A South Burlington man has denied a charge that he beat another man to death in a cell they shared at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.
On his client’s behalf, an attorney for Mbyayenge Mafuta, 22, entered a not guilty plea to the second-degree murder charge during a hearing Tuesday in Franklin County Superior criminal court.
Mafuta is accused of beating Jeffrey Hall, 55, in a cell they shared at the St. Albans prison around 2 p.m. on Dec. 22. Nearly three months later, on March 10, Hall died from the injuries he suffered in the beating, according to authorities.
Initially, Mafuta was charged with attempted second-degree murder. However, the state Chief Medical Examiner’s Office recently completed Hall’s autopsy, ruling that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to his head and the manner of death was homicide.
As a result, Vermont State Police announced this month that the charge against Mafuta had been upgraded to second-degree murder, leading to Tuesday’s arraignment on the new offense. Judge Martin Maley ordered that Mafuta be held without bail, as he has been since his arraignment earlier this year on the attempted second-degree murder charge.
Both Franklin County State’s Attorney John Lavoie, the prosecutor, and Mafuta’s defense attorneys, Paul Groce and Steve Dunham, told Maley during the brief hearing that they needed more time to conduct depositions and exchange discovery before settling on a trial date.
Maley agreed to hold another hearing in the case in November.
An affidavit of probable cause, filed in support of the attempted second-degree murder charge, detailed Mafuta’s behavior in the days leading up to the alleged beating.
Just days earlier, according to the affidavit, Mafuta was moved to a segregated unit at the prison after telling a guard that he was “hearing voices and they would not stop.” Also, according to the affidavit, Mafuta had told a judge he wanted to kill himself.
The next day, Dec. 20, the filing stated, Mafuta was brought back into the prison’s general population after medical and mental health workers at the prison reported he no longer had thoughts of self-harm or wanting to harm others.
Two days later, the affidavit stated, Mafuta allegedly beat Hall in a small cell they shared in the prison.
Lavioe, the Franklin County prosecutor, filed paperwork in support of upgrading the charge against Mafuta from attempted second-degree murder to second-degree murder. Those documents included an affidavit from Vermont State Police summarizing the findings of the state’s Chief Medical Examiner’s Office.
Also, the prosecutor filed an amended charging document that alleges Mafuta “unlawfully” caused Hall’s death with “wanton disregard of the likelihood that death or great bodily harm would result.”
