RICHMOND, Ky. (LEX 18) — Shannon Gilday was back in Madison County Court for a pretrial hearing on Friday. Jordan Morgan's family was also in court, including her father, former Kentucky lawmaker C. Wesley Morgan, who explains that the wait has been hard on the family.
He shared, "You have to understand that we have not stayed in our house since the night that he killed Jordan, and shot me, and shot Sydney."
Gilday's attorneys filed two motions out of concern for his mental health in the last hearing. One was for family visitation which was granted through the jail.
His lead attorney Tom Griffiths says, "He hadn't seen his family for months and that was part of the problem. He had reached the point where he was so bad off that he didn't believe that they were real. And he thought that when he saw them on the tablet that they were robots."
Morgan wasn't interested in Gilday’s mental state saying, "That defense attorney wants to go up there and talk about his mental state, you know, how he feels....who gives a s*** how he feels."
Gilday's defense is waiting to set up a mental evaluation with the Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center. Gilday's trial date was set today for May 5, 2025, but his attorney says he doesn't think this case should get that far.
Griffiths explains, "We all know what happened. We all know what his state of mind is, we know everything about this case that a jury would need to determine — we could determine. And we could explain to the court and commonwealth. We should all be on the same page."
C. Wesley Morgan says he wants to see the death penalty for crimes like this one. He tells LEX 18 he believes Gilday knew what he was doing the morning he entered his home.
He says, "He murdered my daughter in cold blood. And all he had to have done... You see, he came there for blood. He wanted to kill. Because all he would have had to have done is walked into that room, stuck that gun to her and said 'get up, get up. Let's go downstairs’ and walked her down the stairs and we would have said 'you can have the whole house; you can have anything here. Just let us leave.'"
Gilday is scheduled to reappear in Madison County Court for another pretrial hearing on May 26.
