WEST POINT – For her birthday Monday, Tameshia Shelton got the present she’s been wishing for every day for the last 11 years: freedom from prison.

Her four children, mother and other family members blew party blowers, handed her a teddy bear and hugged her as she emerged from the Clay County Detention Center Monday afternoon. “I felt numb before,” she said, “but now it feels real.”

On Monday, she was freed on a $50,000 bond with the help of the Mississippi Fund Collective. The moment marks her first freedom since a jury convicted her of murder in the 2009 shooting death of her sister’s 21-year-old boyfriend, Danelle Young.

Shelton’s lawyers are asking Circuit Judge James T. Kitchens to dismiss the indictment. If he grants the request, her case would mark the seventh exoneration in the same judicial district — a state record.

After her release Monday, she celebrated her freedom and her 48th birthday with Popeye’s chicken, hot sauce and white bread.

“Eleven years too late, Ms. Shelton is coming home,” said one of her current lawyers, Sandra Levick of the Mississippi Innocence Project. “We appreciate everyone who made this day possible, but we will not truly celebrate until the case is finally over. That day should come soon.”

Earlier in June, the Mississippi Supreme Court refused to interfere with the December decision by the state Court of Appeals ordering a new trial for Shelton. The appeals court held that prosecutors failed to prove Shelton was guilty of murder “beyond a reasonable doubt” when she stood trial in 2015 for Young’s death.

The justices’ decision came days after Mississippi Today published its four-year investigation that found that Shelton has remained behind bars, even though much of the evidence in Young’s 2009 death suggested he killed himself — including an apparent suicide note never presented to the jury.

Shelton’s trial lawyer, Rod Ray, failed to introduce Young’s apparent suicide note as evidence — a key reason why the appeals court ordered a new trial for her. The appeals court found Ray was so “ineffective” as Shelton’s defense attorney that he violated her constitutional right to a fair trial.

Other gaps have emerged in Shelton’s case in the years since her murder trial. The prosecution’s case against her relied upon a deputy state medical examiner’s official ruling that Young’s death was a homicide. The pathologist later called the conclusion an “error” due to lack of experience. Prosecutors also used testimony from Clay County sheriff’s deputies that conflicted with actual records. 

In the years following Shelton’s conviction, her family reached out to everyone they could, including District Attorney Scott Colom in 2018. They told Colom that Young’s death was a suicide, not a homicide.

After studying her case, Colom began to have questions. “The evidence sounded thin,” he said. “There was not much motive.”

On top of that, he said, if Shelton were truly guilty of murder, “Why would she call 911?”

He reached out to the Mississippi Innocence Project to look into the case. And he later wrote a sworn statement in support of a hearing to determine if Shelton deserved a new trial.

The wall of Colom’s office has a reminder to him about not rushing to judgment: a photo of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, two exonerated men who together spent a total of 30 years behind bars, including time on death row, for murders they didn’t commit. 

Colom’s predecessor, Forrest Allgood, prosecuted the men and his office has now seen seven people have their convictions thrown out — the record for any district attorney in the state, according to a Mississippi Today analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations. 

Asked before about Shelton’s case, Allgood said he didn’t recall it, but he added that just because an appeals court dismisses a case doesn’t mean it’s right. “Appeals courts are made up of fallible human beings,” he said.

He disagreed with the term exoneration when a case is reversed because “there’s a bias toward the accused being innocent, even after a jury says otherwise,” he said.

Colom couldn’t be reached Monday for comment, but he previously said he would “look at what the facts show and do justice” in Shelton’s case.

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. 

Current Sheriff Eddie Scott, then the chief deputy, told a local reporter he’d ruled out the possibility that Young died from suicide or an accident because he had been shot in the chest from 30 feet away.

Only the gun was actually fired from less than an inch away. That’s what a State Crime Lab expert concluded after finding gunfire burns in Young’s jacket.

A jury convicted Shelton of murder in 2015, and she has suffered strokes and other health setbacks in prison. Her family has started a GoFundMe page for her.

“How do you begin to rebuild a life when everything has been stripped away from you? For 11 agonizing years, our family has lived a nightmare,” her daughter, Trinity, wrote. “Her faith and her desire to hold her kids again are the only things that kept her alive.”

She wrote that in prison, “my mom’s health deteriorated drastically. Today, she lives with a severe disability and suffers from constant, violent seizures. Watching her fight for her life behind a prison cell — without the correct medical care — is a pain we wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

Shelton said Monday that before she left prison, other women serving life sentences told her that she inspires them.

She knows there are innocent people in prison, she said, perhaps because of a misunderstanding or a mistake, but “now you are silent and everybody looks at you like you’re some kind of criminal.”

She recalled that when Clay County deputies arrested her in 2011, she asked for an attorney and a phone call but didn’t get them right away. She quoted the officers as saying, “You said you’re innocent, right? So what do you need an attorney for?”

Now that she is free, she wants to help others in their battles for justice, because she realizes now that a wrongful conviction can happen to anyone, she said. “It could be you. It could be your child. It could be your mom. It could be your brother.”