RAIJON MOSES - 8 yo - Contra Costa County CA

A Contra Costa County Superior Court judge found
a Richmond woman not guilty by reason of insanity today in charges that
she murdered her 8-year-old son in 2006.
Teresa Moses, 26, pleaded no contest to first-degree murder this
morning. In exchange for her plea, the district attorney's office
dropped the remaining charges of child abuse and torture.
Three doctors who evaluated Moses found that she suffered from paranoid delusions.
She will now be committed to a state mental hospital for a minimum
term of six months and a maximum term of life. If she is released, she
will have to spend at least a year in an outpatient program.
Police were called to Moses' home in October of 2006 and found her
son, Raijon, unconscious and lying near a puddle of his own vomit.
Moses told police that her son was "destructive" and might have poisoned himself by drinking the household cleaner Pine-Sol.
Investigators uncovered evidence that Moses had kept Raijon locked
in his bedroom and had restrained him with a nylon cord tied to his
wrists, arms and legs.
The coroner's office determined that he died from continuous, long-term abuse diagnosed as "battered child syndrome."
Investigators found no evidence that Moses had physically abused Raijon's half-sister, who is now 5 or 6 years old.

A
Richmond woman charged with abusing, torturing and murdering her
8-year-old son in 2006 was found not guilty by reason of insanity
Monday and may spend the rest of her life in a state mental hospital.In a two-part hearing in Martinez, Teresa Moses, 26, was first
convicted of first-degree murder in the slaying of Raijon Daniels, whom
she allegedly kept locked in his room and beat repeatedly.
"No contest," Moses said when asked her plea by Judge Charles "Ben" Burch of Contra Costa County Superior Court.
Under an agreement by attorneys from both sides, Burch then cited
findings by three doctors in determining that Moses was "not guilty by
reason of criminal insanity" because she was incapable of controlling
her conduct at the time she killed Raijon.
"I'm satisfied that she'll be spending time in a state hospital,"
prosecutor Jerry Chang said after the hearing. "How much time she will
spend will be up to the state hospital."
Burch told Moses that she will spend at least six months in the hospital and could be confined there for the rest of her life.
Moses was initially charged with torture and child abuse in the
death of Raijon, who was found unresponsive next to a puddle of vomit
Oct. 27, 2006, at his home on South 40th Street in Richmond. The other
counts were dismissed as a result of Monday's pleas.
Raijon died of trauma caused by continuous abuse, according to a forensic pathologist.
At a preliminary hearing in 2007, Dr. Gregory Reiber, who conducted
the autopsy on Raijon, testified that the boy had bruises and scratches
all over his body and showed signs of having been starved.
The boy lived in a locked bedroom that was rigged with a
surveillance camera and motion detectors that notified Moses when
Raijon got off the bed, police said. Moses restrained her son with a
nylon cord tied around his wrists, arms and legs and fed him food mixed
in a blender, police said.
She used a high-pressure water hose every day to wash waste off his
body and forced him to soak in a tub of his own waste and Pine-Sol to
deter him from relieving himself, authorities said.
Moses admitted that on the day of Raijon's death, she sprayed him
with cold water and poured Pine-Sol on his genitals, police said.
After finding the boy unconscious, Moses locked her 3-year-old
daughter in a bedroom as she tried to revive her son before calling
emergency personnel, authorities said.
"It's a tragic case," Chang said. "The boy suffered horribly."
Moses' attorney, Robin Lipetzky, was not immediately available for
comment. A former defense attorney had argued that Moses was forced to
take extreme measures because Raijon often urinated and defecated on
himself at home and at school, acted out and once ran away from home.