Non-jury trial for Ephrata mother charged with homicide by abuse

EPHRATA, Grant County -- A woman charged with causing the death of her 2-year-old son has waived her right to a jury trial in a case that gained notoriety as a hallmark of failure in the state's foster care system.

In a hearing Monday in Grant County Superior Court, Judge John M. Antosz granted a defense request that he hear the case of Maribel Gomez without a jury.

Gomez, 32, whose other five children are in foster care, is scheduled for trial next Monday on charges of homicide by abuse and first-degree manslaughter in the death of little Rafael "Raffy" Gomez. Deputy prosecutors Carolyn Fair and Steve Scott said the trial would likely last about two weeks.

Defense lawyer Robert A. Moser said he expected to call 10 witnesses, including a medical expert from Minnesota. The trial was postponed to allow the expert to testify.

After the boy was born in the back seat of a car on Aug. 7, 2001, tests showed he and his mother had cocaine and methamphetamine in their systems. Three days later he was placed with the foster parents Bruce and Denise Griffith in Royal City.

For the rest of his short life he bounced between foster care and his biological mother and father, Jose Ramon Soltero Arechiga. Social workers described Gomez as loving and attentive even though he was removed from the home four times because of signs of abuse, including two broken legs, concussions, burns and bruises.

By the time he died while in Gomez's care on Sept. 10, 2003, he had spent 14 of his 25 months with the Griffiths.

According to a police report, Gomez said he was eating a bowl of noodles when he threw himself from a high chair to the floor three times, striking his head each time.

No charges were filed against Arechiga, who was at work at the time of the fatal injury.

"It's been three years and five months," Denise Griffith said Monday. "It's been tough, it's been very tough. We're finally here. I have trust in God and I have trust in the prosecuting attorney that things are going to be OK."

Griffith, the court-appointed representative of the boy's estate, has filed a civil rights lawsuit for unspecified damages in U.S. District Court in Spokane, claiming that his death caused by breaches of duty and negligence by the parents and Murray Twelves, a social worker based in Moses Lake.

In June 2004, a month after charges were filed against Gomez, the state Department of Social and Health Services released a child fatality review by 13 experts who spent six months investigating the death. The panel concluded social workers ignored evidence of abuse and were biased in favor of the biological parents.

Twelves, who was singled out for much of the blame in the report, no longer handles child custody cases but remains with the agency as an intake worker, receiving reports of child abuse or neglect, department spokeswoman Kathy Spears said.