COLORADO SPRINGS — Hanif Sims was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years in prison for his role in the death of his 7-year-old daughter.
Sims, 31, pleaded guilty in early February to child abuse resulting in death, with a sentence range of 27 to 40 years in prison.
He had been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Genesis Sims, whose plastic-wrapped body was found beneath a Monument townhome months after her family left Colorado.
Sims was offered a plea deal less than two weeks after an audio recording surfaced that proved detectives were lying or mistaken in asserting that Sims had confessed to leaving his injured daughter on a bed for two days before she was buried in the crawl space, possibly alive.
The offer came before a hearing in which a judge ruled that the murder trial could proceed, despite what he called “stunningly sloppy police work” in the case.
The deal was offered again the morning Sims was set to go to trial.
Sims’ ex-girlfriend, Monique Lynch, is serving a 27-year sentence. She, too, had been charged with first-degree murder, but that was dropped in exchange for her guilty plea to a lower charge and a promise to testify against Sims.
The hunt for Sims and Lynch began when a work crew found Genesis’ body. The El Paso County Coroner’s Office concluded she was a homicide victim, but her body was too decomposed to determine a cause of death.
Sims and Lynch each accused the other of inflicting the fatal injuries.
