A ‘CRUEL’ stepmother has been sentenced to death by lethal injection after starving her 10-year-old stepdaughter to death and then burning her body.
Tiffany Moss, 36, showed no emotion on Tuesday as a jury in Gwinnett County, Georgia handed down the death sentence for the murder of 10-year-old Emani Moss in 2013.
Her death sentence was the first given in Georgia for more than five years.
On Monday, Moss was found guilty of all counts, including murder, cruelty to children and trying to conceal the death of Emani by burning her body in a trash can.
The jury heard how the twisted stepmother kept Emani in her bedroom, slowly starving her to death at her apartment in Atlanta.
A medical examiner described how Emani wasted away without food or water and lived in a filthy faeces-riddled bed because she’d become too weak to move.
Authorities said the 10-year-old weighed just 32 pounds when she died.
Prosecutors showed text messages sent by Moss to her husband, Eman Moss, during the time when Emani was being starved.
At least twice, Moss sent her husband pictures of meals she had prepared for him and her own two children the couple shared.
Prosecutors said it was likely to have taken weeks for Emani to die of starvation.
Justice demands the proper payment
District Attorney Danny Porter
After the girl’s death, Moss and her husband stuffed her emaciated body in a trash can and set it on fire.
Her husband is serving life in prison without parole for his role in the crime, after pleading guilty to felony murder in 2015 in exchange for testifying against his wife.
Moss represented herself at trial and gave no defence. She made no opening statement or closing argument and called no witnesses.
Describing Moss as an “evil stepmother”, District Attorney Danny Porter said: “There’s no joy when a jury imposes a death sentence.
“But this was one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen. The first time you look at it it made you sick. The last time you look at it it makes you sick.”
He added: “There are some crimes that are so horrible, so heinous, the only balance you can pay is with your life. Justice demands the proper payment.”
Under Georgia law, once someone is sentenced to death, there is an automatic appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.
Even if the condemned killer does not want legal representation and files no appeal, the state’s high court will still review the record of the case and issue an opinion, Porter said.
