The upcoming hearing shifts attention from the 2023 killing to whether the legal steps required before Williams’ guilty plea were completed.
DOTHAN, Ala. — The next chapter in Jakayla Ashanti Williams’ capital murder case will not focus first on the newborn found among landfill trash in 2023. Instead, a judge will be asked to examine his own court proceedings and determine whether Williams’ guilty plea was accepted without a required competency ruling.
Houston County Circuit Judge Henry D. “Butch” Binford has set a Nov. 10 hearing after Williams, 21, moved to withdraw the plea that resulted in a sentence of life in prison without parole. Her new attorneys argue that competency had been placed in question before trial but that the court never formally determined she was competent before allowing her to plead guilty. They also allege that she was not advised of a right to appeal. Those claims are pending and have not overturned her conviction.
The challenge places the integrity of the plea proceeding at the center of a case that appeared settled on Sept. 14. That morning, Williams admitted capital murder just as jury selection was scheduled to begin. The agreement spared her from a death-penalty trial, and Binford imposed life without the possibility of parole. In court, Williams told the judge she was accepting the plea freely. Days later, however, she submitted a handwritten motion saying she had been coerced by her legal team.
Binford responded to the post-sentencing filing by appointing new lawyers, Manish Patel and Christopher Sledge. Their subsequent motion broadened the dispute from Williams’ personal claim of pressure to a procedural argument about whether the court had authority to move ahead without resolving competency. WTVY reported that legal experts who reviewed the issue on background believed it could provide a basis for a new trial. The judge has not yet accepted that view, and the Nov. 10 proceeding will be the first scheduled hearing on the challenge.
The coercion allegation was also made outside the courtroom immediately after the plea. Andre Kincey, a relative of Williams, told WTVY that the defense team had pressured her during the period leading up to the agreement. He rejected the characterization of Williams as a person who would intentionally kill a baby and noted that she had previously worked at her mother’s daycare. Her former defense attorneys, Aimee Cobb and Clay Wadsworth, did not comment to the station after the plea. No court finding has established that they coerced Williams.
For prosecutors, the agreement had delivered certainty after years of pretrial proceedings. Houston County District Attorney Russ Goodman had planned to seek the death penalty. The plea guaranteed a capital murder conviction and ensured Williams would remain imprisoned for life, while eliminating the possibility of execution. Goodman said after court that prosecutors were pleased to secure the conviction but saw no reason for celebration. The death of the child, the years of litigation and the permanent sentence left, in his description, no real winner.
That certainty could disappear if the plea is withdrawn. Williams would not simply walk free if the judge grants the motion. According to WTVY, she would remain jailed without bond while the capital case returned to the trial track. Prosecutors could again pursue the death penalty, and a conviction could lead either to execution or life imprisonment without parole. The procedural challenge therefore carries a significant risk for Williams even as it seeks to restore the trial she waived in September.
The underlying investigation began more than three years ago with a story that police said could not be verified. On Aug. 24, 2023, medical staff at Southeast Health contacted the Dothan Police Department after Williams arrived with relatives looking for a newborn. She claimed she had given birth at her home Aug. 13, taken the boy to the hospital within hours and handed him to an employee in the lobby. Police said she explained that she did not want the baby and believed caring for a child cost too much money.
Williams’ family had not known she was pregnant or had delivered until Aug. 23, police said. Once relatives learned of the birth, they wanted to find the infant, which led them to accompany Williams to the hospital. Investigators determined that the claimed surrender had not taken place. After police confronted Williams with that finding, authorities said she acknowledged taking the child somewhere else: an apartment complex on Dothan’s west side where she had no known connection.
According to the Dothan Police Department, Williams said she wrapped her newborn son in a blanket and put him in a dumpster while he was alive. The dumpster was attached to a trash compactor. Investigators seized the receptacle and searched its contents at the Dothan landfill. They said they located a newborn’s remains wrapped in a mattress protector and placed inside a zipped duffel bag. Authorities sent the remains to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences and charged Williams, then 18, with capital murder.
The state’s theory was not uncontested during the long pretrial period. Williams’ lawyers challenged the assertion that the child was alive when placed into the dumpster and raised concerns about her mental health. They emphasized her age and lack of a prior criminal history. A mental-health defense became part of the case, and the competency question now identified by her replacement attorneys emerged from that broader history even though competency for court proceedings and mental responsibility for an offense involve different legal inquiries.
As the scheduled 2026 trial approached, Williams’ defense also attacked the state’s decision to pursue the harshest available punishment. Cobb publicly questioned why prosecutors had selected the case for the death penalty. Goodman’s office did not change course. The resulting plea removed that debate from a jury just as jury selection was about to begin. What had been expected to become a contested capital trial was reduced in a matter of minutes to a guilty plea and a mandatory future in prison.
Meanwhile, Dothan expanded a different part of its response to newborn abandonment. The city approved Safe Haven Baby Boxes after Williams’ arrest, although the fire department had begun exploring the idea beforehand. The Dothan Fire Department now lists boxes at fire stations 1, 3 and 10. The devices provide an anonymous way to surrender an unharmed newborn, lock after a child is placed inside and send an alert so first responders can retrieve the infant promptly. State legislation had authorized such boxes in Alabama.
The boxes cannot change the facts of the Williams case, but their installation became part of Dothan’s public response to a death that drew attention to safe-surrender laws. The court challenge now deals with a different institutional question: whether a defendant facing the most serious criminal charge received the procedural determinations required before permanently giving up the right to trial.
Nothing in the new motion changes Williams’ status yet. She remains convicted of capital murder and subject to a life sentence without parole. The allegations of coercion and procedural error remain unresolved claims, while the facts she admitted through her plea remain part of the judgment currently in force.
Binford’s Nov. 10 hearing is therefore the next point at which the case can materially change. If he rejects the challenge, the September plea and sentence will stand unless further relief is sought through another available legal route. If he allows Williams to withdraw the plea, the courtroom will return to a position it occupied only weeks ago: preparing to try a capital murder case with the death penalty potentially at stake.
Author note: Last updated October 21, 2026.