A Guyanese man was on Thursday given three life sentences in Boston after being convicted of three rapes – two of which were committed on two minors – but will spend 30 years behind bars as two of the sentences will run concurrently.
Moonie Moses, 35, who represented himself during the trial, continued to deny the charges even as he was being sentenced by Judge Margaret Hinkle in Suffolk Superior Court.
“This is not a life sentence, this is a death sentence,” Moses said, according to the Boston Globe. “I won’t live long. Every tear I shed, every drop of blood I shed, is a testimony to my innocence.”
Moses was convicted of the rapes committed in Dorchester during 2002 and one of his victims was 13 at the time when he snatched her off a Fields Corner street. Moses’ second victim was 15 years old, and his third was a 32-year-old woman with cerebral palsy.
According to the newspaper, before he was sentenced, Moses, sobbing, thanked Judge Hinkle for her patience during the trial and then insisted he was wrongly convicted.
“Things are not always as they seem, not always as they sound,” Moses, who migrated to the US from Guyana in 1982, said. “I know there is a higher judge. . . . On my way to heaven, I will tell everybody I know that I did not commit these crimes.”
Moses recalled in the report that he was deported to Guyana while the rape charges were pending after he was convicted of assaulting his wife.
He said that while in Guyana, relatives repeatedly urged him to flee to another country that did not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
He said he had refused the advice because he wanted to clear his name and he vowed that he would continue to do so in the years to come.
His 13-year-old victim, who is 18 now, sat behind him as he asserted his innocence and told the Boston Globe that she considered his tear-filled statement the words of a “pathological liar” who lacks the courage to accept responsibility for his own violent acts.
“I was angry, but all I could do was laugh,” she said outside the courtroom. “It was unbelievable. He raped me.”
Assistant Suffolk District Attorney Leora Joseph, citing Moses’ conviction for raping two children and the woman, had urged Judge Hinkle to give him a sentence that would have kept him behind bars for at least 45 years. Moses asked for probation and a suspended sentence.
The judge crafted a sentence that will keep Moses behind bars for at least 30 years before he first becomes eligible for parole and which may also keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.
According to the newspaper, the judge pointed out that all three victims identified Moses from the witness stand; DNA evidence linked Moses to two of the victims, and that Boston police traced the car Moses used to kidnap his victims to his wife.
“This defendant brutally and mercilessly raped three women, two of whom were children at the time,” she said from the bench. “This is not a case where there is a significant question, in my mind, as to whether or not his defendant committed the crimes for which he stands convicted.”
