Billy Adams III, the Tampa rapper known as Ace NH, wrote a handwritten letter from jail to Judge Mark Wolfe. In it, he asks to waive any mitigating evidence and be sentenced according to the jury’s recommendation.
The recommendation was harsh: the death penalty for the murder of Alana Sims’s unborn daughter, by an 8-to-4 vote, and life without parole for Alana’s murder. “I don’t want my lawyers to present any mitigation or arguments at this hearing”, he wrote. He added: “I have no problem with the death penalty”.
On January 30, 2023, according to the prosecution, Adams took Alana, who was 22 and five months pregnant, according to her family, to a remote area of New Tampa and shot her in the back of the head. Prosecutors say he wanted to be with another woman and eliminate a child he believed was his. It was later determined that he was not the father. Just days earlier, Adams had been acquitted in a double murder unrelated to this case.
Alana’s young son was found unharmed, asleep in an SUV beside her body. The letter does not require the judge to impose the death penalty: the decision will be made on December 1.