MARTINEZ (BCN) -- On Monday a Contra Costa County Superior Court judge in Martinez found a  Richmond woman not guilty by reason of insanity to 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.

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.

Judge Charles Burch said he had reviewed the reports and believed  that Moses was criminally insane at the time of the crime.

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.

The district attorney's office has the right to contest her  release when and if it happens, Chang said.

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.

The court heard the case after Moses sought visitation rights with  her daughter and unanimously denied her appeal. Her parental rights to her  daughter have since been terminated.

“It's a tragic case," Chang said. "The boy suffered horribly."
           
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