BRANDON, Miss. (Court TV) — The attorney for a teenage girl sentenced to life in prison for murdering her mother and trying to kill her stepfather has filed an appeal, citing new evidence and a series of errors at her trial.
Carly Gregg cried as the verdict was read in court on Sept. 20, 2024. (Court TV)
Carly Gregg, 15, was sentenced by a jury, which took less than one hour to decide she should spend the rest of her life behind bars after finding her guilty of murder, attempted murder and tampering with evidence. In a motion filed on Sept. 26, Carly’s attorney has asked for a new trial or, in the alternative, for the jury’s verdict and sentence to be set aside entirely.
At her trial, Carly’s attorneys conceded that she had killed her mother and shot her stepfather, but argued that she was legally insane at the time of the crime and had been suffering from undiagnosed mental illness. Psychiatrist Andrew Clark, hired by Carly’s defense, testified that she had an unspecified schizophrenic disorder. In her motion, defense attorney Bridget Todd said new evidence came to light after the trial, adding further weight to that diagnosis.
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Todd said that a reporter for WLBT contacted the defense team after Carly’s biological father, Kevin Gregg, talked to the television station for an interview. In that interview, Kevin told the reporter that his daughter had suffered from auditory hallucinations as a child, and was put into equine therapy as a result. The motion notes, however, “Kevin Gregg refused to cooperate in Carly’s defense, refused to talk to the State, refused to talk to the mental health professionals evaluating Carly and refused to come to any pretrial hearings or a single day of Carly’s criminal trial.”
Todd’s motion raises an issue with a comment from Dr. Rebecca Kirk, Carly’s former counselor and a witness for the prosecution. Prosecutors specifically asked Kirk about her notes, indicating Carly wanted to read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which Todd says is irrelevant to the case and was introduced only to prejudice the jury.
“This fact is highlighted by the State’s erroneous belief that Ms. Kirk was concerned about Carly reading this book as the title was underlined in her records, without realizing that it was simply grammatically proper to underline the titles of novels.”
Among the other issues cited in Carly’s motion were “radical sanctions” placed on the defense by Judge Dewey K. Arthur in response to what he found were willful violations of discovery, which included excluding two witnesses and limiting the testimony of other witnesses.
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The motion also questions the jury verdict based on the makeup of the jury, pointing to the defendant’s young age. Under Mississippi law, jurors must be 21 years old, meaning Carly was much younger than her “peers” who decided her fate. “Mississippi believes that only a person twenty-one (21) or older possesses the maturity necessary to make decisions about the life of another. However, Mississippi also holds that a fourteen (14)/fifteen (15) year old possesses the maturity necessary to make decisions about plea offers, understand the nature of alleged offenses, comprehend the nature of the charges against them, effectively participate in their defense at trial, and face the same lifelong sentences of an adult. However, these two fundamentally opposing legal standards cannot be rectified.”
No hearing on the motion has been scheduled.
