In re Sims

Defendant and petitioner Karen Sims, a former attorney with serious mental illness of longstanding, was convicted of murdering her husband Henry Sims in 2006 and was sentenced to prison for a term of 50 years to life. After her conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal in 2008, she petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus in the California Supreme Court in 2011, claiming her conviction was invalid because she was incompetent to stand trial. That petition was ultimately denied after an order to show cause (OSC) had been *864 issued, returnable in the Riverside County Superior Court. In 2016, she filed another petition for writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court on the same ground, with additional information about her postconviction mental health problems as they related to timeliness. The California Supreme Court again issued an OSC returnable to this court. We grant the petition.

BACKGROUND 1

Defendant has a history of mental illness that includes at least one prior hospitalization lasting two years and had manifested itself in violent knife assaults against her husband and her daughter while the family lived in Colorado. After being released from an extended…