DA Colom urges judge to end murder case against Tameshia Shelton, arguing evidence could point to suicide: ‘State does not have evidence’

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, is supposed 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.” She said she feels like doing cartwheels.

The Clay County Circuit Clerk’s Office told Mississippi Today on Monday that the judge had not determined whether to dismiss Shelton’s indictment, but would reach a decision by the time of the retrial. 

A crumbling case

On June 1, Mississippi Today published its four-year investigation that found much of the evidence in Young’s death suggested he killed himself. A key piece was Young’s apparent suicide note, but the jury in Shelton’s 2015 trial never saw it before convicting her of murder.

Days after the story ran, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in Shelton’s favor, and she was freed on bond, awaiting trial.

Not long after arriving at Young’s fatal shooting on Oct. 16, 2009, Clay County sheriff’s deputies concluded his death was a homicide. Shelton, who has maintained her innocence, became the prime suspect because she was the last known person to see Young alive. 

A pathologist with the Mississippi Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Young’s death a homicide, based on the trajectory of the bullet, but reversed that decision in a 2021 hearing, concluding that the death should have been “undetermined,” most likely suicide.

In his motion, Colom wrote that he asked the Mississippi Medical Examiner’s Office to review the pathologist’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.”

Shelton also called 911 to report Young’s death to officers and get him medical aid, which could make her innocent in the eyes of a “reasonable jury,” Colom wrote.

Colom: ‘The evidence sounded thin’

For years as district attorney, Colom had supported a second look at Shelton’s murder conviction. 

Her case first came to his attention in 2018, after Shelton’s family came to him in an effort to get her out of prison. He had inherited a prosecutor’s office that oversaw six tossed-out murder convictions, all under Allgood. If the judge grants Colom’s new request, Shelton would become the seventh.

Allgood previously told Mississippi Today that he and his staff never tried anyone they thought was innocent, but that he did not recall the Shelton case, which other prosecutors in his office tried.

After Colom looked into her case, he started to have questions. “The evidence sounded thin,” he told Mississippi Today. “There was not much motive.”

Colom reached out to the Mississippi Innocence Project, whose attorneys ultimately secured the reversal of Shelton’s murder conviction and her freedom from prison. He also wrote a sworn statement supporting a hearing to determine whether she deserved a new trial.

When the state Supreme Court unanimously ordered such a hearing in 2020, Judge Kitchens removed Colom from the case because of that statement and had the attorney general’s office replace him.

“Eight years ago, Scott Colom met with Tameshia’s family to hear their concerns that she had been convicted of a crime that never happened,” Shelton’s current attorney, Sandra Levick, said in a statement Monday. “He had nothing to gain in taking that meeting. He had nothing to gain in signing an affidavit urging the Court of Appeals to allow a hearing so that the facts could be known.”

An apparent suicide note goes unseen

When Young was found shot outside Shelton’s trailer, he had been in town to visit his girlfriend and her younger sister, Ketina Tutton. The couple had been planning on living together, and Young wanted to get married. But Tutton changed her mind after getting a new job, her family said.

At about 8 p.m. on the evening of Young’s death, the couple’s dreams of a new life together had deteriorated into a verbal spat that lasted 15 to 20 minutes. “I had just told him that we were not – that I was not going to move in January like we had planned,” Tutton later told deputies. “This was something we had planned … until I got the job.”

The argument ended with the couple parting ways. She said she walked inside her mother’s house, and Young headed to Shelton’s trailer. 

It was dark when Shelton said Young knocked on her bedroom window. She was already in bed with her two daughters.

When she came to the front door, she said Young told her there was a raccoon in the tree and that he needed Shelton’s revolver and only one bullet to kill it.

She said she replied that he might need more than one bullet, so she loaded the .22 pistol and handed it to Young.

She said she heard a shot, and when Young didn’t return, she went outside to check on him and found him under a tree.

Weeks after Young’s death, Shelton said she found an apparent suicide note in which he wrote, “I have no life without (Ketina). These are my last words.”

She shared the note with her defense lawyer, Rod Ray, who failed to introduce the note as evidence at trial.

Mississippi Today shared the note with five jurors in Shelton’s original murder trial. Three said they believed the note created reasonable doubt about her guilt. 

In Mississippi, a person can’t be convicted of murder unless every juror agrees on a guilty verdict. 

In his Monday request, Colom wrote the note is another piece of evidence that “undermines” any prosecution against Shelton for murder.

“Today, he moved to dismiss the indictment because the facts are known and they show that a grave injustice has taken place,” Levick said in a statement Monday. “We join in urging the Court to grant the motion to put an end to this nightmare for Tameshia Shelton and her family.”