Tiffany Moss on Death Row: Trial, Sentence, and Appeals

Tiffany Moss is the only woman on Georgia’s death row. A Gwinnett County jury sentenced her to death in April 2019 for the starvation murder of her ten-year-old stepdaughter, Emani Moss, and she remains incarcerated at Arrendale State Prison with no execution date set as of the end of 2025.¹

What Tiffany Moss Was Convicted Of

On November 2, 2013, police in Lawrenceville, Georgia, found Emani Moss’s body inside a galvanized steel trash can at the Coventry Pointe Apartments in Gwinnett County.² The child had been burned after death in an attempt to hide the crime.³ An autopsy determined that she had been starved to death after being denied food for several days. She weighed roughly 32 pounds.⁴ Investigators estimated she may have died as early as October 30, 2013.

Emani’s father, Eman Moss, testified that he came home from work on October 24, 2013, to find his daughter having a seizure, and that Tiffany told him, “We cannot take her to the doctor. She is too thin.” When Emani died a few days later, the couple did not call for help. Eman Moss testified that Tiffany told him, “We have got to hide this body and use our criminal minds to get rid of it.”⁵ He eventually led police to the trash can and, according to a detective, confessed on arrest: “I’m guilty. I’m guilty. I killed my baby.”⁶

Tiffany Moss had been charged with harming Emani before. In March 2010, when Emani was six, she told a school nurse she feared her parents would hurt her over a bad report card. Investigators documented severe bruises and welts across the child’s chest, back, shoulders, arms, and legs. Tiffany was arrested on a child cruelty charge after admitting she had beaten the girl with a belt, and took a plea deal that gave her five years of probation. Police records show Emani tried to run away from home in July 2012.³ She was dead less than a year and a half later.

Eman Moss pleaded guilty in 2015 and is serving life without the possibility of parole. His plea required him to testify against Tiffany at her trial.²

Why the Trial Drew National Attention

Tiffany Moss’s trial opened in April 2019 in Gwinnett County Superior Court before Judge George Hutchinson III. What set it apart was Moss’s decision to represent herself in a death penalty case and to put on no defense at all. District Attorney Danny Porter offered to take the death penalty off the table if she pleaded guilty to life without parole. She refused. Judge Hutchinson repeatedly urged her to accept counsel. She refused that too.⁷

After finding her competent, the judge allowed Moss to discharge her lawyers and appointed Emily Gilbert and Brad Gardner of the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender as standby counsel. The Georgia Supreme Court declined to intervene before trial.⁸

Moss gave no opening statement. She did not cross-examine prosecution witnesses. She produced no witness list, reviewed none of the state’s evidence, and called no one on her own behalf. When the prosecution rested on April 26, she rested as well, telling the court she was placing her defense “in God’s hands.”⁸

Brain Damage Concerns Raised by Standby Counsel

The standby lawyers filed a motion alerting the court to neuropsychological testing showing damage to the premotor and prefrontal regions of Moss’s brain. Dr. Don Stein, Director of the Brain Research Laboratory at Emory University, said those regions are “intimately involved in executive function, decision making, and impulse control.” On April 25, 2019, the capital defenders moved to terminate her self-representation for the penalty phase, arguing she was “incapable of representing herself” and that proceeding without counsel would produce “a one-sided and arbitrary proceeding.” The motion was not granted, and Moss continued to represent herself through sentencing.⁸

Verdict and Death Sentence

On April 29, 2019, a jury of six men and six women found Moss guilty of murder, cruelty to children, and concealing a death.⁴ The next day, after about two and a half hours of deliberation, the same jury sentenced her to death by lethal injection. It was the first death sentence imposed in Georgia in more than five years.⁹

Where the Case Stands Now

An initial execution window was set for June 7 to June 14, 2019, but the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s office acknowledged at the time that carrying it out was unlikely because Georgia law requires automatic review and appeals in every death penalty case.⁴ Moss retained a new lawyer, filed a motion for a new trial, and the June date passed.²

In January 2024, Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Karen Beyers denied the motion for a new trial, ruling that Moss had “intelligently, voluntarily, and knowingly invoked her right to self-representation.” The conviction and death sentence stand.² Under Georgia law, the Georgia Supreme Court is required to review every death sentence, and a defendant may then petition the U.S. Supreme Court, though such petitions are rarely granted.

As of December 31, 2025, Moss is held at Arrendale State Prison, the facility that houses female inmates under a death sentence in Georgia. She is the only woman among 33 inmates on the state’s death row. No new execution date has been set.¹

If her sentence is eventually carried out, Moss would become only the third woman executed in Georgia’s history. Lena Baker was executed in 1945 and posthumously pardoned in 2005. Kelly Renee Gissendaner was executed in September 2015 for orchestrating the 1997 murder of her husband.²

1
Georgia Department of Corrections. Death Row Roster CY 2025
2
11Alive. Tiffany Moss Georgia Death Row
3
CBS News. Emani Moss Update: GA Girl Found in Trash Was Starved, Abused, and Had Tried to Run Away
4
NBC News. Tiffany Moss Sentenced to Death for Starving 10-Year-Old Stepdaughter
5
Fox 5 Atlanta. Father of Murdered Child Takes Stand in Tiffany Moss Trial
6
WSB-TV. Grim Details Emerge About Death of Starved, Burned 10-Year-Old
7
Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Stepmom Representing Herself as Death Penalty Trial Begins
8
Death Penalty Information Center. Georgia Lawyers Seek to Intervene After Brain-Damaged Defendant Permitted to Represent Herself
9
Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Jury Deliberates Sentence for Gwinnett Stepmom