BACKGROUND: (From a previous post of this Blog: (September 7, 2026); "Tameshia Shelton: Mississippi: Unusual development: The Dispatch (Reporters Braden Simmons and Paloma Green) reports that the decision as to whether Tameshia Shelton should be called back to court for a retrial - or to have her charges dropped - comes down to the weight the District Attorney and his office put into a recanted pathology report from the original trial..."Mark Jackson, the assistant district attorney assigned to prosecute Tameshia Shelton’s 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. The report claimed the gunshot wound on Young’s chest indicated another person was likely holding the handgun, based on the bullet’s trajectory. A forensic scientist testified that burn marks on Young’s chest were consistent with the gun being fired from “near contact.”
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STORY: "DA calls for judge to dismiss Tameshia Shelton's indictment, the last step for her exoneration," by Reporter Jerry Mitchell, published by Mississippi Today. on September 21, 2026
GIST: Columbus-area District Attorney Scott Colom urged a judge Monday to dismiss the murder indictment against Tameshia Shelton, months after the state Supreme Court let stand a Court of Appeals ruling that threw out her conviction for the death of her sister’s boyfriend.Shelton served 11 years behind bars in the 2009 shooting death of 21-year-old Danelle Young.
She was freed from prison in June after the Mississippi Supreme Court ruling.
The Mississippi Court of Appeals had stated that prosecutors failed to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Shelton murdered Young.
The mother of four, now 48, had been slated to face a new murder trial in Clay County on Oct. 5.
If Circuit Judge James T. Kitchens Jr. grants the district attorney’s request, it could put an end to a case that has followed Shelton the last 17 years.
The office of District Attorney Forrest Allgood, Colom’s predecessor, oversaw the 2015 prosecution.
Now Colom is arguing the state doesn’t have evidence to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Young didn’t kill himself. Upon hearing the news about Colom’s request to the judge Monday, Shelton screamed and said, “Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh! I’m so overwhelmed.”""
The entire story can be read at:
https://mississippitoday.org/2026/09/21/shelton-scott-colom-murder/
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. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. 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; 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;
