OXFORD — A judge denied bond Thursday for the University of Mississippi graduate who is accused of killing Jimmie “Jay” Lee, a well-known member of the LGBTQ+ community in this north Mississippi college, and hiding his body.
Lafayette County Circuit Court Judge Kelly Luther made the decision during Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr.’s bond hearing, which was held on the heels of the discovery of Lee’s body. Despite the finding, the prosecution also announced that it would not seek the death penalty, just as it had declined to during last year’s trial that resulted in an 11-1 hung jury.
“The pressure on Mr. Herrington has gotten worse,” Luther said. “The justification for not showing up is about as high as it can get. The only thing higher is if the state had said ‘we’re gonna seek the death penalty.’”
Though Herrington, a son of a prominent church family in Grenada, had previously been out on bond, he will now remain in jail pending trial. The prosecution recently secured a new indictment against Herrington for capital murder and hiding Lee’s remains, which were found in a well-known dumping ground in Carroll County, 19 minutes from Herrington’s family home, wrapped in moving blankets and duct tape and hidden among mattresses and tires.
Lee was found with a silk bonnet, which evidence shows Lee had worn when he returned to Herrington’s home the morning he went missing on July 8, 2022.
Herrington’s new counsel, Aafram Sellers, a criminal attorney from the Jackson area, said he was too new to the case to comment on the possibility of a plea deal. But he made several pointed arguments against the state’s move to revoke Herrington’s bond, calling it an attempt “to be punitive in nature when the presumption still remains innocent until proven guilty.”
Before making his decision, Luther asked the prosecution, who had previously agreed to give Herrington a bond in 2022, “what’s changed since then?”
Lafayette County District Attorney Ben Creekmore responded that the state now had more evidence, when previously, the case “was mostly circumstantial evidence.”
“Now they want to hold us to that same agreement when the situation has changed,” Creekmore said. “We tried the case. … Everyone knows it was an 11-1 finding of guilt on capital murder.”
“It’s not a no-body homicide this time,” he added.
This prompted Sellers to accuse the prosecution of attempting to taint a future jury, because the court had not established the jury’s split.
“Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s a fact,” Sellers said.
Prior to discussing Herrington’s bond, Luther heard arguments on Sellers’ motion to dismiss Herrington’s new charge of evidence tampering for hiding Lee’s body. Sellers argued the charge violated the statute of limitations because law enforcement knew, by dint of not finding Lee’s body at the alleged crime scene, that evidence tampering had occurred, so Herrington should have been charged with that crime back in 2022.
“If there is a gun here that is a murder weapon and I walk out of here and leave and they never find it, but they know a murder happened in this courtroom, they know I moved evidence on today’s date,” Sellers said. “It’s not hard to contemplate that.”
This led Luther, who said he was not prepared to rule, to ask both parties to provide him with cases establishing a legal precedent in Mississippi.
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