Mississippi teenager Carly Gregg was severely depressed and may have been hearing voices when she allegedly shot her mother, psychiatrists testified in her trial Thursday, but one argued she didn't meet the insanity criteria for her crimes because her actions were “heinous.”
“I used the word 'satanic' and that word remains the same,” psychiatrist Jason Pickett said of the 15-year-old girl who was caught on camera texting her mother, Ashley Smiley's cell phone, to her 40-year-old stepfather shortly after shooting him in the face on March 19: “Hey, when are you coming home?”
The email was apparently a ploy to lure his father-in-law back to the house, and when he returned home a short time later, Greg allegedly fired a handgun at him, grazing him in the shoulder.
“When she did that, to me it was a very specific, heinous act, and it doesn't, to me, align with dissociative disorder or psychosis or mania,” said Pickett, who interviewed Gregg for more than four hours after his arrest. According to WAPT.
“In my opinion, Carly did not meet Mississippi's standard for insanity at the time of the crimes and she was aware of the nature and quality of her actions on that day.”
In Mississippi, Justia's law allows a defendant to be found not guilty by reason of insanity if it can be shown that he or she failed to understand the severity or impact of their actions, which is what Gregg's defense is trying to prove.
Other psychiatrists at the trial advanced the theory that the girl had suffered from severe mental illness before the murder, including some who claimed Gregg had been experiencing auditory hallucinations.
“She said that from an early age, probably around 5 or 6 years old, she had been hearing a voice, a male voice,” said Dr. Amanda Guliano, who also interviewed Gregg after his arrest.
“She said she heard the voices every day, but because they were always in the background, she was able to ignore them,” Guliano said, explaining that the voices Gregg was telling her were those of sinister critics making comments about people.
Dr. Andrew Clark testified Wednesday that the voices in Gregg's head grew increasingly louder leading up to the shooting and that she became mentally unstable that day and had no memory of the incident.
But other medical professionals who worked with Gregg disputed the claims about the voices.
Olivia Reber, a nurse who worked with Gregg in the January before the murder, said that while he had been diagnosed with severe depression, he had never complained of hallucinations, delusions or auditory hallucinations.
Also, counselor Rebecca Kirk, who met with Gregg in January after her parents said she was having severe intrusive thoughts, testified that the girl maintained she was not hearing auditory hallucinations.
Gregg and Kirk met nine times, including to discuss “Crime and Punishment,” a Russian novel about a man who murders a woman and is haunted by anguish and guilt afterwards. But in no session did Gregg show any behavior that indicated he was planning to commit murder, Kirk said.
Security cameras from the family's Brandon home showed Smiley and her daughter returning home after walking their dog, with Greg staggering around the house before following his mother off-camera just as three gunshots and screams could be heard.
The girl then steps back into the camera's field of view, hiding something behind her back and appearing to purposely face the camera. A few seconds later, she picks up her mother's phone and sends a text message.
Ms Clarke suggested that the news that her mother had recently discovered her daughter's marijuana habit, combined with the emotional turmoil she was experiencing, may have precipitated the psychotic episode.
“This was a crisis for Carly in particular, because she cared so much about her mother's approval,” Clark said.
The boy has been charged with murder, attempted murder and tampering with evidence, and faces between 30 years and life in prison if convicted.
