A Lafayette County circuit judge ended an attempt to prosecute Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., the son of a prominent north Mississippi church family who is accused of killing a fellow University of Mississippi student named Jimmie “Jay” Lee, for evidence tampering.
In a March 7 order, Kelly Luther wrote that Herrington cannot be charged with evidence tampering because of the crime’s two-year statute of limitations. A grand jury indicted the University of Mississippi graduate last month on the charge for allegedly hiding Lee’s remains in a well-known dumping ground about 20 minutes from Herrington’s parent’s house in Grenada.
“The Court finds that prosecution for the charge of Tampering with Physical Evidence commenced outside the two-year statute of limitations and is therefore time-barred,” Luther wrote.
In order to stick, Luther essentially ruled that the prosecution should have brought the charges against Herrington sooner. In court last week, the prosecution argued that it could not have brought those charges to a grand jury without Lee’s remains, which provided the evidence that evidence tampering occurred.
READ MORE: ‘The pressure … has gotten worse:’ Facing up-to-date charge, Tim Herrington will remain in jail until trial, judge rules
The dismissal came after Herrington’s up-to-date counsel, Jackson-area criminal defense attorney Aafram Sellers, filed a motion to throw out the count. Sellers did not respond to a request for commend by press time.
Molly Minta covers higher education for Mississippi Today in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on strengthening higher education coverage in local communities.
Originally from Melbourne Beach, Florida, Molly reported on public housing and prosecutors in her home state and worked as a fact-checker at The Nation before joining Mississippi Today in 2021.
Molly’s work at Mississippi Today has been honored by The Green Eyeshades and the Mississippi Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. She is a two-time finalist for the Education Writers Association National Awards for Education Reporting in the beat and feature reporting categories, including for her story on Mississippi’s only class on critical race theory.
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