CLAY COUNTY – More than a decade after Tameshia Shelton was convicted of the murder of her sister’s boyfriend, 16th Circuit Court District Attorney Scott Colom has moved to dismiss the charges.
“I believe, based on that evidence, there was no reasonable juror that could determine that she was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” Colom told The Dispatch on Monday. “And so the ethical thing to do at that point is dismiss it.”
     Scott Colom   In a motion filed Monday in Clay County Circuit Court, Colom’s office moved to dismiss the charges against Shelton for several reasons, including a recanted pathologist report from the deputy chief state medical examiner at the time.
Likewise, Colom, in the motion, noted the recording of a 911 call from Shelton made in hopes of helping the victim, Danelle Young, and an alleged suicide letter believed to be written by Young that was never entered into evidence during the initial trial.
In October 2009, Shelton found Young dead from a gunshot wound outside her trailer. Young was found near a handgun belonging to Shelton, which she told deputies he had asked to borrow. Shelton was charged with his murder in 2011.
A Clay County jury found Shelton guilty of Young’s murder in 2015. She then spent the next decade appealing that ruling, arguing that Young committed suicide. The argument hinged on Shelton’s discovery of the letter allegedly written by Young, which she believes showed he was suicidal at the time of his death.
That letter was never entered into evidence during Shelton’s trial.
Her conviction was overturned by the Mississippi Court of Appeals in December in a decision citing the deputy chief medical examiner’s recanted statement in post-conviction relief hearings from 2021 and ineffective assistance of counsel during the initial case. That left the decision whether to drop the charges or retry Shelton up to Colom’s office.
The case now awaits formal dismissal from 16th Circuit Court Judge Jim Kitchens.
Shelton was released on bond in June after serving 11 years in prison.
Sandra Levick, one of Shelton’s attorneys with the Mississippi Innocence Project, said Colom’s office made its decision because the facts “show that a grave injustice has taken place.”
“We join in urging the court to grant the motion to put an end to this nightmare for Tameshia Shelton and her family,” Levick wrote in a statement to The Dispatch.