Carly Gregg has been found guilty of murdering her mother and attempting to kill her stepfather.
The 15-year-old sobbed as the jury delivered its verdict Friday, just two hours after they paused to deliberate.
She previously rejected a 40-year plea deal offered by Mississippi state prosecutors after she was charged with fatally shooting her mother, Ashley, inside their home on March 19.
Her legal team attempted to argue that she was not guilty due to insanity.
The jury will now deliberate whether he should spend the rest of his life behind bars, without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutor Katherine Newman said: “Ladies and gentlemen, she is dangerous. She may look like a little girl, they may have said she was sweet Carly, but unfortunately that is not true.
‘We ask that you sentence Ms. Gregg to life in prison without the possibility of parole.’
Gregg’s legal team attempted to argue that she was not guilty by reason of insanity.
The 15-year-old sobbed as the jury delivered its verdict Friday, just two hours after they paused to deliberate.
Gregg sobbed as the verdict was delivered.
Gregg was comforted by her attorney as she broke down in tears when the verdict was handed down.
The court heard that Gregg, then 14, kept a diary in which he wrote down five “beliefs” he held, including: “there is no God”, “heaven and hell are false” and “writing your own destiny”.
Ms Newman told the jury it was “more frightening” for her not to know why Gregg committed the crimes, saying: “If we don’t know why, who’s to say it won’t happen again?”
Gregg sobbed when Ms. Newman posed that question, shaking his head and mouthing the word “no.”
Earlier, her lawyer was seen comforting her and telling her “everything is going to be okay,” to which she replied “no, it’s not.”
The court heard that Gregg, then 14, kept a diary in which he wrote down five “beliefs” he held, including: “there is no God”, “heaven and hell are false” and “writing your own destiny”.
On Friday, Ms Newman drew the jury’s attention to the last two “beliefs” Gregg had listed in his diary.
“These two caught my eye, ladies and gentlemen, she told us what her intention was,” Newman said, holding up a piece of paper as he read the final notes.
“You don’t need a family and it’s okay to be evil.”
When audio of his stepfather’s frantic call to police after he was shot was played, Gregg covered his ears with his hands and squeezed his eyes shut.
The defense said in closing arguments that there was no discussion during the five-day trial about the fact that Carly Gregg loved her mother (pictured together).
Gregg was visibly shaken by Friday’s verdict.
Elsewhere in the journal, Gregg wrote: “I choose fire. It is powerful, beautiful and deadly. Those are the characteristics I desire, so I choose fire.”
Gregg’s defense argued that the journals paint a portrait of a mentally challenged girl who had repeatedly detailed how much she was struggling.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jason Pickett told jurors he had a different reading of the journals in key expert testimony that scuppered the defense.
He wondered whether “this is a personal diary where someone puts things that they really try to keep secret, or is this a budding, eloquent author describing things for theatrical reasons?”
Witnesses repeatedly described Carly as “gifted,” bright and intelligent.
Dr. Pickett read an entry Gregg had written about hearing voices (a complaint the teen had not previously raised with her mental health professionals) and said he was “very skeptical about it.”
‘He It seemed more theatrical and ridiculing. Patients who really suffer from this, feel harassed by it, find it quite torturous. They don’t trivialize it.
Carly Gregg was a bright and talented student who “loved to learn,” the court heard.
Gregg kept his head down Friday before the proceedings officially began. Some of his family members are pictured in the background, there to offer support.
Gregg’s legal team based their defense on the claim that the teenager was so tormented by voices, trauma and mental health issues that she dissociated and blacked out during the period when the crimes were committed.
In closing arguments Friday, his attorneys said there was no question Gregg loved his mother and stepfather.
The defense also noted that Gregg had no history of violence and that her actions on March 19 came as a shock to everyone who knew and treated her.
Her maternal grandparents have been with her in the courtroom every day of the trial this week, and her stepfather has not abandoned her either.
When audio of his stepfather’s frantic call to police after he was shot was played, Gregg covered his ears with his hands and squeezed his eyes shut.
Gregg’s mother, math teacher Ashley Smylie, 40, was fatally shot in the face.
Defence lawyer Bridget Todd said Gregg believed his father had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and had developed a paralysing fear of becoming him.
“Carly worried about that all the time, because that was something her mother worried about all the time,” the jury heard.
‘Her mother often worried that Carly would end up having the same mental illnesses as her father, because they are hereditary.’
State experts have questioned whether her father actually had such mental illnesses or whether he had symptoms that presented as such because of his drug addiction.
Both sides described Ashley as a “loving mother” whose world “revolved around Carly.”
“Carly was the love of her mother’s life,” they both said.
But Todd said Ashley was also overprotective, in large part because she had already lost a child — a daughter who died from a health problem years earlier.
‘Do you really think a loving, overprotective mother would put her child on antidepressant medication when she herself had suffered horrible side effects?
‘You can’t tell me that Ashley Smylie, as loving and protective as she was, would have taken that risk with Carly if it hadn’t been necessary.
“She wasn’t a bad girl. She wasn’t a girl who was angry. She wasn’t a girl who hated her mother or her stepfather in her heart. In fact, she was exactly the opposite. She was a girl who suffered from significant mental health issues. The same mental health issues that ran in her family and that we know run in her family,” he said.
‘This is a girl who was compliant with the medication that she had been prescribed, but that medication… made her symptoms worse. And while she was in a state of psychosis in an episode of acute stress on March 19, she got lost in what was the perfect storm.’
Gregg, who served 15 years in prison but was 14 at the time of the alleged crime, was smiling and laughing alongside his attorney Thursday morning before the state’s rebuttal, but within nine hours his entire demeanor had changed.
Gregg laughed and tried to cover his mouth as the fourth day of proceedings began Thursday.
She was seen actively fighting back tears Thursday afternoon following Dr. Pickett’s testimony.
Dr. Pickett was the prosecution’s final witness, who attempted to systematically dismantle the defense case, one argument at a time.
He told the court he does not believe Gregg has bipolar disorder and that his professional opinion was that she was sane at the time of her mother’s death.
Dr Pickett said Gregg had “some psychopathic traits”, an assertion he “does not take lightly”.
“She’s lovely and very nice,” he said. “I liked her when I interviewed her. I don’t like to say these things,” he said.
All of the statements were questioned by defense psychiatrist Dr. Andrew Clark, who had previously said he had diagnosed her with bipolar disorder type two.
He said he did not believe Gregg was “capable of understanding the nature of his conduct and appreciating the difference between right and wrong” at the time of the incident.
