She won't turn 18 until this fall, but today Tiffany Taylor goes on trial in Criminal Court here for the murder of her mother.
She was 16 in November of 1996 when she allegedly knifed Teresa Parramoure to death in her bed at their trailer home on Fisk Road.
Jury selection in her trial was to begin this morning, and testimony could get underway late today.
Defense lawyers are expected to focus on the girl's mental state at the time of the murder.
Charged with first degree murder, she has been free on a $150,000 bond since last October when Judge Leon Burns agreed to allow her to post bond and live with her grandparents pending the trial.
While in custody awaiting trial, Ms. Taylor gave birth to a baby girl, and that baby is now in the care of the girl's father and his family.
The case began just before Thanksgiving in 1996 when the body of Teresa Parramoure was discovered in her bed at her Fisk Road home. She had been stabbed to death the day before.
As they have investigated the case since then, detectives said that Tiffany Taylor, who was a Cookeville High student at the time, got into an argument with her mother late one night and murdered her as she slept.
Allegedly, the two had argued over the boys the girl had been seeing. The girl had lived with her grandparents for much of her life until her mother decided to bring her to live with her that year, according to testimony in various hearings on the case.
Police investigators say Tiffany Taylor at first tried to cover up the murder of her mother.
She went to the hospital emergency room for treatment of a knife wound to her own leg, a wound detectives later said she got during the attack on her mother.
At the hospital, she gave various accounts of how she got the wound, including claiming that a man she didn't know had kidnapped her and had tried to rape her.
When doctors and police could not reach the girl's mother, they contacted her father, Ronnie Taylor, the ex-husband of Teresa Parramoure. He came to the hospital and took the girl home with him.
It was the next day when Ronnie Taylor went to Parramoure's trailer to get some clothing for the girl, and he discovered the body.
In questioning after that, the girl allegedly confessed to killing her mother.
She was arrested and was held at the Putnam Juvenile Detention Center until last fall when she was released on bond.
Soon after her arrest, she was sent to a mental health facility for mental evaluations, and it was there that doctors discovered she was pregnant.
In August of 1997, about nine months after the murder, she gave birth to a baby girl.
State prosecutors succeeded in moving the case from Juvenile Court to adult court, citing the brutality of the killing and the alleged premeditation.
If convicted, Tiffany Taylor could face a life prison sentence, but does not have to worry about the death penalty because that cannot be imposed on a juvenile.
In a hearing last year, a doctor testified that Teresa Parramoure suffered multiple stab wounds, including a deep, slashing cut to the neck and several cuts to her hands and arms, indicating she had tried to defend herself.
She had three stab wounds to the chest and bled to death from those, but probably lived 10 to 15 minutes after being stabbed there, the doctor said.
A detective who investigated the case testified that Tiffany Taylor told him about her mother's last minutes of life.
As she lay bleeding to death, the 38-year-old hairdresser prayed for her daughter's soul, the detective said the girl told him.
Psychiatrists for the state have said Tiffany Taylor is mentally competent to stand trial.
But she has been evaluated by other psychiatrists, and it is expected that their findings about her mental condition at the time of murder will be a significant part of the trial.
She is represented by Cookeville attorneys Joe Edwards and Mike Knowlton, both appointed by the court.
District Attorney Bill Gibson and Asst. DA Lillie Ann Sells are the prosecutors.
The trial is expected to last all this week.