Mom Found Criminally Insane In Death Of Her Son

A Contra Costa County Superior Court judge in Martinez has found a Richmond woman not guilty by reason of insanity on charges that she murdered her 8-year-old son in 2006. Teresa Moses, 26, was originally charged with felony child abuse, torture and murder in connection with her son Raijon Daniels' death. She pleaded no contest to first-degree murder Monday morning. In exchange for her plea, the district attorney's office dropped the remaining charges.

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Three doctors, one psychiatrist and two forensic psychologists, evaluated Moses and concluded that she was criminally insane at the time of the murder. In order to be found criminally insane, Moses had to be incapable of knowing or understanding the nature and consequences of her actions. Deputy District Attorney Gerald Chang said all three doctors found that Moses 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.
Raijon died Oct. 27, 2006. Police and paramedics were called to Moses' apartment at 725 S. 40th St. early that evening and found the boy unconscious and lying near a puddle of his own vomit.


Moses allegedly told police that her son was "destructive" and might have poisoned himself by drinking the household cleaner Pine-Sol, a Richmond police detective said. Along with several open containers of Pine-Sol found throughout the apartment, investigators allegedly 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.

They also found surveillance cameras in his bedroom that were hooked up to a monitor in Moses' bedroom and motion sensors designed to alert Moses if Raijon attempted to get off his bed, according to investigators.
A forensic pathologist testified during a preliminary hearing in the case that Raijon had bruises, scrapes, chemical burns and extensive scarring covering his entire body. The child was also starving, and the coroner's office concluded that he died from continuous, long-term abuse diagnosed as "battered child syndrome."

Before his death, Contra Costa Children and Family Services had received five separate reports from people who suspected that Raijon was being abused beginning in November 2005. The most recent report was in January 2006. Raijon's case was closed eight months before he died, according to CFS documents.
Investigators found no evidence that Moses had abused Raijon's half-sister, who is now 5 or 6 years old, but a CFS report alleged that the girl had suffered severe mental and emotional trauma from witnessing her mother's continuous torture and abuse of Raijon, according to a California Court of Appeal decision issued in 2008.