Late Saturday afternoon, Tiffany Taylor was found guilty of first degree murder in the knifing death of her mother and was sentenced to life in prison.
The verdict was four hours in the making and followed four full days of testimony, which included the 17-year-old Taylor taking the witness stand herself on Friday.
The jury of seven men and five women took the case just after noon on Saturday after listening to closing arguments by Assistant District Attorneys Lillie Ann Sells and Ben Fann and by lead defense attorney Joe Edwards.
At 4:10 p.m., the jury returned and announced the verdict.
As the foreman read the verdict, Taylor put her hand to her face and cried.
Behind her in the audience were her father, her grandparents, and other relatives.
She has been free on bond in the case since last October and has been living with her grandparents, and on Saturday afternoon, she turned to look at them, still crying as she was led away by court officers after Judge Leon Burns had formally accepted the verdict, pronounced the sentence, and revoked the bond.
The case, which went to trial last Monday, featured what is perhaps a unique defense: Tiffany Taylor said she was not guilty because she killed while having a nightmare and thought she was defending herself.
And her lawyers succeeded in having the formal instructions to the jury to include the possibility of finding Taylor not guilty by reason of self defense, based on her claim that her mother, who was angry at the girl that night, kept waking her by "pushing" her shoulders as the two slept in the same bed.
Other options the jury had included second degree murder and manslaughter.
By taking the witness stand in her own defense, Tiffany Taylor hoped to convince the jury that she was telling the truth about her nightmare on the night of Nov. 26, 1996.
The girl, who had been sneaking out at night to meet boys, had angered her mother late that night because someone tapped on her window and the mother believed she had invited someone to their home.
They argued, and Teresa Parramoure forced her daughter to come and sleep with her and kept on arguing with her off and on that night.
Sometime in the early morning hours, the girl dreamed someone was chasing her and woke up to find she had stabbed her mother to death, she testified.
"It had to be me. I was the only one there, but I didn't know that I did it," she testified on Friday.
"I was just trying to defend myself. I thought I was killing the person in my dream. And then my mom was lying there in front of me. There was blood everywhere.
"I had no idea why my mom would be lying there. I don't remember even having the knife in my hand. I saw it there on the bed.
"She rolled over and was not moving. I was asking her if she was okay. I was telling her I loved her. I was asking God to give me another chance. I didn't know what I did."
She then got up and went to her own room and tried to sleep, thinking that "if I could sleep, I'd just wake up and everything would be all right," she said.
"When you woke up and saw your mother covered with blood, why didn't you call 911?" Assistant District Attorney Lillie Ann Sells asked her.
"There were no signs that I could help her. I was afraid. I didn't know what had happened. I didn't know what to tell them. I thought they wouldn't believe me."
Her fear that no one would believe her kept growing and was part of the reasons he left her home that morning and spent the next night with her grandparents and told law officers and doctors various false stories about how she got the serious stab wound to her own leg, she said.
It was not until late afternoon of the day after her mother's killing that the body was discovered, and in all that time she didn't tell anyone what had happened because she had begun to believe it hadn't really happened, she said.
Taylor's defense lawyers, Joe Edwards and Mike Knowlton, made it clear Friday that it was her decision to take the stand in her own defense against the charge of first degree murder.
With the jury out of the room just before her testimony, Judge Leon Burns questioned the girl to make sure she understood her rights and the risk of opening herself to cross-examination by prosecutors.
She said she understood.
During the cross-examination as Asst. DA Sells asked questions about some details as shown in photos of Teresa Parramoure's bedroom, the girl turned her head and refused to look at parts of the photos in which her mother's body was visible.
Sells then used a sheet of paper to cover the parts of the photos showing the body, and the girl looked at the other parts of the pictures.
When the photos, part of the evidence in the case, were about to be passed to the jury, Tiffany Taylor spoke up and said, "Could you cover up the parts I didn't look at?"
But Judge Leon Burns told her, "The whole exhibit goes in." The photos were then passed to the jury to look at.
Tiffany Taylor's testimony on Friday also included her claim that some of the witnesses who testified against her lied, particularly three juvenile girls who spent time with her in the Putnam Juvenile Detention Center.
Taylor denied saying what those girls reported hearing her say: that she was glad her mother was dead and that she had made up stories to tell police, including the dream story.
Under cross-examination, Taylor admitted that she "probably" stole the knife that killed her mother from the Shoney's restaurant where she worked, but denied stealing it for the purpose of killing her mother.
"I stole a lot from Shoney's," she said. She had stolen other kitchen items, such as cups, and also a "lot of food," she said.
Taylor also testified that during her childhood, she frequently witnessed her mother having sex with men and said she also witnessed "men having sex together" because one of her mother's friends was gay.
"I told her to stop it (having sex in front of her), but she said it was her life and she was the mother and I was the daughter and she'd do what she wanted," the girl said.
Teresa Parramoure's son, who also grew up in the home, said he never witnessed his mother having sex with anyone.
Also on Friday, the girl's father, Ronnie Taylor, her grandparents, Joe and Peggy Taylor, and her aunt testified, all saying she was always a well behaved child who studied hard and made good grades and that they never saw any evidence that she drank, used drugs, or sneaked out of the house with boys, as state testimony indicated.
Tiffany Taylor testified that state-paid psychiatrists who evaluated her after her arrest misunderstood what she had told them about her sex partners. They recorded that she told of having 15 different sex partners.
"What I said was that I had only had sex about 15 times in my whole life," the girl said.
"And how many partners had you had?" her attorney asked.
"Three, maybe four," she said.
She also said that her mother had caught her sneaking out of the house at night only once and said she had done the same thing "maybe five or ten" other times without being caught.
At one point in her testimony Friday, defense attorney Joe Edwards asked Taylor if she loves the baby she gave birth to while in Juvenile Detention custody awaiting trial.
"With all my heart," she said.
Taylor will be held in Juvenile Detention custody until September when she turns 18 and will then be sent to state prison.
Her lawyers will appeal the verdict.