"John" GIGLIOTTI - 16 yo - Spring Hill (SE of Weeki Wachee) FL

Spring Hill FL ---- A jury took three hours Monday to convict a Spring Hill woman on
two counts of aggravated child abuse.

Tai-Ling Gigliotti, 51, was solemn and showed little emotion as the
bailiff cuffed her and escorted her out of the courtroom.

Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 9 in Hernando County
Circuit Court. She faces up to 60 years in prison.

The six jurors
believed the prosecution's argument that Gigliotti caged and
tortured her adopted son in their home, depriving him of food and
routinely subjecting him to beatings.

The last morning the boy was in the home he was naked and hog-tied
with packing tape and bungee cords. He remained imprisoned in the
bathroom and the power was turned off.

"Obviously, we're very satisfied," said Assistant State Attorney
Brian Trehy. "It appears the jury gave full consideration to everything
both sides offered."

The victim, now 17, attends high school and lives with a foster
family. He smiled as he left the courtroom. Both he and his foster
family declined to comment.

"Everything seems to suggest he's moving his life in the right
direction," Trehy said of the victim.

Defense
attorney Jimmy Brown said he was "disappointed" in the verdict and
would ask the judge for a "lenient sentence."

The minimum the judge could give her based on the sentencing
guidelines is eight years.

Gigliotti
originally wanted to enter a plea of guilty last month before Circuit
Judge Jack Springstead in exchange for six years in prison. She changed
her mind after the judge didn't think she had her heart set on the plea
agreement.

After consulting with Brown, she decided to go to trial.

Gigliotti's attorneys argued the victim had a history of violence and
the morning of Feb. 9, 2009, had tried to sexually assault his mother.

She hit him with a metal-tipped rubber hose and wooden stick to
defend herself, they said.

Later that afternoon, after Gigliotti and her
fiancé, Anton Angelo, left for work. The boy escaped from the bathroom
and ran to a neighbor's house.

Detectives from the Hernando County Sheriff's Office executed a
search warrant where they discovered droplets of blood in the bathroom,
along with plywood over the window and brackets over the door.

They found the wooden stick and rubber hose, both with traces of
blood. Pieces of packing tape and a bungee cord also had blood on them.

Trehy said he is never sure how a jury is going to go, but thought
possibly the defendant's own testimony might have damaged her.

"I felt like her cross examination revealed she wasn't being
completely honest about things," he said.

Angelo also was originally charged with two counts of aggravated
child abuse. In March, he pleaded guilty to one of the counts and later
was sentenced to five years probation in exchange for his testimony.

While on the witness stand last week, Angelo said Gigliotti would beat
her son at least once per month. The morning of Feb. 9, 2009, he heard a
commotion and ran into the bathroom, where he saw his fiancée beating
her son with a stick.

He wrestled the stick away from her, he said.

Jurors listened to
nearly 100 hours of testimony from more than a dozen witnesses. The
trial lasted seven days.

Gigliotti is a
former musician whose late husband, Anthony Gigliotti, was a longtime
member of the Philadelphia Orchestra and one of the world's best known
clarinetists.

The couple adopted the boy when he was 6 years old and living in
Taiwan. He was the biological son of Tai-Ling Gigliotti's brother.

Tai-Ling Gigliotti was back in court a day before she
is scheduled for sentencing. The Hernando County mother was found guilty
in May of abusing her teenage son and caging him in a bathroom. But the
sentencing had to be delayed last month after new information surfaced
about the victims behavior.

Gigliotti's defense attorney said some evidence was hidden
and suppressed during the trial. And he did not have all the facts.

In motions filed by the defense,
investigators found after Gigliotti's arrest, while he lived with a
foster parent, the victim was caught engaging in a felony sex act with a
14-year-old."Why the things that were
hidden, were hidden? I can't answer that," said Gigliotti's attorney, Jimmy Brown.

But the foster parent only told investigators,
the teen "had normal, common problems."

The now complete pre-sentencing investigation also found the victim in the case used
alcohol and pornography, facts that the defense says state and local
agencies were informed of, but they were not.

Saying the victim has shown a pattern of lying, the defense has filed a motion for
mistrial. While that hasn't officially been ruled out, Judge Jack
Springstead agreed with prosecutors who said information on the victims
behavior and conduct would not have swayed the jury and is irrelevant.


"His (the victim's) general credibility certainly has always an
issue. I think that far too much of the case rested on what the victim
had to say," said Brown.

It wasn't in the timely fashion that he wanted it. But the judge says he now has all the information needed
to sentence Tai-Ling Gigliotti. That sentencing hearing is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon at 1.

A woman who'd been convicted of torturing her teen-aged nephew learned
her fate today.
Tai-Ling Gigliotti faced up to 60 years in prison. She was convicted
of abusing her foreign nephew, who had come to the U.S. from Taiwan
several years ago. Instead of a six month visit, prosecutors say it
turned into years of torture and abuse.
Gigliotti stood before the court, convicted of beating, periodically
caging and torturing the boy in the bathroom of their Spring
Hill home. It was abuse that took place over the course of years, said
prosecutors, until the teen escaped in early 2009.

Her lawyers argued the boy was violent, a sexual deviant, and a liar.
But Circuit Judge Jack Springstead rejected several last-minute motions
for a mistrial, saying the boy's behavior wasn't the issue.
"I have seen the pictures of the welts, the bruising, the bleeding,
the cuts, the scars. And those didn't just happen. He did not do it to
himself," said the judge.
Before imposing sentence, the court heard from several character
witnesses, including videotaped testimony from Gigliotti's mother, and
an impassioned plea for leniency from a college roommate.
Others were more critical, including the victim himself, who said his
aunt had betrayed her family and robbed him and his mother -- who still
lives in Taiwan -- of a normal relationship.
Judge Springstead then sentenced the 51-year-old to 12 years in
prison, followed by three years probation.
"Her failure to this day to accept responsibility for her actions or
to admit any wrongdoing, express any contrition regret or remorse says
it all," said the judge.
Afterward, Gigliotti addressed the court, saying she was in fact
remorseful, but that only led to a heated exchange with Judge
Springstead.
"I am sorry for the scandal and the disturbance that my family
tragedy has created," said Gigliotti. But the judge then interrupted.
"No, your actions created that, ma'am. Let's be clear. Your actions
created this problem," said Judge Springstead.
Gigliotti's defense lawyers vowed to appeal on several grounds. They
accuse Gigliotti's nephew of lying, and say state workers failed to
provide information or were slow to provide facts that could have been
relevant before the trial.
Her attorney concedes Gigliotti's last minute confrontation probably
didn't help her legal cause.
"She has a very strong will, a very strong personality. And she said
what she felt," said defense attorney Jimmy Brown, "and she would not be
true to herself if she didn't."
Gigliotti's fiance Anton Angelo pleaded guilty to a single charge of
child abuse in April, and was given five years probation in exchange for
his testimony against Gigliotti at her trial.
Her lawyers tell us Gigliotti is - and has been - on suicide watch.

As promised and expected, lawyers for a Spring Hill woman convicted
of beating and imprisoning her 17-year-old nephew in a bathroom have
appealed her conviction and 12-year prison sentence to a higher court.Tai-Ling
Gigliotti's defense attorneys filed a motion Friday afternoon
requesting a review from the Florida's 5th District Court of Appeal in
Daytona Beach.Gigliotti, the 51-year-old widow of world-renowned
clarinetist Anthony Gigliotti, was convicted May 10 of two charges of
aggravated child abuse. She faced a minimum of eight years and a maximum
of 60 years in prison. Circuit Judge Jack Springstead settled on
12 years, roughly the amount of time Gigliotti cared for her nephew
after bringing him from Taiwan to the United States. After her time in
prison, Gigliotti will be placed on probation for three years.But
on Friday, Gigliotti's attorney Jimmy Brown filed four motions
notifying the state of his intention to appeal her case. One of the
motions asks the appeals court to consider Springstead's refusal to
allow certain kinds of testimony and evidence about Gigliotti's nephew's
behavior, among other things.Citing a case from Maryland, Brown
also asked the court to review his claim that state foster care
officials and the nephew's foster parents failed to disclose before the
trial a pattern of troublesome and even illegal behavior by the teen.In
the days before Gigliotti's sentencing hearing last month, Brown made a
number of explosive allegations in a request for a mistrial, including
that the nephew's first foster parent may have committed perjury by not
revealing the teen had been accused of engaging in sex acts with a
14-year-old boy.Springstead rejected those claims, saying that
none of those allegations were relevant to the case.Gigliotti
was accused of beating her nephew and periodically locking him in a
bathroom at their Spring Hill home for the better part of 15 months
before he escaped in February 2009.Prosecutors said that
Gigliotti beat, bruised, starved and hog-tied the boy on the cold tile
floor in the days before he managed to free himself and run to a
neighbor's house. At the end of a seven-day trial in early May,
jurors sided with the prosecutors. A jury of six people, five of them
mothers, reached a guilty verdict in a little more than three hours.
Gigliotti's attorneys have always maintained that her nephew's story
was exaggerated and riddled with discrepancies.