Mississippi’s highest court refused to alter an appellate court decision that had thrown out a murder charge against a woman who had served 11 years in jail after being convicted of killing her sister’s boyfriend back in 2009. A death that forensic specialists now believe was probably a suicide. The state’s Supreme Court on Thursday, June 4, 2026, ruled in a 6-1 majority vote that the Mississippi Court of Appeals’ ruling in December 2025 to overturn Tameshia Shelton’s case be sustained.
The case took place on October 16, 2009, in the Mhoon Valley of Clay County. According to court papers, 21-year-old Danelle Young traveled from Forest, Mississippi, to visit his girlfriend Kettina Tetton, the sister of Shelton. In an argument about their accommodation plans for the future, Young chose to stay overnight at Shelton’s trailer.
Investigators say that later that night. Young knocked on Shelton’s window to borrow a handgun to kill a raccoon. Shelton told police she loaded a .22 revolver and handed it to him. Minutes later, a single gunshot echoed through the property. Shelton found Young under an oak tree with a contact wound to his left chest and spent 17 minutes on a recorded call with 911, begging for medical help.
In April 2011, a grand jury appointed by the ex-District Attorney Forrest Allgood indicted Shelton on charges of murder. Later, in 2015, Shelton was found guilty by a jury. However, the Appellate attorneys pointed out that the defense counsel for Shelton, Rod Ray, did not introduce the suicide note written by Young, which was found by Sheldon in a baby book.
The conviction further disintegrated when Dr. Liam Funte, the state forensic pathologist who initially testified that the bullet proved homicide, completely reversed his expert opinion. In May 2021. Funte attested that after reviewing and acquiring deeper experience, his original testimony was in error.
“I now regard my determination of the manner of death of Danelle Young to be in error … I see no evidence to support homicide.”
— Dr. Liam Funte, forensic pathologist, Atlantablackstar
Current District Attorney Scott Colom, who defeated Allhood in 2015, expressed serious doubts about the coviction noting that the original case lacked motive and relied on thin evidence.
“The evidence sounded thin. There was not much motive.”
— Scott Colom, District Attorney, 16th Judicial District, Mississippitoday
Shelton was released from the Clay County Detention Center on a $50,000 bond. Her attorneys with the Mississippi Innocence Project are now moving to have the original indictment dismissed entirely.
“West ‘deliberately fabricated evidence and conclusions which were not supported by the evidence, the data or the rules of science but … because they were consistent with the prosecutor’s theory.'”
— Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, Innocenceproject
“Nobody wants to put the wrong guy in jail.”
— Forrest Allgood, former District Attorney, Innocenceproject
Disclaimer: Inquisitr could not independently confirm the facts of this incident and is reporting based on the information available within the public video record.
