QUOTE OF THE DAY: "During those hearings, Funte noted that his opinion had changed since his initial report. Funte did not return requests for comment by press time Friday. “I lean toward suicide, but I cannot make that determination with certainty. I see no evidence at this point to support homicide,” Funte said in a May 2021 affidavit. Tameshia Shelton was ultimately denied post-conviction relief by the circuit court. "
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SECOND QUOTE OF THE DAY: "While Colom would not comment on his predecessor’s office, he said it’s important for his office to seek the truth, not just a conviction. “You don’t represent the victim. You don’t represent the police,” Colom said. “You represent the people. You represent the state. You represent what’s right. … Most importantly, I’ve fought really hard to make sure (my office) got it right.”
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THIRD QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Raymond Barranco, a Mississippi State University professor of sociology with a focus in criminology, said several of the issues within Tameshia Shelton’s case are nothing new to the criminal justice system. He pointed to a combination of an inexperienced medical examiner, investigators’ tunnel vision, and a questionable conviction record within the 16th Circuit District Attorney’s Office at the time. “You would hope that coming into a case, the police would be open-minded about all possibilities, but that may not always be the case,” Barranco said. “… (Investigators can) put the blinders on, and you don’t really see all the contradictory stuff because this is the theory that you’re going with. … And we know this (happens) because of all the people who have been exonerated.”
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Beyond 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. Defense 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’s ruling was never recorded in the trial transcript. Colom said he has not decided whether his office will pursue the case."
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SECOND PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In 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. Cases 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. Cole said Tameshia Shelton’s case in particular exemplifies issues with how evolving forensic science analysis and understaffing of qualified forensic pathologists can impact a ruling. According 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. “We don’t have enough people, … which is really bad for all kinds of reasons,” Cole said. “… It’s not an attractive specialty, (and) it takes too much training.”
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THIRD PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "If her charges are dropped, Tameshia Shelton could become the seventh exoneree in the 16th Circuit Court District since 1989, according to the exonerations registry. The six overturned convictions occurred between 1990 and 2004, during Forrest Allgood’s tenure as district attorney, with five of the exonerations tied to faulty testimony from an uncertified medical examiner."
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STORY: "Retrial or relief: Tameshia Shelton’s murder case is at a crossroads," by Reporters Braden Simmons and Paloma Green, published by Dispatch, on ooo.
SUB-HEADING: "DA weighs recanted autopsy, missing suicide letter.
GIST: "Tameshia Shelton’s 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’s office.
While currently out on bond, Shelton could be called back to court for a retrial or have her charges dropped.
That decision comes down to the weight Colom and his office put into a recanted pathology report from the original trial.
Beyond 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.
Defense 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’s ruling was never recorded in the trial transcript.
Colom said he has not decided whether his office will pursue the case.
First, 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’s office.
“I have to decide what the next steps are, and I’m going to do what I do in every case,” Colom said. “… I’m going to have to review the case and decide … whether the case needs to be dismissed or whether there’s even enough evidence to go to (a new) trial.”
The original case
On Oct. 16, 2009, Clay County sheriff’s 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’s office chooses to prosecute.
Deputies found Young dead from a gunshot wound to the chest outside of Shelton’s residence. Shelton was arrested in connection to the death, and a grand jury indicted her in 2015 for first-degree murder.
Young was in a relationship with Shelton’s younger sister, Ketina Shelton.
Clay County Sheriff Eddie Scott, who was a deputy sheriff at the time of Young’s death, said it was investigated as a homicide based on the evidence collected at the scene.
“We did our job,” Scott said. “… 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 … that falls to the district attorney.”
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.”
Tameshia Shelton’s defense argued the victim’s death was either from a self-inflicted gunshot or a misfire by the victim, Jackson said.
Ray said in a statement to The Dispatch he defended Shelton with “every ounce of energy,” and claimed her contradictory statements to police during the investigation created issues in her defense.
“Unfortunately, as it relates to her defense, she gave several statements to law enforcement before I was hired to represent her,” Ray wrote. “… 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.”
Shortly after Young’s 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.
According to testimony given in post-conviction relief hearings, Ray originally planned to introduce the letter into evidence during Tameshia Shelton’s testimony, but she decided not to take the stand.
“Tameshia’s decision not to testify was her decision, and her decision alone, which she made after drafting a ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ list,” Ray wrote to The Dispatch.
He then tried to pivot to introducing it during Ketina Shelton’s testimony but was denied.
Judge Jim Kitchens told The Dispatch he sustained the prosecutor’s 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.
Kitchens said his ruling on the letter should have been in the trial transcript, and he is not sure why it is not.
“There’s a couple reasons why it might not be (in the transcript),” Kitchens told The Dispatch. “Maybe my court reporter was not in the court room if this was a pre-trial kind of thing. I can’t imagine why it’s not in there. I’m usually pretty good about those kinds of things.”
After a two-hour deliberation by the jury, Tameshia Shelton was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
Ray wrote to The Dispatch that he stands by his original defense of the case and believed his client appreciated it at the time.
“I wish nothing but the best for Tameshia Shelton, as I grew extremely fond of her during my time representing her,” Ray wrote in the statement.
“She, 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.”
“Thank you for everything,” Tameshia Shelton wrote in the note dated July 17, 2015, which Ray provided to The Dispatch. “I know in my heart that you are doing all you can for me in my defense.”
The appeals process
In 2020, the Mississippi Innocence Project won permission from the Mississippi Supreme Court to file a petition on Tameshia Shelton’s behalf for post-conviction relief, which allows defendants to challenge their convictions based on new evidence.
After learning of the recanted testimony and the potential suicide note, Colom signed a letter of support for Tameshia Shelton’s PCR hearings. He also noted her lack of motive and decision to call 911 for medical assistance.
“When 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,” Colom told The Dispatch on Friday. “… What I decided to do was allow what I thought was right to be more important to me than any outside pressure.”
During those hearings, Funte noted that his opinion had changed since his initial report. Funte did not return requests for comment by press time Friday.
“I lean toward suicide, but I cannot make that determination with certainty. I see no evidence at this point to support homicide,” Funte said in a May 2021 affidavit.
Tameshia 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.
Funte’s recantation alone should have been the reason Tameshia Shelton’s 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.
“I know I did everything I could on Tameshia’s behalf,” Ray wrote. “And 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.”
If Tameshia Shelton is granted a new trial, Ray wrote in his statement that he hopes she is found not guilty because he has “always believed in, and fought for, her innocence.”
Sandra Levick, one of Shelton’s current lawyers with the Mississippi Innocence Project, declined to comment on behalf of herself, Tameshia Shelton or the defendant’s family when reached by The Dispatch.
Potential exoneration
Raymond Barranco, a Mississippi State University professor of sociology with a focus in criminology, said several of the issues within Tameshia Shelton’s case are nothing new to the criminal justice system. He pointed to a combination of an inexperienced medical examiner, investigators’ tunnel vision, and a questionable conviction record within the 16th Circuit District Attorney’s Office at the time.
“You would hope that coming into a case, the police would be open-minded about all possibilities, but that may not always be the case,” Barranco said. “… (Investigators can) put the blinders on, and you don’t really see all the contradictory stuff because this is the theory that you’re going with. … And we know this (happens) because of all the people who have been exonerated.”
In 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.
Cases 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.
Cole said Tameshia Shelton’s case in particular exemplifies issues with how evolving forensic science analysis and understaffing of qualified forensic pathologists can impact a ruling.
According 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.
“We don’t have enough people, … which is really bad for all kinds of reasons,” Cole said. “… It’s not an attractive specialty, (and) it takes too much training.”
If her charges are dropped, Tameshia Shelton could become the seventh exoneree in the 16th Circuit Court District since 1989, according to the exonerations registry.
The six overturned convictions occurred between 1990 and 2004, during Forrest Allgood’s tenure as district attorney, with five of the exonerations tied to faulty testimony from an uncertified medical examiner.
If a convicted defendant is exonerated, either through acquittal in a new trial or Colom’s decision not to retry, state lawentitles 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.
Even with consideration of the suicide letter and the recanted pathology report, Jackson said he has no regrets about how he tried the case.
“I took my job seriously, and our job is not to seek convictions; it’s to seek justice in cases,” Jackson said. “And 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. … I think that (we) fairly introduced evidence and brought everything that we knew about what had taken place. … I have no issues with Scott Colom’s office reviewing that and making a decision based on all the circumstances today.”
While Colom would not comment on his predecessor’s office, he said it’s important for his office to seek the truth, not just a conviction.
“You don’t represent the victim. You don’t represent the police,” Colom said. “You represent the people. You represent the state. You represent what’s right. … Most importantly, I’ve fought really hard to make sure (my office) got it right.”
The entire story can be read at:
https://cdispatch.com/news/retrial-or-relief-tameshia-sheltons-murder-case-is-at-a-crossroads/
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;