Published: February 06, 2007 08:54 pm

Murder vs. Suicide

Attorneys make cases in opening of Simpson trial

By BEN FIELDS - The INDEPENDENT

CATLETTSBURG — Faith Clay was asleep on a couch when Timothy Scott Simpson leveled a 9 mm pistol fitted with a homemade silencer at her right eye and pulled the trigger, according to the team prosecuting Simpson for murder in Boyd Circuit Court.

But the defense claims Clay, 28, of Flatwoods, was a habitual drug user with a history of mental problems who had made several statements about wanting to kill herself before she was found dead in an Ashland garage apartment on Feb. 16, 2006.

Simpson, 24, who lived in the apartment on the 4800 block of Boyd Street, adjacent to his mother’s house, was indicted on one count of murder and one count of tampering with evidence in October, eight months after Clay’s death.

Court officials spent most of the trial’s first day seating a jury, but Commonwealth’s Attorney David Justice and defense attorney Michael Curtis got their opening arguments in before Judge C. David Hagerman dismissed court for the day.

Justice said Clay was killed instantly when a bullet passed through Clay’s right eye and exited the back of her head while she was laying on Simpson’s couch.

Justice said green plastic shards were found at the entry point of the wound, and Simpson admitted to police that he fashioned a silencer by duct-taping a two-liter Mountain Dew bottle to the end of the gun.

The prosecutor, who is in his first trial as commonwealth’s attorney, said evidence will show Simpson cleaned the gun, threw away incriminating clothing and waited an hour before calling police after the shooting.

He added he believes evidence will show that the gun couldn’t have been located under a couch where Clay could reach it, as Simpson claims, because of the bottle attached to it.

Justice didn’t deny that Clay was a heavy drug user. In fact, he is relying on that in part as proof of Simpson’s guilt, saying Clay couldn’t have killed herself because she was unconscious from a combination of methadone and Xanax when the shooting occurred.

Simpson’s story, according to Justice, is that he was at his computer in another room when he heard a gunshot.

However, Justice added Simpson’s story changed over the course of two interviews, and that he admitted to police that he destroyed evidence because it indicated he was the shooter.

Also, Justice said, Simpson admitted to police that he would shoot his pistol in the apartment and punch holes in the wall when he got angry.

Justice said Simpson’s motive was that Clay, who was in a relationship with Simpson and had been living with him for three weeks, had decided to leave him.

“I will prove to you that on Feb. 16 ... that man right there intentionally, and in cold blood, murdered Faith Clay,” he said. “She was leaving him, and he knew it, and he was so jealous he killed her.”

Curtis said his evidence paints a different picture: That of a longtime drug addict with severe emotional problems who wanted to end her own life.

He said Clay had been in and out of various treatment programs since 1997, and had abused opiates, Xanax and cocaine over the years.

He said psychiatric notes indicated that Clay would never recover because of a high level of denial.

“She was living like a homeless person,” Curtis said. “She had cocaine and methadone in her system when her third child was born in April 2005.”

Clay had lost custody of her three children, though she was still allowed to see them under supervision, and Curtis claims it was the loss of custody that put Clay over the edge.

“She started using more drugs, and started saying things like ‘If I had a gun, I would kill myself,’” Curtis said. “Well, she found a gun on Feb. 16.”

Curtis also claimed evidence will show that it would have been possible for Clay to put the gun to her head and pull the trigger, even with the extended length added by the two-liter bottle.

If convicted of murder, Simpson faces 20 years to life in prison. Tampering with physical evidence carries a maximum sentence of five years.

The prosecution is expected to call its first witness this morning. The trial is expected to last about five days.