[1] Tiffany Nicole Moss (born July 20, 1983)[2][3] was convicted of murdering Emani in 2019 and was subsequently sentenced to death.

[7][8][9] The murder led to several systemic changes in the Georgia Division of Family and Child Services (GDFCS).

[14] Eman was charged with and convicted of battery and second-degree child cruelty in 2004 after beating Emani's biological mother in front of her.

Emani, then age six, told a school nurse that she feared going home with a bad report card because she worried her parents would hurt her.

[1] After the March 2010 beating, Emani was taken from her father and stepmother's home and placed with her grandmother Robin, staying with her for about six months.

In one case, she went to the apartment office and told them she wanted to run away because Moss had tied her up with a belt and placed her in a cold shower.

[10][18] In another July 2012 incident, Emani ran away and was found sleeping in the bushes of a nearby apartment complex by a police officer.

The officer reported the event to the GDFCS and filed runaway and curfew violation charges against Emani to ensure she would see a juvenile court judge.

[7] On August 6, 2013, the GDFCS received an anonymous tip that Emani was being neglected by her father and stepmother and "appeared to be thin."

"[10][12][22] Mother's Day (12 May) 2013 was the last time any members of Emani's family, besides her father, stepmother, and siblings, saw her alive.

On several occasions, she sent Eman pictures of meals she had prepared for her children, and in another instance, she asked her husband to bring home cookie dough so she could bake.

At trial, prosecutors pointed out that Emani would have had to smell the baked cookies as she lay in her room starving to death.

Eman testified at trial that when he came home from work, the family seemed normal, with the children playing and Moss watching TV.

In the early morning of November 1, the Moss couple put the trash can containing Emani's body in the back of their car and took their children to find a place to burn it.

They added charcoal briquettes to the bottom of the can, doused Emani's body with lighter fluid, and set it on fire.

Upon learning that the police had been called, Moss placed the trash can with Emani's remains in a grassy area at the apartment and fled in the family vehicle with her children.

In exchange, he agreed to testify against Moss, who rejected a plea deal that would have allowed her to be sentenced to life in prison.

[24] Moss, who was appointed lawyers through the State Office of the Capital Defender, decided to represent herself, despite Judge Hutchinson's efforts to persuade her otherwise.

During pre-trial hearings and jury selection, Judge Hutchinson urged Moss to rely upon the standby counsel, but she refused.

[9][35] During the sentencing phase, Moss declined to address the jury, present mitigating evidence, or have her relatives who had attended the trial testify on her behalf.

Judge Hutchinson agreed with the jury's recommendation and sentenced Moss, then age thirty-six, to death by lethal injection.

[12] She is currently incarcerated at Arrendale State Prison and is Georgia's only female death row inmate.

[37] Soon after she was sentenced to death, the Georgia Capital Defender group filed a motion asking for a new trial, arguing, among other things, that Moss was not competent to act as her attorney.

According to her attorneys, Moss has "neuropsychological testing data that showed the defendant to have damage to the premotor and prefrontal regions of the brain.

[10] After the murder, an intake case manager, a social services administrator, and a program assistant at the GDFCS were all terminated.

[12] The murder led the department to enact reforms, including deeper investigations into allegations of abuse and changing how it assembles maltreatment reports.

Agency workers no longer decide whether reports warrant investigations based entirely on information gathered over the telephone.

Additionally, no case is assigned a less-serious, lower-priority status until a caseworker meets a child who allegedly has been abused.

[1][22] In January 2015, the Council released a report with recommendations on ways to improve Georgia's child welfare system.

[40] In 2018, Emani's grandmother Robin filed a lawsuit in the Gwinnett County State Court against the GDFCS, arguing that caseworkers were aware of deteriorating conditions and abuse in the Moss family and could have acted earlier.