UPDATE:
JACKSON — Attorneys for Carly Gregg argued before the Mississippi Supreme Court on Tuesday that her first-degree murder conviction and life sentence in the shooting death of her mother should be thrown out, contending the trial moved too quickly to allow a fair sentencing hearing for a juvenile offender.
Defense attorney James H. Murphy told the court the entire case, from the March 19, 2024, shooting in Rankin County to Gregg’s sentencing on Sept. 20, 2024, proceeded in 183 days, a pace he called “extraordinary” for a case involving complex psychiatric evidence and questions of dissociation tied to psychotropic medication. The court pushed back, asking if it wasn’t one of the charges of the system to give a speedy trial.
Gregg was 14 when she shot and killed her mother, Ashley Smylie, and wounded her stepfather, Heath Smylie, at the family’s Brandon home. A jury convicted her of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder and sentenced her to life imprisonment…