PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Dr. Randall Frost, the medical examiner for Bexar County, Texas, said in an affidavit that Funte testified incorrectly that Young’s lack of mental illness or suicidal ideation supported a finding that ruled out suicide. “Suicide is very often an impulsive act, especially in teenagers and young adult males,” Frost said. The motion included a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that said that 54 percent of people who killed themselves did not have a diagnosed mental-health condition at the time of death. The motion said that close-contact bullet wounds were almost always associated with suicides (in 96 percent of non-accidental shooting deaths in one study), and that Funte had failed to grasp the significance of Young’s bullet wound when provided with that information at trial. “When … confronted with the Mississippi Crime Lab’s determination that the gun was actually fired from contact or near contact range, [Funte] should have reconsidered [their] opinion in light of all the facts,” Bux said."
PASSAGE FOUR OF THE DAY: "About a month after Young’s death, Shelton had found a note from Treasure’s baby book. It’s not clear when the note was written, but it was either around the time of Treasure’s birth, in early May 2009, or in the days just prior to Young’s death, when he returned to Mhoon Valley for the first time since May. In the note, Young describes his despair over the collapse of his relationship with Tutton, who he called “T.” He wrote in part: “T is a sweet girl. I love her 2 death. She’s my heart. I planned my life with her around her. I never planned 4 just me. I planned 4 both of us. I will always want to work things out between us always. I’ll never give up on her. I pretty much gotta start my life over again. I have no life without her. These are my last words.” During the trial, Ray told Shelton’s family that Judge Kitchens wouldn’t allow the letter to be introduced into evidence. But the court records didn’t reflect any discussion of the letter, and Ray didn’t do any pre-trial preparation to authenticate the letter as the first step toward its introduction. “Mr. Ray did not make a strategic choice to forgo the evidence; Instead, he utterly failed to execute the choice he had made to gain its admission,” the motion said. "
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PARAGRAPH FIVE OF THE DAY: "Ray testified at an evidentiary hearing on April 14, 2022. He said his experience with juries in Clay County drove his decision not to consult with forensic experts, either on the cause of death or the gunshot residue. “Well, that was not my strategy in this case,” Ray said. “The strategy, as I said earlier, was to go back to a hysterical person who claimed this man committed suicide and keep the jury—try to keep the jury focused on that.”
PARAGRAPH SIX OF THE DAY: "The appeal said that Judge Kitchens’s inference that Shelton wanted Ray to “fabricate” a defense was “untethered to any facts” before the court. “The circuit court’s ruling betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the role of defense counsel in gathering information, conducting discovery, investigating the case, interviewing witnesses, preparing to introduce evidence, and consulting with and retaining expert assistance on critical forensic issues in the case,” the appeal said. "
PASSAGE SEVEN OF THE DAY: "At an evidentiary hearing before Judge Kitchens on December 9, 2021, Funte said the bullet’s trajectory was not a valid basis for distinguishing homicides from suicides and that his earlier opinion was not supported by science. Funte also said that when he testified at the trial, he had been unaware of the size of the gun that killed Young. At the hearing, Funte used a toy gun to demonstrate how easy it was to “get the muzzle in alignment parallel to the sagittal plane,” the line that divides the body into right and left halves. Funte also said that his trial testimony regarding mental-health issues and suicidal ideation was wrong. He said suicides can be impulsive."
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ENTRY: Tameshia Shelton: Mississippi: By Ken Otterbourg: Posted by The National Registry of Exonerations on October 19, 2026; Contributing Factors; (A witches brew!) False or Misleading Forensic Evidence, Perjury or False Accusation, Official Misconduct, and Inadequate Legal Defense;
GIST: "At 8:59 p.m. on October 16, 2009, Tameshia Shelton called 911 to report a shooting outside her home in Mhoon Valley, a rural community in Clay County, Mississippi.
“Oh my God! Danelle!” Shelton told the operator, referring to 21-year-old Danelle Young, the boyfriend of her half-sister, Ketina Tutton.
The operator asked Shelton, who was 31 years old, what happened. Shelton said Young was still breathing. The operator asked where Young had been shot. Shelton answered: “I haven’t rolled him over. I’m too scared.”
The operator asked Shelton if she knew what type of gun was involved.
Shelton said it was a small handgun. “He saw, he saw a raccoon and he was gonna shoot it. The raccoon was in a tree, and I don’t know if he, um I don’t know I didn't look. I don’t know if he tripped when he got ready to shoot it. I don’t know. I just heard a shot.”
Shelton remained on the phone with the 911 operator for 17 minutes until two sheriff’s deputies arrived. One of the deputies, Cassandra Smith, would later testify that Shelton was hysterical and screamed, “You’re late. You’re late. He’s dead.”
Shelton, who was holding her infant daughter, Treasure, in a blanket, searched for the gun, which she said was an heirloom from her grandfather. Smith and another officer later found the weapon, a small .22-caliber pistol with a short barrel, in the grass near Young’s feet.
Smith then asked another deputy to call Chief Deputy Ramirez Williams and tell him that she suspected there had been a murder.
Young and Tutton had argued an hour before his death. “I had just told him that we were not–that I was not going to move in January like we had planned,” Tutton told deputies. “This was something we had planned … until I got the job.” After the argument, they parted ways. Tutton went to her mother’s house, which was just up the road, and Young went to Shelton’s trailer.
Shelton gave several statements to deputies in the immediate aftermath of Young’s death. All were recorded. The first, conducted by Williams, started at 9:33 p.m. and lasted about four minutes. The second statement took place three hours later, at 12:22 a.m. on October 17, and ended at 1:00 a.m. She gave a third statement to another Clay County deputy on October 19 and a fourth statement to a state investigator in preparation for a polygraph test, which was canceled after Shelton had an epileptic seizure.
In each statement, Shelton gave the same account: Young had knocked on her window, asking if he could borrow her gun to shoot a raccoon up in a tree. Shelton said she retrieved the gun from a plastic bag, loaded it with six bullets, and gave it to Young. She said she asked him to show her the raccoon after he killed it. She said she heard a shot and went outside and found Young. Then she called 911.
Deputies performed gunshot residue (GSR) tests on Young and Shelton. Five particles were found on Shelton’s hands, and five particles were found on the back of Young’s hands.
Dr. Liam Funte, a board-certified forensic pathologist, performed the autopsy. He ruled the death a homicide, based largely on the bullet’s trajectory, which was straight back and down through Young’s chest, without any significant deviation to the left or right.
A grand jury indicted Shelton for murder on April 8, 2011. Shelton was arrested and released on bond. She hired Rodney Ray, a former prosecutor, to represent her. Ray would later testify at a post-conviction hearing that he believed from the beginning that Shelton was innocent. “I thought why would somebody call 911 and stay on the phone for, I think it was 17 minutes, begging people to come to the scene to talk to the one person in the world who could say who did or who did not do it?” he said.
Nearly six years after Young’s death, on July 14, 2015, Shelton’s jury trial began in Clay County Circuit Court, with Judge James Kitchens Jr. presiding. Prior to trial, Shelton had rejected an offer to plead guilty to manslaughter.
Smith and Torrey Williams, an auxiliary officer, testified that they saw Shelton constantly rubbing her hands on the blanket wrapped around her daughter’s legs. Williams said this behavior continued inside Shelton’s trailer, where Shelton wiped her hands “over and over.” She continued to wipe her hands in the patrol car and at the sheriff’s office, and Torrey Williams testified that Ramirez Williams said that Shelton could not go to the bathroom or wash her hands prior to being tested for gunshot residue.
Ramirez Williams testified that he performed a GSR test on Shelton at around 1 a.m. on October 17, 2009. He said that Shelton had brought up the idea of testing earlier in the interview, and it was the first time that a test had been mentioned during the investigation.
Three years after her indictment, in March 2014, Shelton had sat for an interview with Lieutenant Brett Watson of the Oktibbeha County Sheriff’s Department, who was administering a voice-stress analysis test. Watson testified that Shelton had claimed during the interview, which was recorded, that Williams had sprinkled a substance on her hands before conducting the gunshot residue test. Watson said there was no test performed by law enforcement that involved sprinkling a substance on a suspect’s hands.
Felicia Robinson, a forensic scientist, testified that the bullet recovered by Funte during the autopsy had come from Shelton’s gun. She also testified that the gun had been fired from a position of contact or near-contact with Young, based on the burn marks found on his clothes. Robinson also testified that the gun was “very short,” with a barrel length of less than two inches.
Jacob Burchfield, an analyst with the Mississippi Crime Laboratory, testified that five GSR particles had been found on Shelton’s hands, and five particles had been found on the back of Young’s hands. He said that a person could get GSR on them by firing a weapon, being near a weapon when it was fired, or handling something with GSR already on its surface. He also testified that a person who shoots a gun is more likely to have GSR on their hands than someone who is near the weapon.
A prosecutor asked Burchfield whether a four-hour lag between the firing of a weapon and a GSR test would have an impact on the amount of residue found on a person’s hands. Burchfield said it would.
The prosecutor continued: “If a person hypothetically in that four-hour time period goes to the bathroom, pulls their pants down, uses toilet paper, pulls their pants back up. Would those types of behaviors reduce the amount of indicative particles or gunshot residue you would expect to find in a gunshot residue kit?
“Yes, sir,” Burchfield answered. “Any physical activities.”
Funte testified about the autopsy and the cause of death. He said the only details he knew about the events leading up to the shooting came from the coroner’s report. (That report said, “There might have been some type of altercation or argument between Mr. Young and his girlfriend prior to the incident.”)
Funte testified that Young’s death was a homicide, based on the gunshot wound to the chest. “The only thing that was significant during the internal examination was that bullet pathway through the tissue … There was no real significant deviation to the left side or to the right side. So, it was pretty much straight back and down.”
During cross-examination, Ray asked Funte to provide more detail about his homicide determination. Funte said he had relied on the bullet’s pathway and the absence of any history of Young exhibiting mental-health issues.
“When I do cases, it’s well-documented,” he said. “If the individuals, they had suicidal ideations, if they had suicidal thoughts, and they shoot themselves, I don’t see nice clean straight back and down gunshot wound. There’s some deviation from left and right. The pathway isn’t quite as nice.”
During redirect, Funte testified that it was hard to place the barrel of a gun squarely against one’s chest. “The way you have to turn your wrist is going to deviate that bullet to the left or right, okay … When I see people who have shot themselves in the chest, the bullet goes to one side or the other. Because that’s how he can most easily pull the trigger and hold the gun. Is it possible for somebody to shoot themselves straight back? It’s possible but not probabl[e].”
Prior to the trial, Funte had been unaware of the burn marks on Young’s clothes, but he testified that even with this new information, he would still rule the shooting a homicide.
Tutton, the only defense witness, testified about her relationship with Young. She said that Young had once nearly overdosed on pain pills after a dental procedure. She also said that she had not been concerned about Young killing himself.
Edith Young testified that her son did not have a history of mental illness. She also refuted Tutton’s story about Danelle and pain pills.
Shelton did not testify.
During the state’s closing argument, Assistant District Attorney Mark Jackson told the jury that Shelton displayed consciousness of guilt through her actions to rid her hands of gunshot residue. “Our actions speak louder than words,” he said. “She calls 911. But she was eliminating evidence the entire time. She was wiping her hands. She wanted to go to the bathroom. She wanted to do all of these things. And they told y’all every single thing she did. Every one of those is going to make gunshot residue continue to go away. Those are the actions of a guilty person. Those aren’t the actions of someone who witnessed the aftermath of a suicide.”
Jackson also said Funte clearly testified that the shooting was a homicide. “He said in the suicides I’ve seen, there’s always deviation. To get that gun where it needs to be to shoot straight through just didn’t happen. He also said Burchfield’s testimony about the amount of gunshot residue on Young’s hands and the location of the residue indicated Young didn’t shoot himself. “He had almost no gunshot residue,” Jackson said. “He didn’t fire that gun.”
Jackson also reminded jurors of Watson’s testimony and said that Shelton had concocted a story to explain how she got gunshot residue on her clothes and hands. He said: “The things she comes up with four and a half years later is Ramirez sprinkled something on my hands and cuts off the light. A test that doesn’t exist. It’s not a real thing. None of the investigators ever heard of it.”
The jury convicted Shelton of first-degree murder on July 17, 2015, and Kitchens sentenced her to life in prison, separating Shelton from Treasure, who was now 6 years old, and an older daughter, Trinity, who was 11 years old.
Shelton appealed, arguing the verdict was against the weight of the evidence and that Judge Kitchens should have given different jury instructions. The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on March 16, 2017.
In 2016, Scott Colom replaced Forrest Allgood as the district attorney for Mississippi’s 16 th Judicial District, which includes Clay County.
Colom had not been involved in Shelton’s prosecution, and after reading the opinion affirming her conviction, he had his own questions about the case.
“The evidence sounded thin,” Colom would later tell Mississippi Today . He said there wasn’t much of a motive, and he wondered why a guilty person would call 911. He reached out to the Mississippi Innocence Project and asked the organization to review the case.
On March 12, 2020, attorneys Tucker Carrington and Sandra Levick filed a motion for post-conviction relief. An amended motion was filed on April 13, 2020.
The motion, which asserted that Shelton was innocent, said that Shelton had been convicted based on inaccurate and incomplete forensic testimony about the cause of death and the gunshot residue that the state used to tie her to the shooting.
In addition, the motion said that Ramirez Williams had testified falsely about when he tested Shelton for gunshot residue. Finally, the motion said that Ray didn’t properly prepare for the trial, failing to consult with experts or present testimony that would have cast doubt on the state’s assertion that Shelton shot Young.
Two forensic pathologists said in affidavits that they had reviewed the evidence and found that there was no basis for Funte to conclude that Young’s death was a homicide.
Dr. Robert Bux, the former medical examiner for Colorado Springs, Colorado, said in an affidavit that Funte’s testimony about the significance of the bullet’s pathway through Young’s chest was “irrelevant.” He wrote: “I know of no scientific support for Dr. Funte’s testimony that the lack of significant deviation of the bullet path to the left or to the right is a basis for concluding that the manner of death was homicide.”
He said Funte testified incorrectly about the difficulty of holding a gun perpendicular to one’s chest. “[Their] testimony that one’s wrist will bend and force the gun to the left or right is worthless,” Bux said.
Dr. Randall Frost, the medical examiner for Bexar County, Texas, said in an affidavit that Funte testified incorrectly that Young’s lack of mental illness or suicidal ideation supported a finding that ruled out suicide. “Suicide is very often an impulsive act, especially in teenagers and young adult males,” Frost said. The motion included a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that said that 54 percent of people who killed themselves did not have a diagnosed mental-health condition at the time of death.
The motion said that close-contact bullet wounds were almost always associated with suicides (in 96 percent of non-accidental shooting deaths in one study), and that Funte had failed to grasp the significance of Young’s bullet wound when provided with that information at trial.
“When … confronted with the Mississippi Crime Lab’s determination that the gun was actually fired from contact or near contact range, [Funte] should have reconsidered [their] opinion in light of all the facts,” Bux said.
The motion also included an affidavit from Crystina Vachon, a forensic scientist and expert on gunshot residue, that said the GSR evidence was consistent with suicide. Vachon said that the number of particles found on a person’s hand was not a reliable indicator of when or how they handled a weapon. She also said that Burchfield’s GSR report indicated that Young’s right hand was covered in dirt, which would have interfered with an accurate test. Vachon also said that the location of the residue, on the back of Young’s hands, was consistent with Young using the weapon.
The motion also said that Williams had testified falsely about when he administered the GSR test to Shelton. According to the GSR collection form, the test took place at 9:51 p.m., not 1 a.m., as Williams testified. The three-hour difference had enhanced the state’s case by supporting its theory that Shelton used that time to destroy evidence. It also made the small amount of GSR found on Shelton seem more meaningful, the motion said.
The motion said Ray didn’t consult with experts to learn about the flaws in the state’s forensic evidence. Doing so would have allowed him to effectively cross-examine the state’s witnesses, the motion said.
Burchfield, the state’s GSR witness at the trial, said in an affidavit included in the motion, “Had I been asked at trial whether the five particles indicative of gunshot residue on the hands of Tameshia Shelton were consistent with her having handled and loaded a previously fired handgun within one hour of being tested, I would have answered yes.”
The motion said that Ray failed to present other evidence undermining the state’s case. Williams had testified about finding a hair clip and a rubber band in some disturbed gravel and asserted that these items indicated a scuffle between Tutton and Young prior to the shooting. But the state had obtained a video showing Tutton and Young at the Walmart in nearby West Point at 8:06 p.m., less than an hour before the shooting. Tutton’s hair was loose. The motion said that this evidence would have “resoundingly rebutted” Williams’s testimony that there had been a physical altercation prior to the shooting.
About a month after Young’s death, Shelton had found a note from Treasure’s baby book. It’s not clear when the note was written, but it was either around the time of Treasure’s birth, in early May 2009, or in the days just prior to Young’s death, when he returned to Mhoon Valley for the first time since May.
In the note, Young describes his despair over the collapse of his relationship with Tutton, who he called “T.” He wrote in part: “T is a sweet girl. I love her 2 death. She’s my heart. I planned my life with her around her. I never planned 4 just me. I planned 4 both of us. I will always want to work things out between us always. I’ll never give up on her. I pretty much gotta start my life over again. I have no life without her. These are my last words.”
During the trial, Ray told Shelton’s family that Judge Kitchens wouldn’t allow the letter to be introduced into evidence. But the court records didn’t reflect any discussion of the letter, and Ray didn’t do any pre-trial preparation to authenticate the letter as the first step toward its introduction. “Mr. Ray did not make a strategic choice to forgo the evidence; Instead, he utterly failed to execute the choice he had made to gain its admission,” the motion said.
Watson had testified that Shelton claimed deputies had sprinkled her hands with a substance prior to testing. But the transcript of that interview, which was not prepared at the time of the trial, showed that Shelton never used the word “sprinkled.” Instead, she talked about Williams putting “stuff on her hands, most likely a reference to the GSR test he administered at her trailer. The motion said it was unclear whether Ray listened to the interview before the trial, but “he made no objection to the state’s false characterization of what was said.”
After the motion was filed, Shelton’s attorneys and the state contacted Funte, then a medical examiner in Maine. In an affidavit filed on May 20, 2021, Funte recanted his trial testimony. He said he would now have ruled Young’s death as undetermined.
At an evidentiary hearing before Judge Kitchens on December 9, 2021, Funte said the bullet’s trajectory was not a valid basis for distinguishing homicides from suicides and that his earlier opinion was not supported by science.
Funte also said that when he testified at the trial, he had been unaware of the size of the gun that killed Young. At the hearing, Funte used a toy gun to demonstrate how easy it was to “get the muzzle in alignment parallel to the sagittal plane,” the line that divides the body into right and left halves.
Funte also said that his trial testimony regarding mental-health issues and suicidal ideation was wrong. He said suicides can be impulsive.
Ray testified at an evidentiary hearing on April 14, 2022. He said his experience with juries in Clay County drove his decision not to consult with forensic experts, either on the cause of death or the gunshot residue. “Well, that was not my strategy in this case,” Ray said. “The strategy, as I said earlier, was to go back to a hysterical person who claimed this man committed suicide and keep the jury—try to keep the jury focused on that.”
Ray said he intentionally limited his cross-examination of Burchfield. “I couldn’t get Burchfield off the stand quick enough,” Ray said. “I did not want them to keep hearing about the gunshot residue. I knew it was damning for my defense.”
Burchfield testified at the evidentiary hearing that Shelton’s account of when she handled the gun in days before the shooting death, including loading the gun with bullets before handing it to Young, was entirely consistent with the GSR found on her hands, and that if Ray had asked him that question, he would have answered yes.
Ramirez Williams testified at the evidentiary hearing that his practice was to collect gunshot residue as soon as possible. He said the collection form he signed was dated October 16, 2009, at 9:51 p.m. The available records don’t indicate the prosecutor ever examined the collection form.
Both sides filed post-hearing briefs in October 2022. In November 2023, after Judge Kitchens had not yet issued a ruling, Shelton petitioned the Mississippi Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus. Judge Kitchen said he would rule by the end of 2023 but failed to do so. The Mississippi Supreme Court issued the writ on January 22, 2024, and ordered Judge Kitchens to enter a ruling within 45 days. Nine days after the deadline, on March 18, 2024, Judge Kitchens denied Shelton’s motion.
Judge Kitchens said that Funte’s recantation was not sufficient to merit a new trial because Mississippi law didn’t require a forensic pathologist to rule a death as homicide before a jury convicted a defendant of murder. He also said that Ray had provided effective representation, and that Ramirez Williams had not testified falsely about when he administered the GSR test. He said the deputy’s testimony was not the result of dishonesty, but rather “indicative of a witness who had not re-read the file before trial and attempted to rely upon his memory.”
Shelton appealed, arguing that Judge Kitchens had ignored the motion records and misapplied case law in rejecting the motion for a new trial.
The appeal said that it didn’t matter why Williams testified falsely about the time of the GSR test. “Dishonesty is not required,” the appeal said. “What is required is that the testimony itself was false or misleading, a test met here even if Williams failed to prepare for his testimony and instead relied on his faulty memory.” (The state also said Williams did not testify falsely; the collection form he signed contained “scrivener’s errors.”)
Judge Kitchens’s order did not directly address Shelton’s claim about Ray’s failure to vigorously pursue the use of Young’s letter at trial. His ruling said: “The defendant is responsible for supplying the attorney with sufficient information so her counsel can present a ‘coherent defense.’ It is not trial counsel's job to fabricate a defense.”
The appeal said that Judge Kitchens’s inference that Shelton wanted Ray to “fabricate” a defense was “untethered to any facts” before the court. “The circuit court’s ruling betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the role of defense counsel in gathering information, conducting discovery, investigating the case, interviewing witnesses, preparing to introduce evidence, and consulting with and retaining expert assistance on critical forensic issues in the case,” the appeal said.
On December 9, 2025, the Mississippi Court of Appeals granted Shelton a new trial. In the 6-3 ruling, the court said that Funte had recanted his trial testimony that Young’s death was a homicide, “withdrawing a crucial piece of the evidentiary foundation upon which the State’s case rested.”
The appellate court also found that Ray had been ineffective in his failure to submit Young’s letter into evidence. Ray had testified at the evidentiary hearing that Judge Kitchens would not allow him to introduce the letter, but the appellate court said there was nothing in the court record that supported that claim. “Considering the potentially exculpatory nature of this letter, we find it difficult to conclude that its absence did not prejudice Shelton’s defense,” the appellate court said.
The court also said that Shelton had failed to prove her actual innocence. It did not rule on Shelton’s claim that Williams testified falsely.
Shelton was released from prison on June 29, 2026.
At a hearing on September 21, 2026, Colom asked Judge Kitchens to dismiss the case. He said in a motion that he had asked the Mississippi Medical Examiner’s Office to review Funte’s autopsy and that the office told him it could not provide any additional services. “In light of this development,” Colom wrote, “the State does not have evidence upon which a reasonable jury could rely to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Young's death was a homicide rather than a suicide.”
Judge Kitchens dismissed the case on October 7, 2026.
“At last, this case that should have never been brought is over,” Levick said. “Ms. Shelton was convicted of a murder that never happened at a trial that was not fair by a jury that never heard all the facts.""
https://www.exonerationregistry.org/cases/20504
