There are 37 people on death row in Georgia and all but one of them are men.
Tiffany Moss, the only woman, was convicted of starving her 10-year-old stepdaughter to death in her family’s Lawrenceville apartment.
At the time of Emani Moss’ death in the fall of 2013, the child weighed just 32 pounds, about as much as a toddler. Her father and stepmother later stuffed her emaciated body in a trash can and tried to burn it, prosecutors said at trial.
Tiffany Moss took the unusual step of representing herself in the capital case and mounted no defense. She didn’t ask a single question of the witnesses who testified against her and offered no opening statement or closing argument.
In asking for the death penalty, former Gwinnett District Attorney Danny Porter described in harrowing detail how the body shuts down when denied food. Prosecutors said it likely took weeks — if not longer — for Emani to die of starvation.
“Who in the world conceives of or executes a plan to starve a 10-year-old to death?” Porter asked the jury. " … 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.”
A jury of six men and six women deliberated about two and a half hours before sentencing Moss to die by lethal injection.
Emani’s father, Eman Moss, pleaded guilty to his role in Emani’s death in August 2015. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and agreed to testify against his wife.
The last woman executed in Georgia was Kelly Renee Gissendaner, who was convicted of orchestrating the 1997 murder of her husband, Douglas Gissendaner.
Gregory Bruce Owen, the man who stabbed Douglas Gissendaner to death, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Kelly Gissendaner was executed Sept. 30, 2015.
She was the first woman executed in Georgia since 1945 and the only person who did not directly commit the murder to be executed in Georgia since the since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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