A local woman accused of burning the fingers of a boy she was babysitting was found guilty Tuesday of felonious assault after she admitted guilt as part of a negotiated plea agreement.

Thirty-seven-year-old Teresa J. Moore signed a court document admitting that on May 9 she knowingly caused serious physical harm to the 8-year-old boy “by using matches and a lighter to burn multiple fingers of the child.”

Clinton County Common Pleas Judge John W. Rudduck referred Moore’s case for pre-sentence research in which Moore’s background will be examined and information about Moore will be provided to help the judge when he sentences Moore on the second-degree felony conviction.

The Clinton County Adult Parole Authority will conduct the pre-sentence investigation of Moore and provide the judge a report by the sentencing date. The judge encouraged Moore to cooperate in the process.

The maximum prison term in the case is eight years and the maximum fine is $15,000.

As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors consented to recommending to the judge that a second charge, endangering children, which also is a second-degree felony offense, be dismissed.

If Moore is sentenced to prison, a period of supervision by the Adult Parole Authority after release from prison is mandatory.

The sentencing hearing is scheduled for Jan. 21, 2010, at the common pleas courtroom.

Earlier this month, Rudduck ruled on a motion by defense to exclude from evidence statements Moore made during a children services interview days after the incident.

Defense attorney Anthony J. Baker, in late October, filed a motion to suppress, challenging if statements by his client were obtained in violation of her federal and state constitutional rights.

The issue revolved around an interview of Moore conducted at the Clinton County Children Services facility by a children services staffer in which Moore was not given Miranda warnings. In Miranda v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that certain procedural safeguards must be afforded defendants to protect the privilege against self-incrimination.

In Rudduck’s Dec. 8 decision on the motion to suppress, he wrote, “Central to any constitutional analysis of this sort is determining whether the defendant was in custody and subject to a custodial interrogation at the time alleged incriminating statements were provided. No reasonable person could conclude defendant was in custody on May 15, 2009, when she voluntarily appeared before [children services] investigator [Jodi] Brisbine and voluntarily consented to answer her questions.”

Rudduck concluded that Moore’s statements were not obtained by violating her constitutional rights and denied the motion to suppress the statements.

The children services interview wasn’t the first time Moore’s willingness to talk about the incident came into play in this case. The crime was reported by Patricia Waelti (pronounced “well-tee”), a Wilmington woman who on May 14 offered to help a woman she didn’t know with a broken-down car in the Kroger parking lot. After some conversation, the stranded woman reportedly confided in Waelti that she had burnt a boy’s fingers as a punishment for smoking cigarettes.

In a News Journal interview last May, Waelti said the woman, later identified as Moore, showed her the boy’s fingers. To describe their color in her interview, Waelti pointed to a bright Christmas-red sweatshirt. The blisters on the boy’s fingertips “looked like they had been popped and clipped,” said Waelti.

The child victim’s mother, 37-year-old Michelle M. Worthington of Wilmington, previously was sentenced in the incident to four years in prison for permitting child abuse. Her boyfriend, 39-year-old William L. Ballard of Wilmington, was sentenced in the incident to one year in prison for permitting child abuse.

Worthington and Ballard reportedly witnessed the finger-burning, according to Clinton County Prosecutor Rick Moyer.