Death penalty sought  in Dominique Moody case

Mecklenburg County prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Tonya McKnight, the legal guardian accused of subjecting 6-year-old Dominique Moody to prolonged abuse before the child’s death last year.

The Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday that it intends to prosecute McKnight’s first-degree murder charge as a capital case, meaning a death sentence is possible if she is convicted.

McKnight is accused of directing abuse against Moody that investigators say included starvation, beatings, restraint with duct tape, and confinement in a dog crate. Moody weighed 27 pounds when she was found unresponsive at an east Charlotte home on Dec. 16, 2025, according to court records. She later died.

Police affidavits described Moody as having broken bones, burns, healed ligature scars, and open wounds in various stages of healing. Other children living in the home told investigators that McKnight forced Moody to live in a dog crate, while investigators alleged she was deprived of food and left for extended periods in urine- and feces-soiled diapers.

McKnight was initially charged with child abuse in December before prosecutors added a first-degree murder charge in February.

Two other women, Tery’n McKnight and Susan Robinson, are also charged with first-degree murder and child abuse in connection with Moody’s death, but prosecutors said Tuesday they will not seek the death penalty against either woman.

The decision makes McKnight’s prosecution the first case in which Mecklenburg prosecutors have sought the death penalty under District Attorney Spencer Merriweather. The office last pursued capital punishment in 2017 under former District Attorney Andrew Murray in the case against Curtis Atkinson Jr.

Prosecutors later dropped their pursuit of the death penalty in that case, and Atkinson was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted in 2023.

Under North Carolina law, district attorneys have discretion about whether to prosecute a first-degree charge as a capital case. Prosecutors seeking a possible death sentence must notify the defendant and file that intent with the court by the pretrial conference or arraignment, whichever occurs later.

If convicted in a capital case, a separate sentencing proceeding would determine whether she receives death or life imprisonment. State law also allows prosecutors to accept a life sentence later in the prosecution even after initially declaring a case capital. North Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2006.

As of Aug. 11, no trial date has been announced.

Moody’s death also prompted scrutiny of the child welfare agencies that had contact with her household before she died and legislative action.

A North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services review found Mecklenburg County child welfare officials missed repeated opportunities to intervene. Four of five reports involving Moody’s household that county workers screened out should have been accepted for further assessment because the allegations met the legal definition of abuse or neglect, according to the department.

State reviewers also found that workers failed to adequately examine the household’s child protective services history, make sufficient collateral contacts, or maintain the level of contact needed to assess Moody’s safety.

“Our review of this fatality revealed serious concerns with Mecklenburg’s child welfare practice, including numerous violations of state law, rule, and policy,” Lisa Tucker-Cawley, division director for human services at NCDHHS, told lawmakers during a June 4 House Oversight Committee hearing.

The roughly eight-hour oversight hearing broadened the scrutiny beyond Moody’s case. In a review of 122 unrelated Mecklenburg County child welfare records, NCDHHS found that intake workers failed to ask sufficient questions in 52% of cases, adequate safety plans were present in 43%, and 58% lacked all required components of quality supervisory oversight.

“Dominique Moody’s death could have been prevented,” Rep. Allen Chesser, R-Nash, said as he opened the hearing. “This was a preventable death that occurred because of inaction.”

The findings helped drive legislation aimed at creating a state backstop for high-risk cases in North Carolina’s county-administered child welfare system. 

The House voted 113-0 in June for Senate Bill 280, the Dominique Moody Safety Act, which included a Child Welfare Case Escalation Team within NCDHHS to review cases involving repeated reports or significant child welfare histories.

During the House debate, Rep. Brenden Jones, R-Columbus, pointed to the abuse documented in Moody’s case.

“I read the report on Dominique, and it’s enough to make the biggest, strongest man cry to know what that child endured,” Jones said. “We have no greater responsibility than to take care of the children of our state.”

Rep. Carla Cunningham, I-Mecklenburg, one of the bill’s primary sponsors, said the legislation was intended in part to ensure repeated reports involving the same child are considered together rather than in isolation.

“Patterns matter. History matters. Repeated concerns matter,” Cunningham said.

Lawmakers ultimately included $650,000 for Moody-related reforms in the 2026-27 state budget, including $550,000 in recurring funding for six employees on the escalation team and $100,000 in one-time funding for child abuse and neglect training. 

Chesser told Carolina Journal after the budget was approved that Moody’s case would have triggered review by the team because of the number of earlier reports that had been screened out.

“This would have provided a much-needed review, a second set of eyes, if you will, that could have reviewed the decision-making and ultimately, I believe, saved this life,” Chesser said.

The final budget did not include several other provisions from the House-passed legislation, including predictive risk modeling, a public dashboard comparing county child welfare performance, and additional documentation requirements for certain home assessments. 

“Death penalty sought  in Dominique Moody case” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.