JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The woman who admitted to kidnapping Kamiyah Mobley when she was a baby is asking a judge to throw out her judgment and sentence.
Gloria Williams pleaded guilty in 2018 to the 1998 kidnapping of a baby from a Jacksonville hospital. She was sentenced to 18 years in prison, one year for every year Mobley was without her biological family.
Williams, who admitted to kidnapping and raising Mobley as her own, has asked the court to reconsider her cases several times. She has appealed her sentence, asked for a reduction to her sentence twice, and now she wants the judge to throw out the judgment and sentence and start over.
READ: Williams Motion for Postconviction Relief | 2018 Sentencing Order
The motion argues she had ineffective counsel. Williams says her attorneys didn’t investigate her mental health. She argues her counsel didn’t ask for a hearing to decide if she was incompetent to proceed. She says her counsel didn’t prepare a defense, which gave her no option but to take a plea. And, she argues her counsel was ineffective for not trying to get a change of venue for a fair trial.
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The motion says Williams should be allowed to withdraw her plea, be re-evaluated for competency and proceed as needed if competency is established.
Tom Hackney, a JSO investigator on the case, said about the motion, “It really is a slap in the face to justice. You know, it’s one of those things that there’s not a whole lot of cases that you can definitely know what happened there.”
How does Kamiyah feel? In the past, she has said to the news and to the court that she wants Williams in her life.
18-year secret unravels
During her sentencing hearing, Williams said she didn’t tell Kamiyah her true identity until Kamiyah discovered she couldn’t get a driver’s license because she didn’t have a valid birth certificate or Social Security card. In January 2017, police announced they had found Mobley in South Carolina, living under the name Alexis Manigo.
Kamiyah’s abduction became the subject of a Lifetime movie: “Stolen By My Mother: The Kamiyah Mobley Story.”
Williams admitted she took Kamiyah from the hospital at a time when her life was spiraling out of control. Williams said she was coping with depression and an abusive relationship.
She also apologized to Kamiyah and the girl’s biological parents at the sentencing, saying if she could go back in time, she would not have taken the baby.
Mobley’s biological father released this statement about the motion, “She (Williams) can keep trying to do what she can to get out. I’ll do whatever I can to keep her in there.”