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http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/em...es.nsf&docid=230071E5F1C2C636862571C0001798A2
Paula Sims is making a bid for freedom
By Adam Jadhav
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Aug. 03 2006
Prosecutors are calling it a last-ditch ploy of desperation. Defense attorneys
and advocates see it as a final appeal for mercy and justice.
Either way, a petition for executive clemency from Paula M. Sims, the Alton
mother convicted in 1990 of killing her 6-week-old daughter Heather, is bound
to reopen heaps of court files and years of emotional wounds.
Already the debate is stirring once again over the case of Sims, 47, who
claimed that the infant and another daughter, 13-day-old Loralei, had been
kidnapped by a masked gunman and killed in separate incidents three years
apart. At the time, it was national news, one of the most sensational trials in
the Metro East area.
But as time has worn on, a new theory has been advanced: that the unknown
intruder was a hallucination and that Sims was driven - even commanded by
voices in her head - to murder by postpartum psychosis.
Now, in a petition filed this week with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board,
Sims asks for her punishment of life-without-parole to be commuted by Gov. Rod
Blagojevich on just those grounds. The argument is this: had the case been
tried properly and had today's medical knowledge been applied, Sims would have
been found not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to treatment rather
than prison.
It's almost identical to what defense lawyers said about Andrea Yates during
her second trial for the 2001 drowning deaths of her five young children. Last
month, a new jury sided with the Texas mother and acquitted her.
But Sims' case is far older and carries much more legal baggage. A trial and
many subsequent appeals and motions have all ended the same. Most recently, in
1999, a circuit judge rejected a motion for a new trial, saying that while
mental illness may push some mothers to kill, Sims wasn't one of them.
Now, the petition - and a clemency hearing scheduled for October - will really
be Sims' last chance.
"If you've never talked to a person who's heard voices, it's very easy to
dismiss it as Hollywood poppycock," said Sims' attorney, Jed Stone of Waukegan,
Ill. "We're saying that she was sick and couldn't possibly understand what she
was doing. We're asking for mercy."
'Just a ploy'
But that sounds rather hollow to the prosecutors who oversaw Sims' initial
trial and subsequent appeals, considering the brutality of what she later
admitted. At home in Brighton in 1986, she left her newborn daughter Loralei in
a bathtub to drown and then dumped the body in the woods, she has confessed.
Then, in 1989, after she and her husband moved to Alton, she killed baby
Heather and hid the body in a trash can several miles from the family house.
"At the time of the trial, she steadfastly denied guilt," said Democratic state
Sen. Bill Haine, then the Madison County state's attorney who oversaw Sims'
original trial. "When she was convicted and after her appeals were exhausted on
that issue . . . the postpartum depression thing was just a gambit, a
last-ditch effort."
Neither Haine nor his original prosecutor, Don Weber, now a Madison County
circuit judge, are denying that postpartum psychosis may be a real contributor
to infanticide. But Sims' case has gone on too long, and parts of the story
have changed too much, they say.
In particular, Weber points to Sims' own testimony. At trial, he asked her if
she was depressed, but she said no and held to the story of a break-in and
abduction.
"Somebody has to speak for Heather and Loralei, the victims. I did in 1990 and
I want to speak for them now," Weber said. "This is just a ploy."
It's that emotion - and the sensational nature of Sims' case - that ultimately
led Weber to write a book with former Post-Dispatch reporter Charles Bosworth
Jr. "Precious Victims" became an irresistible script for a 1993 CBS television
movie of the same title.
But the story, with all its twists, is indicative of Sims' condition, Stone and
other observers say. She was delusional and believed fervently in the
hallucinations, they argue.
"She at the time was hearing voices that were telling her to harm her children,
and hallucinated a masked man that had come in and abducted her child," said
Diane Sanford, a psychologist and president of the Creve Coeur-based Women's
Healthcare Partnership.
For more than a decade, Sanford has interviewed and corresponded with Sims.
Sanford wrote a letter - as part of the clemency petition - that Sims should be
released from Dwight Correctional Center where she is currently held.
Sanford and Stone both make their arguments, knowing that the basic evidence
has remained the same. Instead, they say, it's the medical science - clinical
research and published studies about postpartum psychosis - that has changed.
And Andrea Yates' acquittal at a new trial supports such a theory, some mental
health and legal experts say.
"I know that the emotional reaction of the people on the street is that this is
a dodge, that it's all smoke and mirrors, that it's all psychiatric
mumbo-jumbo," said Steve Beckett, a law professor at the University of Illinois
who has handled such cases. "The public ought to understand that mental illness
is real and that there is an explanation of the actions other than just a
criminal mind."
Andrea Yates case
The mental stability of a mother who killed her children has been in the
national spotlight most recently because of this Texas case. Yates said when
she drowned her five children in the bathtub in 2001, she believed she was
saving them from Satan. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity last
month at her second murder trial.
Paula Sims is making a bid for freedom
By Adam Jadhav
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Aug. 03 2006
Prosecutors are calling it a last-ditch ploy of desperation. Defense attorneys
and advocates see it as a final appeal for mercy and justice.
Either way, a petition for executive clemency from Paula M. Sims, the Alton
mother convicted in 1990 of killing her 6-week-old daughter Heather, is bound
to reopen heaps of court files and years of emotional wounds.
Already the debate is stirring once again over the case of Sims, 47, who
claimed that the infant and another daughter, 13-day-old Loralei, had been
kidnapped by a masked gunman and killed in separate incidents three years
apart. At the time, it was national news, one of the most sensational trials in
the Metro East area.
But as time has worn on, a new theory has been advanced: that the unknown
intruder was a hallucination and that Sims was driven - even commanded by
voices in her head - to murder by postpartum psychosis.
Now, in a petition filed this week with the Illinois Prisoner Review Board,
Sims asks for her punishment of life-without-parole to be commuted by Gov. Rod
Blagojevich on just those grounds. The argument is this: had the case been
tried properly and had today's medical knowledge been applied, Sims would have
been found not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to treatment rather
than prison.
It's almost identical to what defense lawyers said about Andrea Yates during
her second trial for the 2001 drowning deaths of her five young children. Last
month, a new jury sided with the Texas mother and acquitted her.
But Sims' case is far older and carries much more legal baggage. A trial and
many subsequent appeals and motions have all ended the same. Most recently, in
1999, a circuit judge rejected a motion for a new trial, saying that while
mental illness may push some mothers to kill, Sims wasn't one of them.
Now, the petition - and a clemency hearing scheduled for October - will really
be Sims' last chance.
"If you've never talked to a person who's heard voices, it's very easy to
dismiss it as Hollywood poppycock," said Sims' attorney, Jed Stone of Waukegan,
Ill. "We're saying that she was sick and couldn't possibly understand what she
was doing. We're asking for mercy."
'Just a ploy'
But that sounds rather hollow to the prosecutors who oversaw Sims' initial
trial and subsequent appeals, considering the brutality of what she later
admitted. At home in Brighton in 1986, she left her newborn daughter Loralei in
a bathtub to drown and then dumped the body in the woods, she has confessed.
Then, in 1989, after she and her husband moved to Alton, she killed baby
Heather and hid the body in a trash can several miles from the family house.
"At the time of the trial, she steadfastly denied guilt," said Democratic state
Sen. Bill Haine, then the Madison County state's attorney who oversaw Sims'
original trial. "When she was convicted and after her appeals were exhausted on
that issue . . . the postpartum depression thing was just a gambit, a
last-ditch effort."
Neither Haine nor his original prosecutor, Don Weber, now a Madison County
circuit judge, are denying that postpartum psychosis may be a real contributor
to infanticide. But Sims' case has gone on too long, and parts of the story
have changed too much, they say.
In particular, Weber points to Sims' own testimony. At trial, he asked her if
she was depressed, but she said no and held to the story of a break-in and
abduction.
"Somebody has to speak for Heather and Loralei, the victims. I did in 1990 and
I want to speak for them now," Weber said. "This is just a ploy."
It's that emotion - and the sensational nature of Sims' case - that ultimately
led Weber to write a book with former Post-Dispatch reporter Charles Bosworth
Jr. "Precious Victims" became an irresistible script for a 1993 CBS television
movie of the same title.
But the story, with all its twists, is indicative of Sims' condition, Stone and
other observers say. She was delusional and believed fervently in the
hallucinations, they argue.
"She at the time was hearing voices that were telling her to harm her children,
and hallucinated a masked man that had come in and abducted her child," said
Diane Sanford, a psychologist and president of the Creve Coeur-based Women's
Healthcare Partnership.
For more than a decade, Sanford has interviewed and corresponded with Sims.
Sanford wrote a letter - as part of the clemency petition - that Sims should be
released from Dwight Correctional Center where she is currently held.
Sanford and Stone both make their arguments, knowing that the basic evidence
has remained the same. Instead, they say, it's the medical science - clinical
research and published studies about postpartum psychosis - that has changed.
And Andrea Yates' acquittal at a new trial supports such a theory, some mental
health and legal experts say.
"I know that the emotional reaction of the people on the street is that this is
a dodge, that it's all smoke and mirrors, that it's all psychiatric
mumbo-jumbo," said Steve Beckett, a law professor at the University of Illinois
who has handled such cases. "The public ought to understand that mental illness
is real and that there is an explanation of the actions other than just a
criminal mind."
Andrea Yates case
The mental stability of a mother who killed her children has been in the
national spotlight most recently because of this Texas case. Yates said when
she drowned her five children in the bathtub in 2001, she believed she was
saving them from Satan. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity last
month at her second murder trial.
