The panel chose different punishments for Alana Sims’ death and the death of her unborn daughter, leaving the final capital sentence to a judge.

TAMPA, Fla. — A Hillsborough County jury recommended that Billy Adams III be sentenced to death for causing the death of Alana Sims’ unborn child, while choosing life imprisonment for the first-degree murder of Sims herself, an unusual split decision that followed his conviction in the 2023 killing of the pregnant Tampa mother.

The 8-4 death recommendation came Sept. 2, one day after jurors convicted Adams, 28, of first-degree murder in Sims’ death and of killing an unborn child by injury to the mother. Sims, 22, was about five months pregnant when she was shot in New Tampa on Jan. 30, 2023. She had planned to name her unborn daughter Leilani, according to prosecutors. The jury’s vote did not itself place Adams on death row. Under Florida law, a judge must make the final sentencing decision after considering the aggravating factors found by jurors, the mitigation presented by the defense and the jury’s recommendation.

The distinction is important because reports immediately after the penalty phase described Adams as having received a death sentence. Florida’s capital-sentencing law provides that when at least eight jurors recommend death, the trial court may impose either death or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole after its own review of the case. When jurors recommend life, however, the court is required to impose life on that count. The result means Adams faces life imprisonment for Sims’ murder, while the punishment tied to her unborn child remained for the judge to decide after the jury returned its capital recommendation.

Prosecutors told jurors that the killings grew from Adams’ desire to separate himself from Sims after both believed he was the father of her unborn child. Adams was involved with another woman whom the prosecution described as his primary girlfriend, and the state argued that he believed Sims’ pregnancy threatened that relationship and the life he wanted. Evidence later established that Adams was not the biological father of the unborn child. Prosecutors said that fact was unknown to him when Sims was killed and therefore did not change the motive they presented to the jury.

The state’s case portrayed the shooting as planned rather than the product of a sudden confrontation. Prosecutors said Adams sent Sims affectionate messages and encouraged her to meet him at an unfinished stretch of the Easton Park subdivision in New Tampa. According to trial reporting, he told Sims that he missed her and discussed the possibility of living together, communications the state characterized as a way of getting her to come to an isolated location. Prosecutors contrasted those messages with communications involving Adams’ other girlfriend that they said showed his intention to remove Sims from his life.

Sims drove to the area in her Ford EcoSport with her young son in the vehicle. She was later found on the pavement near the SUV after being shot behind the head. Her son, who had not yet turned 2, remained unharmed in a car seat inside the vehicle. Prosecutors emphasized both Sims’ pregnancy and the presence of her young child as they reconstructed the events surrounding the killing. Investigators used surveillance recordings, phone information and messages to trace Adams’ movements and test the accounts he gave detectives after Sims’ death.

Authorities said Adams initially denied being with Sims that night. Investigators also examined video offered in support of an alibi and concluded that its timing had been altered, according to reporting based on the arrest affidavit. Police obtained phone and surveillance evidence placing Adams in the area of the killing. They also found searches and messages that prosecutors later used to support their contention that the shooting had been contemplated in advance, including searches about probable cause for arrest and whether gloves could prevent gunshot residue from reaching a person’s hands.

After investigators confronted Adams with evidence that challenged his first account, he gave a different explanation for the shooting. He said a gun discharged during a confrontation with Sims, according to reports of the case. Prosecutors argued that the physical circumstances and the rest of the evidence did not support that version. At trial, the state focused on the location of Sims’ wound, Adams’ communications before the meeting and the digital evidence surrounding his actions. Jurors deliberated for about five hours before finding him guilty of first-degree murder and the unborn-child offense.

The case then moved directly into a separate penalty proceeding. Prosecutors urged jurors to find that the circumstances surrounding the death of the unborn child justified the state’s most severe punishment. They argued that the killing had been cold, calculated and premeditated and noted that Sims was deliberately killed while pregnant. A medical examiner who performed the autopsies testified during the penalty proceeding about the unborn child’s development and the possibility of survival if delivered at that stage of pregnancy. The state relied on the child’s age and the contemporaneous killing of Sims among the circumstances it asked jurors to consider.

The defense did not argue that a life sentence would amount to freedom for Adams. Assistant Public Defender Jamie Kane instead told jurors that life without parole was itself a severe punishment and that Florida law did not require them to recommend death. Defense witnesses described Adams as an intelligent student from a close family who had graduated from Wharton High School and later earned a business degree from the University of South Florida. Family members described his upbringing and relationships with his younger brothers, giving jurors mitigating evidence to weigh against the aggravating circumstances presented by prosecutors.

Sims’ relatives, meanwhile, described the lasting effects of her death on the family and on the son she left behind. Her sister, CarliAnna Robinson, told the court that Sims and her children mattered and that the family would continue to carry the pain of her loss. The boy who was found unharmed in the SUV was approaching 2 years old when his mother died. By the time of the 2026 trial, relatives said he was in kindergarten and would have to grow up without Sims. Hillsborough State Attorney Suzy Lopez said after the penalty recommendation that the decision was not something prosecutors celebrated and expressed hope that the proceeding would give the family some peace.

The prosecution also unfolded against an extraordinary but legally separate piece of Adams’ history. Three days before Sims was killed, a different jury acquitted him of charges in an unrelated 2020 double shooting at a recording studio in Lutz. Adams had testified in that case that he acted in self-defense after believing a robbery was about to occur. The jury in Sims’ case was not told about that earlier trial during its consideration of his guilt and punishment. The prior acquittal did not establish anything about whether Adams committed the later crime, and the state was required to prove the Sims case on the evidence admitted in the new proceeding.

What followed the September penalty proceeding was therefore a sentencing process rather than a completed execution judgment. Florida law requires the trial judge to address the aggravating factors and mitigating circumstances in a written sentencing order when imposing life or death in a capital case. The jury’s 8-4 vote met the statutory threshold for a death recommendation on the unborn-child count, but it did not eliminate judicial review or compel the judge to impose death. The jury’s life recommendation for Sims’ first-degree murder, by contrast, requires a life sentence without parole on that conviction.

The latest reliable reporting reviewed for this article did not establish that the trial judge had entered a final order sentencing Adams to death. He remains convicted of killing Sims and causing the death of her unborn child, with life without parole required for Sims’ murder and the court responsible for determining whether the death recommendation on the other count ultimately becomes a death sentence.

Author note: Last updated October 19, 2026.