A 20-year-old man convicted of a local woman’s murder will be transferred to the Tennessee Department of Correction while awaiting sentencing on more charges.
Cortez Sims no longer needs to be held in Hamilton County and can continue serving his life sentence in prison, his newest attorney, Joshua Weiss, wrote in a recent motion. Prosecutors had no objection Wednesday.
Sims was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a jury said in April that he shot and killed Talitha Bowman, 20, during a rampage inside a College Hill Courts apartment in 2015. Sims, then a minor, still faces sentencing for three counts of attempted first-degree murder against toddler Zoey Horton, Marcel Christopher and the now-deceased Bianca Horton. Those charges carry 15-25 years behind bars.
Sims’ next court date is Oct. 31. That will be a status hearing to see how prepared Weiss is for the attempted first-degree murder sentencing hearing. Because he was not the trial attorney, Weiss needs to review those transcripts.
Sims bashed his trial attorneys, Lee Ortwein and Clancy Covert, in a court document that judges typically review before sentencing someone, claiming they did him “incredibly wrong” by forgoing a closing argument and not objecting to certain pieces of state evidence.