Carly Gregg Mississippi teen found guilty of killing mom and attempting to kill step-dad in only 2 hours as she’s sentenced to life without parole as mental health professional for the prosecutors portrayed her as a psychopath while the defense insisted she was mentally unwell and insane.
Accused Mississippi teen killer, Carly Gregg wept Friday after a court found her guilty of murdering her teacher mom along with attempting to shoot dead her step-father.
Carly Gregg, 15, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole just 30 minutes after she was found guilty of murdering her mom and trying to kill her stepdad.
The 15-year-old sobbed as the guilty verdict was delivered by the jury on Friday afternoon, just two hours after they broke for deliberation, Vicksburg Daily News reported.
‘Hurry up and return!!’
But by the time she returned to the court room to hear her sentence, the teen was observed smiling profusely to the bewilderment of court attendees.
Gregg will serve two life sentences concurrently for the charges of murder and attempted murder of her step-father, who she had lured to the family home after texting him to ‘hurry up and return,’ before gunning him in the shoulder, as well as 10 years for tampering with evidence.
The final charge relates Gregg attempting to tear down CCTV surveillance camera down from the family kitchen and hide it in the refrigerator after shooting her mom, Ashley, dead in the home on March 19.
Her legal team unsuccessfully sought to argue the then 14 year old she was so mentally unwell at the time of the shooting that she should be found not guilty due to insanity.
The life sentence comes after Gregg’s legal team had earlier rejected a 40-year plea deal offered by Mississippi state prosecutors in late August, the Clarion Ledger reported.
‘You don’t need family, and it’s okay to be evil.’
When it came time to decide her punishment, the jury deliberated for just 30 minutes on whether Carly Gregg should spend the rest of her life behind bars, with or without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutor Katherine Newman had urged the jury not to leave open any possibility that Gregg could later be paroled.
‘Ladies and gentlemen she is dangerous. She may look like a little girl, they may have said she is sweet little Carly, but unfortunatley that is not true,’ she said.
‘We ask you sentence Ms Gregg to life in prison without the possibility of parole.’
Ms Newman told the jury that it was ‘scarier’ for her to ‘not know why’ Gregg committed the crimes, noting that ‘if we don’t know why, what’s to say it won’t happen again?’
Gregg sobbed as Ms Newman posed that question, shaking her head and mouthing the word ‘no.’
The court heard Gregg, then 14, kept a journal in which she wrote five ‘beliefs’ she held, including: ‘there is no God’, ‘heaven and hell are false’ and ‘writing your own destiny.’
Ms Newman on Friday drew the jury’s attention to the final two ‘beliefs’ Gregg had listed in her journal.
‘These two stand out to me ladies and gentlemen, she told us what her intent was,’ Newman said, holding a piece of paper as she read the final notes.
‘You don’t need family, and it’s okay to be evil.’
Elsewhere in the journal, Gregg wrote: ‘I choose fire. It is powerful, beautiful and deadly. These are the traits I desire, so I choose fire.’
Gregg’s defense argued that the journals paint a picture of a mentally unwell child who had repeatedly detailed just how much she was struggling according to the dailymail.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jason Pickett, who was the prosecution’s closing witness told the jury he had a different reading of the journals, with the key expert testimonial seemingly undoing the defense’s attempt to portray Gregg as insane at the time of the shootings.
Psychopath or schizophrenic ?
The mental health professional questioned whether ‘this is a personal journal where somebody puts things they’re really trying to keep secret, or is this a budding, articulate author that describes things for theatrical reasons?’
Dr. Pickett read an entry Gregg had written about hearing voices – a complaint the teen hadn’t previously raised with her mental health professionals – and said he was ‘highly skeptical of that.’
‘It seemed more theatrical and making light of something. Patients who really suffer this, they are haunted by it, it is quite torturous to them. They do not trivialize it.’
Dr. Pickett attested that he believed that Carly was sane at the time of her mom’s shooting murder.
Gregg’s legal team had hinged its defense on the claim that the teenager was so haunted by voices, trauma and mental health issues that she disassociated and blacked out for the period of time when the crimes were committed.
In closing arguments on Friday, her lawyers said there was no disputing the fact that Gregg loved her mother and stepfather.
The defense also noted that Gregg had no violent history, and that her actions on March 19 earlier this year came as a shock to all who knew and treated her.
Defense attorney Bridget Todd said Gregg believed her father had both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and she had developed a paralyzing fear of turning into him.
‘Carly worried about that all the time, because that’s something her mom worried about all the time,’ the jury heard.
‘Her mom frequently worried that Carly was going to end up with the same mental illnesses her dad had, because they’re hereditary.’
Experts for the state have questioned whether her dad did have those mental illnesses, or if he had symptoms that presented as such due to his drug addictions.
Dr. Pickett said Gregg had ‘some psychopathic traits’ – a statement he ‘does not take lightly.’
‘She is charming and very likeable,’ he said. ‘I liked her when I did the interview. I don’t like saying these things,’ he said.
The statements were all disputed by the defense’s psychiatrist, Dr. Andrew Clark, who had earlier said he diagnosed her with bipolar two disorder.
