The Carly Gregg murder trial resumes today. We will have real time updates on this page.
Carly Gregg, now 15, is on trial in Rankin County Circuit Court for the March 2024 fatal shooting of her mother, Ashley Smylie, who police say was shot twice in the face. Gregg then allegedly shot her stepfather and ran from the scene.
The defense has argued that Gregg has a mental illness that makes her black out, and that she was not conscious while the shooting occurred.
The prosecution has sought to prove that Gregg knew what she was doing and knew that she was wrong.
Gregg is being tried as an adult.
See coverage of Day 2.
See coverage of Day 3.
See coverage of Day 4.
Note: This is a chronological account as the trial goes on. Any redundancy or jumpiness in the story line reflects the flow of questions and discussions that took place in court.
Judge Dewey Arthur is currently giving jury instructions prior to the closing arguments.
Michael Smith is speaking to the jury on behalf of the prosecution.
“You haven’t seen one shred of evidence” that anyone besides Carly Gregg killed Ashley Smylie.
Smith brings up how the defense had said the prosecution wants the jury to leave their common sense at the door, then he says no, we definitely want you to use your common sense. That’s all we want. The person who shot Ashley Smylie, who attempted to kill Heath Smylie, who took down the camera and hid it in the refrigerator… all of those were Carly Gregg, he said.
Count one, the first degree murder charge: Smith goes point by point to establish that it did happen on March 19, as mentioned in the charge. It did happen in Rankin County, he said, as Farmington Station is in Rankin County. “Deliberate design” is intent to kill, he said, and aiming a 357 revolver at someone’s head is intent to kill.
“Let’s think about what happened that day,” he said, bringing up the fact that Gregg’s friends had decided they were going to talk to Smylie about Gregg’s drug use. Smith says Gregg was “the love of Ashley’s life,” and she spent time worrying that Gregg would be like her father, Kevin Gregg, who has been described throughout the case as a drug addict.
Smith details how the garage camera shows Smylie and Gregg getting home from school on the day of the shooting and they’re not speaking, and Gregg goes outside with the dogs.
“Somewhere outside she makes up her mind exactly what she’s going to do,”Smith said. Then she walks to the side of the home where the pistol is located.
She wants you to believe that from the time she took the dogs out, she blacked out, Smith said. “Well that’s a real convenient time to be blacked out.”
She brings the dogs back in and retrieves the pistol, Smith says. She looks around the corner into the kitchen to make sure Smylie hasn’t come out of her room. “Cool calm and callous,” Smith says.
Then she walks into her room, “boom, boom,” Smith said, “two shots into a relatively small target, Ms. Smylie’s head.” Then a third shot, under Smylie’s chin.
The deputy coroner testified to the stippling, or powder burns on Smylie’s face from the third shot, Smith said. Then she comes back into the kitchen and “has the wherewithal to enter her mom’s code into her phone and text someone specific, and that specific person was her stepfather Heath Smylie.”
“When are you going to be home, honey?” she texts.
She knows exactly where the camera is, he says, and she hides the gun behind her back. She’s got the wherewithal to know where the dog is, and makes sure he doesn’t knock the gun off the counter.
Messages between Gregg and her friend show the friend getting to the house and Carly meets her at the door and says, “Do dead bodies make you squeamish,” and the friend says she doesn’t know, she’d never seen one.
“Not knowing there’s a dead body in the house,” Smith said.
Gregg then takes the friend to see her mother’s body with the arms crossed over her chest, “posed,” Smith says, and with a red towel on her face.
Gregg texts another friend, “I f—ed up.”
“She knew what she did, she knew the difference between right and wrong,” Smith said. “She knew she couldn’t tell him over the phone.”
When one friend couldn’t get her to answer, he says, “I’m going to call 911,” and she says no, “because she’s about to try to kill Heath,” Smith said.
Look at her actions, sneaking around the house, calling her friends, knowing not to tell them over the phone what she did, Smith said, emphasizing the prosecution’s assertion that Gregg knew what she did was wrong.
She tells her friend, “I put three (bullets) in my mom and I’ve got three for Heath,” then when another friend said, “Don’t hurt yourself or anyone else,” and she wrote back, “Too late.”
Smith addressed the defense’s attempt to impeach the arresting deputy, Tony Shack, because he muted his body camera for a few seconds during the arrest and said, “At that point his involvement in the situation was over.”
Smith then played the video of Gregg coming back into the house with the dogs, going to her room to make sure her mother was there, going to get the gun and returning to peer around the kitchen door, walking into her room. Then two shots and a scream are heard. Then a third shot. The dogs look flustered. Then she returns to the kitchen with her hands behind her back, sits down, and begins to text her stepfather.
She sings for a moment, then returns to her room.
Then the audio from the 911 call from her stepfather. Gregg put her head down and covered her ears at that point, and the display showed her list of 10 rules, which included, “You don’t need family,” and “sometimes it’s okay to be evil.”
DEFENSE CLOSING
Defense attorney Bridget Todd asked the jurors to think about the “undisputed” truth.
“It is undisputed that Carly loved her mom. It’s undisputed that Carly had no history of violence prior to March 19,” Todd said. “It’s undisputed that Carly loved her stepdad, he was really the only dad she ever had.”
Todd reminded the jury that Gregg thought her dad was a bad person and unsuccessful with a history of drug abuse and mental illness, and that she wouldn’t want to be like him. She reminds the jury that Ashley Smylie had worried Carly would become like her father. She talked about Gregg’s mental illnesses, bulimia, anxiety, major depressive disorder, and trouble sleeping.
Todd points to a journal entry in which Gregg asks, “Do I have schizophrenia?” and other entries, such as the one where she asks, “Am I having a psychotic break?”
It’s also undisputed that Gregg’s mental health worsened to the point that her parents put her in counseling and got her on an anti-depressant, Todd says. “I want to break down the decision a mom is making to put her child on an anti-depressant at that time.”
Ashley loved her daughter more than anything, having lost a child before. “Do you honestly think that loving, overprotective mother would put her child on an antidepressant when she herself had horrible side effects with Prozac?” Todd said. “That tells you everything you need to know about the serious mental health issues Carly was having.”
“It’s also undisputed by Rebecca Kirk, the only medical professional who spent more than a day with Carly,” Todd said, “it was evident that Carly loved her mom and wanted to please her mom… that she walked on eggshells trying not to upset her mom.”
Todd recounted that Gregg had told her counselor that just having her mother snap at her was traumatic. “How could Carly tell her mom she was having the same mental issues her dad had?” Todd asked.
Kirk had testified that she believed there was more going on than Carly was letting her know, Todd said.
Heath Smylie continues to stand by Gregg in spite of the loss of his wife, Todd said. He testified that he noticed she was beginning to have memory lapses and lose track of time.
Todd says it was only after she was described an antipsychotic that she was able to be calm, and that the antidepressant had made her mental illness worse until she was given a mood stabilizer.
Smylie was so convinced that Gregg was in a state of terror that he walked around the house after he was shot to see if there could be anyone else there, Todd said.
“Carly has consistently told everyone” that she blacked out after letting the dogs out, then came back when she was crawling in the cold water in the sewer.
“For the genius kid that Carly has been described as,” Todd said, why would she do what she did knowing there were cameras in the house.
Why not leave the house after she killed her mom? Todd asks. Why text all of her friends? Why text her stepdad? Why wait in the house? Todd continued to ask.
“The state can’t tell you why she did any of those things but they have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” Todd said.
Todd took a shot at prosecution expert Dr. Jason Pickett by saying he was in medical school when defense expert Dr. Andrew Clark was teaching at Harvard, trying to debunk his testimony that Gregg showed psychopathic tendencies.
Pickett had never evaluated a child before Carly, testified in a criminal case, or qualified as an expert before this, Todd said, “So I have a hard time accepting his opinion.” Todd said she distrusted Pickett’s discounting Kevin Gregg’s doctor’s diagnosis, too.
“If Dr. Pickett can undiagnose and diagnose someone, he’s going to have a hell of a career,” Todd said. She said Pickett left out facts that “didn’t fit his story.”
Todd pointed out that Pickett was a sheriff’s deputy before getting into the medical field.
“When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” she said.
“That wasn’t Carly,” Todd said. “Why else would those parents still let her call her.”
Todd said Gregg is so smart that she could have told a convenient lie. “That’s not what Carly’s done, she told the hard truth about her mental illness,” Todd said.
“I hope none of us are ever judged by the worst moments of our lives but rather our lives as a whole, and when you look at the facts of this case as a whole and the picture of who Carly Gregg is on the whole, you’ll see this wasn’t a bad kid, this wasn’t a kid who was enraged,” Todd said. “This was a kid experiencing significant mental health issues and health issues that ran in her family.”
The medication caused her symptoms to worsen, and “she lost herself in what was the perfect storm,” Todd said. “I’m asking you for those reasons to please find Carly Gregg not guilty by reason of insanity and finally quell this storm for Carly Gregg and her family.”
