble to have sex, even though they didn’t want to, “just as Ceus had forced Bramble to be (former member’s) sex slave,” the brief states.
Once Ceus had decided Hannah and Makayla were “impure,” she ordered them to stay in their mother’s car and would not allow food she prepared to be given to them, according to trial testimony and the appeal brief.
She allowed Blair and Bramble to obtain food from a Telluride charity only once for the girls, who were last known to have been fed in July, 2017, according to testimony and the brief.
The group removed itself to another part of the property to prepare for doomsday, leaving the girls alone.
Bramble later found her girls dead, and when she and Blair told Ceus, Ceus first attempted to have the earth “swallow” the car, the appeal document said, citing trial testimony. When that failed, Ceus reportedly said she had instead decided to use the girls’ spirits for dark magic, and ordered the car to be covered with tarps. Blair and Archer complied.
Ceus next declared Bramble to be an abomination, and exiled her to a car without food and water, despite Bramble’s pregnancy, Martin Neff wrote in the appeal.
At trial, prosecutors said Bramble decided to save herself, and walked off the property of her own free will; the appeals document says Ceus had ordered her to leave, and that the jury never heard that.
Authorities discovered the grim scene in September of 2017, after Blair’s father, who had become alarmed by what his son’s friends were reporting, paid a visit to the property. Standoffish at first — and barely recognizable in “rags” — Blair led his father to the bodies, and the older man called the San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office.
Pathologists said the children likely succumbed to heat, thirst and starvation.
Blair pleaded guilty as an accessory to a crime and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Archer was convicted at trial of fatal child abuse and as an accessory to a crime; he was sentenced to 24 years in prison and is appealing his conviction.
Ceus was also charged with murder, but was convicted of fatal child abuse. At her sentencing, she denied being a cult leader. She is also planning to appeal.
Another group member, Ika Eden, was charged with fatal child abuse, but has been deemed incompetent to stand trial.
Martin Neff argues in Bramble’s appeal that the District Court abused its discretion by precluding Lalich’s specific testimony.
At first, the court wasn’t going to let Lalich testify at all, but upon a motion to reconsider, allowed the limited “blind principle” testimony about cult dynamics. However, denying testimony specific to Bramble and the group robbed the jury of critical context and deprived Bramble of her rights to have a full, complete defense, thereby depriving Bramble of a fair trial. This court error contributed to the guilty verdict and as such, is not harmless, but requires reversal, the appeal argued.
“This was not a mere ‘spiritual group.’ Communes and spiritual groups are very different from cults because they do not necessarily involve the control, manipulation and re-socialization of a ‘cult,’ which social dynamics were key to helping the jury make sense of the evidence and Bramble’s behavior, as well as to understand the contextual circumstances of the two girls’ deaths,” the Martin Neff wrote.
Calling the Norwood group a “spiritual group” is akin to calling a violent street gang a “neighborhood boys club,” the attorney said.
She attacked the District Court’s multi-pronged reasoning for limiting Lalich’s testimony, which would have included Lalich’s expert opinion that Ceus is a “traumatizing narcissist.”
That terminology was not being offered as a psychiatric diagnosis, but as a specific sociological term, which Lalich was qualified to use, Martin Neff said.
In the appeal, she suggested the trial court judge, a former prosecutor, might have been instinctively inclined to “prosecute from the bench.”
The trial court, she said, “exhibited a bias, a prejudice, an unfairness that is not acceptable on the bench.”
Martin Neff also argued that the lower court also erred by prohibiting Bramble to use two pages written by Ceus as part of her defense. These had been offered to establish Ceus’ position as a leader who had referred to herself as God — not as proof that she actually was God, Martin Neff wrote.
Both Lalich’s specific testimony and the writings would have helped the jury understand the circumstances, case context and Bramble’s defense; their exclusion amounts to a cumulative error requiring the convictions to be reversed, Martin Neff argued.
https://www.montrosepress.com/news/cult-expert-should-have-been-allowed-to-testify-specifically-about-norwood-group-appeal-of-murder/article_38b57652-e310-11ea-9b53-b75acb9b0a28.html
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