TIFT COUNTY, GA -- A Tift County man has been sentenced to six life sentences and 240 years in prison for the September 2005 murders of six Mexican immigrants.

27-year-old Stacey Bernard Sims attacked and killed his victims while they were sleeping in a mobile home.

Sims avoided a possible death penalty by not going to trial and pleading guilty to 17 felonies.

According to a press release from District Attorney Paul Bowden, Sims entered the guilty pleas August 12 and Tift County Superior Court Judge Bill Reinhardt handed down the sentence Thursday; life for each of the six murders, 80 years without the possibility of parole for four armed robberies and 140 years total for four aggravated assaults and three burglaries.

Sims’ trial was set to begin Monday, but Sims’ lawyers filed a motion to disqualify his co-counsel, forcing another delay in the trial of the case. Bowden said that since Sims’ arrest on October 2, 2005, he has had no less than eight different lawyers involved in his defense at different times.

Jamie Underwood, another defendant in the case, was sentenced in December 2008 to serve 120 years in prison without the possibility of parole.  Sims was 19 and Underwood was 27 at the time of the murders.

The two men armed themselves with aluminum baseball bats and burst into four trailers, beating the men and demanding their money and cell phones. Five of the men were beaten to death but the sixth was shot.

Law enforcement officers described the attacks as, ”some of the most vicious the state of Georgia has witnessed."