SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — A southern Illinois woman who served three decades in prison for killing her infant daughter has been granted parole.
The Illinois Prisoner Review Board board voted 12-1 Thursday to grant release to Paula Sims. Her attorney, Jed Stone, tells the Belleville News Democrat the parole “is a recognition that postpartum psychosis is real and the women who suffer from that mental illness need to be treated and understood.”
Sims has been incarcerated for 30 years.
The jury in 1990 convicted Sims of first-degree murder and other offenses in the suffocation death of her 6-week-old daughter, Heather Sims in 1989. She also confessed to the 1986 killing of her other daughter, 13-day-old Loralei Sims.
