1:54 pm:
Leeds Crown Court heard the judge has to decide whether to pass a sentence of custody for life, the child’s equivalent of a life sentence, an extended sentence which would provide extra supervision for the teenager after her release, or confine her under the Mental Health Act.
Two doctors have to agree that a hospital order is needed before one can be passed and the court has heard only one doctor says one is needed.
1:53 pm:
The judge has read reports from psychiatrists that disagree on a diagnosis for the teenager’s mental condition, but agree that it had substantially affected her mental processes in the run-up to the killing.
1:49 pm:
Nicholas Johnson QC said the teenager’s mental state could be due to a traumatic event in her childhood about which she was unable to speak.
She believed that other people were controlled by a “higher and hostile” force.
He said of a social media posting two days before the killing: “We submit she was clearing crying out for help and support.”
Since her arrest and remand to a secure children’s home, her mental health had improved.
“She is no longer, we submit, significantly and severely depressed."
1:47 pm:
The teenager entered her plea by writing guilty on the indictment and signing it.
Her solicitor Colin Byrne then confirmed what she had written.
She did not speak throughout the hearing, including when she was asked her name. Her solicitor, who was sitting next to her in a room linked to the courtroom by video link, confirmed her identity for her.
A pathologist and a forensic scientist later established the teenager had smothered Katie with a green glove over her face.
1:36 pm:
A pathologist and a forensic scientist later established the teenager had smothered Katie with a green glove over her face.
Police later found in the teenager’s bedroom a mutilated Simba soft toy which had been cut by a knife.
1:27 pm:
Earlier Graham Reeds, prosecuting, said the girl had planned the killing in advance and had taken a Stanley knife with two spare blades to “The Square”, the playing field off Alness Drive where Katie was fatally injured.
The teenager’s mental health had deteriorated for several months and she developed a taste for the “macabre”. She believed other people were “robots” and “not human” and was receiving counselling.
She was also on medication for depression.
Mr Reeds said at 4.35pm on January 9, the teenager phoned 999. She was standing in Alness Drive, Woodthrope, covered in mud with a bloodstained hand and seemed not to know where she was.
