{ "archive_path": "archive/1787801044.519285", "base_url": "cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads", "basename": "", "bookmarked_date": "2026-08-27 03:24", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=cdispatch.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/index.html" }, "domain": "cdispatch.com", "extension": "", "hash": "12WG0NJY6N0J3T5T5YMF", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=cdispatch.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:14.040067+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1787801044.519285", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:13.564246+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:14.323062+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1787801044.519285", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:14.049411+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:36.041015+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1787801044.519285", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:32.790337+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp_a8ztiby", "https://cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:32.776355+00:00", "index_texts": [ "Tameshia Shelton, left, listens to proceedings in Clay County Circuit Court on her quest for a new trial in April 2022 with one of her current attorneys, Tucker Carrington of the Mississippi Innocence Project. Shelton is currently awaiting word from the 16th Circuit District Attorney Scott Colom\u2019s office on whether she will receive a new trial or have charges dropped in connection with her first-degree murder charges from 2015. Jerry Mitchell/Mississippi Today\t\n\t\t\tTameshia Shelton\u2019s future, after more than a decade of contesting her guilty verdict in the murder of Danelle Young, now rests in the hands of 16th Circuit District Attorney Scott Colom\u2019s office.\nWhile currently out on bond, Shelton could be called back to court for a retrial or have her charges dropped.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tTameshia Shelton\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\nThat decision comes down to the weight Colom and his office put into a recanted pathology report from the original trial.\nBeyond the report, the Mississippi Court of Appeals in its December decision also said an alleged suicide letter from the victim could have given reasonable doubt in her conviction, but it was not included in the original trial. On this basis, the appeals court ruled Shelton did not receive an adequate defense.\nDefense attorney Rod Ray did not attempt to enter the letter as an exhibit until after the trial began, leaving room for the judge to exclude it from evidence. The judge\u2019s ruling was never recorded in the trial transcript.\nColom said he has not decided whether his office will pursue the case.\nFirst, his office is taking a fresh look at the evidence and Colom would like to get a new pathologist to review the case. He declined to comment on whether the case had been referred to the Mississippi Crime Lab or the State Medical Examiner\u2019s office.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tScott Colom\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\u201cI have to decide what the next steps are, and I\u2019m going to do what I do in every case,\u201d Colom said. \u201c\u2026 I\u2019m going to have to review the case and decide \u2026 whether the case needs to be dismissed or whether there\u2019s even enough evidence to go to (a new) trial.\u201d\nThe original case\nOn Oct. 16, 2009, Clay County sheriff\u2019s deputies responded to a 911 call from Shelton claiming Young had been shot, according to a Mississippi Court of Appeals ruling from December that granted her a new trial if Colom\u2019s office chooses to prosecute.\nDeputies found Young dead from a gunshot wound to the chest outside of Shelton\u2019s residence. Shelton was arrested in connection to the death, and a grand jury indicted her in 2015 for first-degree murder.\nYoung was in a relationship with Shelton\u2019s younger sister, Ketina Shelton.\nClay County Sheriff Eddie Scott, who was a deputy sheriff at the time of Young\u2019s death, said it was investigated as a homicide based on the evidence collected at the scene.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tEddie Scott\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\u201cWe did our job,\u201d Scott said. \u201c\u2026 We presented this evidence to a grand jury. A grand jury found probable cause to indict her, and of course then it moved to a trial. So we did our part, but once it got to the courtroom \u2026 that falls to the district attorney.\u201d\nMark Jackson, the assistant district attorney assigned to prosecute Tameshia Shelton\u2019s case, centered his argument on an analysis showing gunshot residue on both the suspect and the victim, inconsistent statements from Tameshia Shelton and the pathologist report by Dr. Liam Funte, the deputy chief medical examiner for the state at the time.\nThe report claimed the gunshot wound on Young\u2019s chest indicated another person was likely holding the handgun, based on the bullet\u2019s trajectory. A forensic scientist testified that burn marks on Young\u2019s chest were consistent with the gun being fired from \u201cnear contact.\u201d\nTameshia Shelton\u2019s defense argued the victim\u2019s death was either from a self-inflicted gunshot or a misfire by the victim, Jackson said.\nRay said in a statement to The Dispatch he defended Shelton with \u201cevery ounce of energy,\u201d and claimed her contradictory statements to police during the investigation created issues in her defense.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRod Ray\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\u201cUnfortunately, as it relates to her defense, she gave several statements to law enforcement before I was hired to represent her,\u201d Ray wrote. \u201c\u2026 The prosecution painstakingly went through those statements, comparing one to another in great detail, which profoundly damaged her credibility, and undermined any theory of her defense.\u201d\nShortly after Young\u2019s death, Shelton said she found a letter, which she believed indicated Young had a suicidal mindset at the time of his death, according to the appeals decision. That letter was never introduced into the trial.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tA copy of a statement given to The Dispatch by Attorney Rod Ray is pictured. Ray was the defense attorney for Tameshia Shelton in 2015 during her initial murder trial in Clay County. Shelton, after more than a decade of appeals, could be exonerated or receive a new trial based on the decision of District Attorney Scott Colom\u2019s office. Courtesy of Rod Ray\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\nAccording to testimony given in post-conviction relief hearings, Ray originally planned to introduce the letter into evidence during Tameshia Shelton\u2019s testimony, but she decided not to take the stand.\n\u201cTameshia\u2019s decision not to testify was her decision, and her decision alone, which she made after drafting a \u2018pros\u2019 and \u2018cons\u2019 list,\u201d Ray wrote to The Dispatch.\nHe then tried to pivot to introducing it during Ketina Shelton\u2019s testimony but was denied.\nJudge Jim Kitchens told The Dispatch he sustained the prosecutor\u2019s objection when Ray attempted to enter the letter because Ray did not introduce it in discovery before trial began and did not give proper notice for prosecutors to inspect it.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tJim Kitchens\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\u201cWhen things were provided on the morning of trial, oftentimes they get excluded,\u201d Kitchens told The Dispatch. \u201c\u2026 It was several years after the death occurred before it went to trial. \u2026 When you have a situation like that where it\u2019s been some time between the death and then the trial, you have to factor that in (to) why that evidence was not provided in a timely fashion.\u201d\nKitchens said his ruling on the letter should have been in the trial transcript, and he is not sure why it is not.\n\u201cThere\u2019s a couple reasons why it might not be (in the transcript),\u201d Kitchens told The Dispatch. \u201cMaybe my court reporter was not in the court room if this was a pre-trial kind of thing. I can\u2019t imagine why it\u2019s not in there. I\u2019m usually pretty good about those kinds of things.\u201d\nAfter a two-hour deliberation by the jury, Tameshia Shelton was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.\nRay wrote to The Dispatch that he stands by his original defense of the case and believed his client appreciated it at the time.\n\u201cI wish nothing but the best for Tameshia Shelton, as I grew extremely fond of her during my time representing her,\u201d Ray wrote in the statement.\n\u201cShe, likewise, felt the same for me at the time of her trial as evidenced by the attached note she wrote to me at the conclusion of her trial.\u201d\n\u201cThank you for everything,\u201d Tameshia Shelton wrote in the note dated July 17, 2015, which Ray provided to The Dispatch. \u201cI know in my heart that you are doing all you can for me in my defense.\u201d\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tA copy of a letter written by Tameshia Shelton to her then defense attorney Rod Ray during her initial murder trial in 2015 is pictured. Shelton was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 for the murder of Danelle Young. After 11 years in prison, Shelton may be exonerated of her previous conviction based on a recanted pathology report and an alleged suicide letter from Young that was not entered into evidence at the trial. Courtesy of Rod Ray\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\nThe appeals process\nIn 2020, the Mississippi Innocence Project won permission from the Mississippi Supreme Court to file a petition on Tameshia Shelton\u2019s behalf for post-conviction relief, which allows defendants to challenge their convictions based on new evidence.\nAfter learning of the recanted testimony and the potential suicide note, Colom signed a letter of support for Tameshia Shelton\u2019s PCR hearings. He also noted her lack of motive and decision to call 911 for medical assistance.\n\u201cWhen I had the choice to sign an affidavit and decide whether I should support her getting a post-conviction relief hearing, there was pressure on me not to do that,\u201d Colom told The Dispatch on Friday. \u201c\u2026 What I decided to do was allow what I thought was right to be more important to me than any outside pressure.\u201d\nDuring those hearings, Funte noted that his opinion had changed since his initial report. Funte did not return requests for comment by press time Friday.\n\u201cI lean toward suicide, but I cannot make that determination with certainty. I see no evidence at this point to support homicide,\u201d Funte said in a May 2021 affidavit.\nTameshia Shelton was ultimately denied post-conviction relief by the circuit court. The Mississippi Innocence Project appealed that ruling to the Mississippi Supreme Court, which referred to the Court of Appeals. In a 7-3 decision in December, the appeals court ruled a new trial was warranted, overturning the circuit court decision.\nFunte\u2019s recantation alone should have been the reason Tameshia Shelton\u2019s conviction was overturned, Ray wrote in his statement to The Dispatch, adding that during the original trial he tried to convince Funte to reconsider his opinion.\n\u201cI know I did everything I could on Tameshia\u2019s behalf,\u201d Ray wrote. \u201cAnd I am not surprised that the Appellate Court Judges who have actual trial experience, either as prosecutor, trial judges or simply those who have tried jury trials, agree with me in their dissent.\u201d\nIf Tameshia Shelton is granted a new trial, Ray wrote in his statement that he hopes she is found not guilty because he has \u201calways believed in, and fought for, her innocence.\u201d\nSandra Levick, one of Shelton\u2019s current lawyers with the Mississippi Innocence Project, declined to comment on behalf of herself, Tameshia Shelton or the defendant\u2019s family when reached by The Dispatch.\nPotential exoneration\nRaymond Barranco, a Mississippi State University professor of sociology with a focus in criminology, said several of the issues within Tameshia Shelton\u2019s case are nothing new to the criminal justice system. He pointed to a combination of an inexperienced medical examiner, investigators\u2019 tunnel vision, and a questionable conviction record within the 16th Circuit District Attorney\u2019s Office at the time.\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRaymond Barranco\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\n\u201cYou would hope that coming into a case, the police would be open-minded about all possibilities, but that may not always be the case,\u201d Barranco said. \u201c\u2026 (Investigators can) put the blinders on, and you don\u2019t really see all the contradictory stuff because this is the theory that you\u2019re going with. \u2026 And we know this (happens) because of all the people who have been exonerated.\u201d\nIn a 2023 report, the National Registry of Exonerations identified 111 cases where issues with the initial medical death report resulted in defendants later being exonerated. Of those cases, pathologists recanted their initial rulings in 19 of them.\nCases where the medical death report came into question make up 5% of all exonerations identified by the National Registry of Exonerations, said Simon Cole, the researcher behind the study and a professor of criminology at the University of California-Irvine.\nCole said Tameshia Shelton\u2019s case in particular exemplifies issues with how evolving forensic science analysis and understaffing of qualified forensic pathologists can impact a ruling.\nAccording to 2025 data from the American Board of Medical Specialties, there are only five board-certified pathologists in Mississippi who are certified to practice forensic pathology.\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have enough people, \u2026 which is really bad for all kinds of reasons,\u201d Cole said. \u201c\u2026 It\u2019s not an attractive specialty, (and) it takes too much training.\u201d\nIf her charges are dropped, Tameshia Shelton could become the seventh exoneree in the 16th Circuit Court District since 1989, according to the exonerations registry.\nThe six overturned convictions occurred between 1990 and 2004, during Forrest Allgood\u2019s tenure as district attorney, with five of the exonerations tied to faulty testimony from an uncertified medical examiner.\nIf a convicted defendant is exonerated, either through acquittal in a new trial or Colom\u2019s decision not to retry, state law entitles them to $50,000 for each year of imprisonment, up to $500,000. According to the national registry, restitution amounts for previous exonerations in the district have ranged from $135,000 to $500,000.\nEven with consideration of the suicide letter and the recanted pathology report, Jackson said he has no regrets about how he tried the case.\n\u201cI took my job seriously, and our job is not to seek convictions; it\u2019s to seek justice in cases,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cAnd part of that is just in difficult cases where no one else is there, you present the evidence and allow the jury to make that decision. \u2026 I think that (we) fairly introduced evidence and brought everything that we knew about what had taken place. \u2026 I have no issues with Scott Colom\u2019s office reviewing that and making a decision based on all the circumstances today.\u201d\nWhile Colom would not comment on his predecessor\u2019s office, he said it\u2019s important for his office to seek the truth, not just a conviction.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t represent the victim. You don\u2019t represent the police,\u201d Colom said. \u201cYou represent the people. You represent the state. You represent what\u2019s right. \u2026 Most importantly, I\u2019ve fought really hard to make sure (my office) got it right.\u201d\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n \n \n Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 42 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.\n \n \n\n\t\t\t\n \n \n Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 42 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community." ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1787801044.519285", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:30.644970+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:30.637505+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "Retrial or relief: Tameshia Shelton\u2019s murder case is at a crossroads - The Dispatch", "pwd": "/data/archive/1787801044.519285", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:30.608268+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--backup-converted", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--warc-file=/data/archive/1787801044.519285/warc/1787990594", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "https://cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:30.598732+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/index.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1787801044.519285", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-08-29T08:03:14.332220+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "Retrial or relief: Tameshia Shelton\u2019s murder case is at a crossroads - The Dispatch", "warc": null, "wget": "cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/index.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1787801044.519285", "newest_archive_date": "2026-08-29T08:03:32.790337+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-08-29T08:03:13.564246+00:00", "path": "/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "d9a6033a-bdbc-4004-a7f8-2c66c59a8399", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1787801044-import.txt" ], "tags": ",cdispatch_local,pool", "tags_str": "cdispatch_local,pool", "timestamp": "1787801044.519285", "title": "Retrial or relief: Tameshia Shelton\u2019s murder case is at a crossroads - The Dispatch", "updated": "2026-08-29T08:03:13.563872+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-08-29 08:03", "url": "https://cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/" }