A 15-year-old girl who shot her mother to death tried to get out of jail with a strange excuse that included horse therapy.
Carly Gregg’s lawyers said the underage killer should not spend the rest of her life behind bars because she received treatment as a child for hallucinations.
His lawyers claimed the jury should have been told about the equine treatment while Gregg was on trial for murdering maths teacher mother Ashley Smylie at her Mississippi home in March this year.
His defense insists that if the court had known this, it could have been given the option of finding the teenage killer not guilty by reason of insanity.
But Judge Dewey Arthur, who presided over Gregg’s case, quickly dismissed this attempted retrial on Monday, saying it “would not have produced a different outcome at trial.”
The horrific shooting was caught on camera and sparked outrage across the country. Disgruntled jurors sentenced the young man to life in prison without parole last month.
Teenage murderer Carly Gregg, 15, seen smiling last month as she was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of her mother, saw a motion for a new trial dismissed this week after her attorneys argued that jurors would never They heard that she underwent “horse therapy” as a child.
Gregg was convicted of murdering her mother, maths teacher Ashley Smylie, 40, and attempting to murder her stepfather Heath Smylie (pictured together) last year.
The conclusion of Gregg’s trial captured attention last month when a jury found her guilty after just 30 minutes of deliberation, prompting the 15-year-old to break into a chilling smile when she learned she would die behind bars.
At her trial, prosecutors showed harrowing footage from inside the kitchen of her home showing the moment Gregg appeared to be hiding something behind her back before she entered her bedroom and three gunshots were heard.
Gregg’s mother could then be heard screaming in the footage after she was fatally shot in the face, before the teenager nonchalantly returned to her kitchen and began using her phone.
The damning images were used along with witness testimony and DNA to secure a murder conviction for the teenager, who had previously rejected a plea deal to serve a 40-year sentence.
Gregg’s legal team based its 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 time period in which the crimes were committed.
But the jury rejected Gregg’s attorney’s argument that she was legally insane at the time of the shooting.
At her trial, prosecutors showed harrowing footage from inside the kitchen of Gregg’s home showing the moment she appeared to hide something behind her back before entering her bedroom and three gunshots could be heard.
Gregg, seen at the time she was arrested for the murder, claimed she was so plagued by mental health issues that she passed out around the time the crimes were committed.
Days after the conviction, Gregg’s biological father, Kevin, gave a revealing interview to WLBT, and his attorneys argued that an “unaired portion” of the interview would have changed the jury’s assessment of his sanity.
Kevin claimed his daughter had been treated with horse therapy – where children groom, feed and ride horses – to improve her mental health, after she said she was hearing voices.
They stated in a motion for a new trial that if the jury had heard the story of Gregg’s childhood treatment for auditory hallucinations, it would have reinforced a doctor’s testimony that he suffered from an “unspecified schizophrenic disorder.”
Gregg’s attorneys further argued that they did not have this information about her mental health treatments until after the trial, and claimed that her father kept it a secret and “never cooperated” with his daughter’s defense.
However, this contradicts Kevin Gregg’s interview, as he said he was never contacted to testify and called the insanity defense “very silly.”
‘That girl knew right from wrong. “That girl’s not crazy, that was a pretty dumb defense if you ask me,” he said. But I wasn’t involved. Nobody ever called me.
Gregg broke down during the trial when prosecutors read his diary, including a passage that said “you don’t need family and it’s okay to be evil.”
Gregg’s mother, Ashley Smylie, a 40-year-old math teacher, was fatally shot in the face.
At the motion hearing Monday, Judge Arthur sided with prosecutors and dismissed any claims that the interview had made a difference.
“This Court specifically finds that no new material has been discovered (sic) that would likely produce a different outcome at trial and, through reasonable diligence, this evidence could not have been discovered earlier,” he said.
‘The defendant points to alleged statements by Kevin Gregg. The Court reviewed the statements and concludes that they probably would not have produced a different outcome at trial.’
During Gregg’s trial, prosecutors also unearthed passages from her diary that they said offered a glimpse inside the troubled teen’s mind before she shot her mother.
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 “write your own destiny.” “.
They specifically drew the jury’s attention to the last two “beliefs” that Gregg had listed in his diary.
“These two stand out to me, ladies and gentlemen, she told us what her intention was,” Newman said, holding up a sheet of paper as he read the final notes.
‘You don’t need family; and it’s okay to be evil.’
Elsewhere in the diary, Gregg wrote: ‘I choose fire. It is powerful, beautiful and deadly. These are the traits I desire, which is why I choose fire.’
