Her attorney says the 30-year-old fears appearing in court would “likely lead to a mental breakdown” and affect her sentencing.
(St. George News | Pool) Mia Bailey appears for a hearing in Fifth District Court in St. George, Wednesday, July 10, 2024.
Mia Bailey, who has pleaded guilty and mentally ill to murdering her parents last year, is asking to skip her sentencing hearing Friday.
Bailey, 30, previously sent a handwritten note to 5th District Court Judge Keith Barnes asking him to bar the media from her sentencing, a request he did not take action on.
Now, she “is very concerned” that attending in person herself, a Thursday filing said, “will very likely lead to a mental breakdown with accompanying inappropriate outbursts in court which has the possibility of negatively impact[ing] her sentence.”
Last month, Bailey admitted in plea documents that she “intentionally” shot and killed her parents, Gail and Joseph Bailey, and attempted to shoot her brother in the family’s Washington City home in June 2024. Gail Bailey was 69 and Joseph Bailey was 70.
According to her defense attorney, Bailey recently read the presentencing investigation in her case. The reports — which are prepared by Adult Probation and Parole for judges and filed under seal — recount a defendant’s background, crime and any statements victims want to provide.
Bailey contacted him the next day, attorney Ryan D. Stout wrote to the court, to ask him to seek permission for her to be sentenced without being present, with him in court to represent her interests and read a statement from her. She has a history of “meltdowns” during “high stress or unfamiliar scenarios,” he explained.
With the request being filed Thursday, Stout wrote that he recognized that the judge was not likely to rule on it before Bailey was transported from Purgatory Correctional Facility in Hurricane Friday morning.
Bailey “is prepared to address this request in court, in person, and waive her right to be present at sentencing,” Stout wrote.
She pleaded guilty and mentally ill last month to three charges: Two counts of aggravated murder and a charge of aggravated assault. In exchange for her pleas, prosecutors dismissed a half dozen other felonies.
She faces a sentence of 25-year-to-life on each of the two murder charges, and up to five years in prison for the assault. Barnes may decide Friday whether she will serve these three prison terms one after the other, or whether she will serve some or all of them at the same time.
Utah has indeterminate sentencing, so it will be up to the state’s parole board to ultimately decide how long Bailey spends incarcerated.
Bailey’s brother, identified as C.B., fled to a neighbor’s home and called 911 on on June 18, 2024, reporting that he believed that his parents had been shot, Washington City police officer Josh Janda said in an affidavit of probable cause for charges. The brother and his wife told officers that they heard his parents “yell at Mia to get out of their home” before they heard gunshots.
She then went to her brother’s bedroom and fired through the locked door but did not hit him, the affidavit said.
Bailey left before police arrived but was spotted and arrested the next day in St. George, and told officers “she had had a falling out with both of her parents and her brother who resided in that home,” Janda said. She said she went to the house “with the intent to kill her parents,” did not feel remorse, and stated, “I would do it again. I hate them,” the affidavit said.
Family members told law enforcement that they were afraid of Bailey, Janda said. Months earlier, in July 2023, court records show, her brother sought a protective order against her. By October 2023, KSL reported, they had reached a “personal conduct agreement” and the brother’s attorney asked to dismiss the case without prejudice, which meant it could be refiled.
In a separate case, she faces two third-degree felony counts of assault by a prisoner, for allegedly striking one staff member in the face and kicking another in the knee on Oct. 28, 2024, at the Purgatory Correctional Facility.
Aggravated murder charges carry a possible death penalty but the Washington County Attorney’s Office announced early in the prosecution that it would not seek that sentence.
