GUEST POST: "Justice for Tasha Shelby: By Elizabeth Howard:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am grateful to Elizabeth Howard for providing this powerful guest post. Elizabeth is an author and podcaster with a career in marketing and communications in New York. It is fascinating to me to note that she is bringing her experience in these areas, to do whatever she can, along with Tasha's Aunt and advocate Penny Warner, and other supporters, to correct the injustice that is keeping Tasha in prison, as a passionate advocate for human rights and social justice.
HAROLD LEVY: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
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GUEST POST: "Ursula K. LeGuin’s, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, is a haunting story that raises the questions: What is evil? What is injustice? How are evil and injustice tolerated and accepted within our society? How can we, not as “simple” folk, but as “happy” and “mature, intelligent, passionate adults, whose lives are not wretched” attend a festival in Omelas, knowing that in the cellar of a public building is a child that has been neglected, not allowed to grow and yet “can remember sunlight and it’s mothers voice.”
“The child used to scream for help at night and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining “eh-haas, eh-haas and speaks less and less often.”
When I read LeGuin’s story I think of Tasha Shelby. On the night before she was sentenced to life in prison without parole, she wrote a poem that began:
Am I
When I started to walk in there with my head hung low in shame,
I had to reconsider for I know I’m not to blame.
And though this journey I will walk is a new one I’ve never known,
I walk with pride, with my head held high, for I’ll never walk alone...
Tasha recently celebrated her 50th Birthday, a milestone for all of us, and is now serving her 27th year in the Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl, Mississippi, accused of Shaken Baby Syndrome in the death of her 2 ½ year-old stepson. Byran had underlying health conditions, including severe asthma since birth, requiring a home nebulizer, and a seizure disorder. Aware of these conditions Tasha had talked with a pediatric neurologist and scheduled an appointment that was on her calendar. The appointment was slated for two weeks after the child’s death.
Bryan did not have skull fractures, broken ribs, or injuries to the neck because of falling from his bed after a seizure, although his father accidentally bumped his son’s head against the car door when rushing him to the hospital. Yet, Dr. Leroy Riddick, the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy, concluded that Bryan’s death was a homicide, in line with the prevailing wisdom of the time and determined Bryan had been shaken to death.
In 2015, upon re-examination his records, Dr Riddick stated that he would not reach the same conclusion. He testified at the hearing that the death of Bryan was an accident, attributable to the short fall, seizure disorder, and the child’s difficulty breathing. The Mongolian Spots, the same condition on his fathers’ back, were a skin pigmentation, not bruises. Dr. Riddick and another expert, Dr. William D. Owen, both testified that these spots did not have any blood beneath them and were indeed birthmarks. After changing his opinion, Dr. Riddick testified on behalf of Tasha Shelby at her state Post-Conviction Hearing in April 2018.
And, yet Tasha remains in prison. Attempts at a retrial, resentencing, or clemency have all been denied.
For the last three years I have been advocating on behalf of Tasha Shelby attempting to bring attention to her situation. Working with her advocate and aunt, Penny Warner, we have attempted to engage journalists, politicians, social justice advocates and others who could possibly make a difference. Often there is the same answer: “We’ve covered Shaken Baby Syndrome.” “We have written about Tasha.” “We know her case and have mentioned her in our press notices about innocence and SBS.” “Have you been in touch with the Innocence Project?” Recent books published around those who are innocent and serving long prison sentences, focus on men.
Perhaps Tasha is too kind and loving. She isn’t angry. She doesn’t have plans to sue the State upon her release. When you meet her, she might talk about the kittens they are fostering in her “block” and the lemon seed she planted that is now growing in her Aunt Penny’s Garden in Tennessee. She has excelled in her prison classes, served as a greeter when Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves came to the prison to dedicate a new chapel. She has been a mentor to the other incarcerated women. Prison volunteers and professors become her advocates.
Time is prison is different from our time. There are no seasons, unless viewed through a window. There are no holidays to anticipate, weddings to plan, grandchildren to spoil. There is a daily routine. Each morning the women slip into a tee-shirt with the word “CONVICT” in large block letters and pull up striped pants. When you visit you cannot bring a few stems of flowers, a bar of chocolate or a book. As a visitor your clothing is restricted, and apart from a wedding ring, jewelry is not allowed. As is the protocol in most prisons, you are searched, a guard’s hands running up and down and over your body.
And then Tasha greets you with a warm embrace and you feel, in this moment, her gentle manner. With a smile she invites you to sit with her at a quiet table near a painted mural on the wall.
At the end of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, LeGuin writes:
“A few of those people who have traveled to Omelas leave, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. They place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us then the city of happiness. I cannot describe it all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.”
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Here is a list a list of links which will help readers get the message out to the powers that be, that Tasha Selby is a victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice and put be freed. .
LINKS TO SHORT FUSE PODCASTS:
The Short Fuse Podcast can be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Simplecast and through the Arts Fuse.
From Madison Avenue to Rikers Island
Lessons of Superpredators
TASHA SHELBY WEBSITE:
Website for Tasha: https://
What you can do: https://freetashashelby.
FROM A PREVIOUS POST OF THIS BLOG: "In 2015, Riddick said he made a mistake. He said that he now believed Thompson had fallen and suffered a seizure and that the child’s asthma had also contributed to his death. At the time of his initial examination, he says he did not know that Thompson’s family had a history of seizures or that Thompson was scheduled to see a neurologist before he died. In 2018, Riddick amended the manner of death on Thompson’s death certificate from homicide to accident. Riddick died in 2021. Daniel Mullen, a juror in Shelby’s initial trial, also agrees that the crime never occurred. “I initially was (sic) of two jurors that voted for the death penalty, but I now believe Tasha Shelby is innocent."
https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/3979955568989693061
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Follow and post on Facebook: JustUs for Tasha Shelby
Write to Mississippi Governor, Tate Reeves
Telephone: 601.359.3150
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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