FIEND GETS LIFE (Freed crack user raped, killed girl)

Clarence Moss, a 44 year old crack addicted monster,  was convicted of raping, sodomizing and killing 11 year old Tamiqa Gutierrez and has been sentenced to life in prison without parole yesterday. He also got 14 additional years for raping little Tamiqa before killing her during a booze and cocaine binge on May 8, 200l.  He was able to commit this heinous crime because a Philadelphia judge let him off the hook on an earlier charge. Judge Anne Lazarus terminated Moss' probation 18 months early allowing him to leave the state. Two and a half years earlier, Lazarus had sentenced him to four years' probation in a shocking case in which he was accused of slashing a hooker's throat from ear to ear, requiring 30 stitches.. When his probation ended, he came to the Bronx, moving into an Olinville Avenue apartment on the same floor as Tamiqa's. He raped and killed the little girl after she knocked on the door looking for Moss' grandson, leaving her body in the hallway near her parents' door. He confessed to raping and killing the little girl. Governor Pataki proposed life-without-parole in prison as the minimum sentence for violent felons who murder children while committing other crimes. He called the measure Tamiqa's Law. Current law calls for a minimum 15 year sentence and a maximum of the death penalty, for felons who murder a child under the age of 15 while in the process of committing a sexual offense, robbery, burglary, kidnapping or arson. Tamiqa's parents burst into tears as their former neighbor was convicted. We hope they burn him in jail, Santa Cruz, Tamiqa's mother said. Moss was convicted of first-degree murder and two counts of sexual abuse.

(New York)