State v. Shelton

75 So. 3d 512, 11 La.App. 3 Cir. 22, 2011 La. App. LEXIS 1123, 2011 WL 4465535
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedSeptember 28, 2011
DocketNo. 11-22
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 75 So. 3d 512 (State v. Shelton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Shelton, 75 So. 3d 512, 11 La.App. 3 Cir. 22, 2011 La. App. LEXIS 1123, 2011 WL 4465535 (La. Ct. App. 2011).

Opinion

COOKS, Judge.

| PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On August 15, 2007, a grand jury indicted Shawn Shelton (Shelton), charging him with the second degree murder of Justin James (James) on October 30, 2005. The indictment alleged the murder was committed during the perpetration or attempted perpetration of forcible rape. Shelton pled not guilty on November 17, 2008. An amended indictment/bill of information was filed on February 5, 2010, revising the charge to manslaughter, a violation of La. R.S. 14:31(A)(2)(a).

The jury convicted Shelton of manslaughter on March 19, 2010. He was [514]*514previously convicted in Nevada for the kidnapping and sexual assault of a fourteen-year-old boy, and was serving a sentence of thirty-five years to life in prison. Shelton committed this crime during the investigation of James’ homicide. The trial court sentenced Shelton to thirty years at hard labor on June 23, 2010, to run consecutively to the Nevada sentence. Shelton appeals his conviction. We affirm.

FACTS

On October 29, 2005, the victim, James, and his friend, Justin Wise (Wise), were drinking beer and watching television at the home of the victim’s sister’s boyfriend, about a 45-minute drive from Natchitoch-es. Two other friends, Josh Collins (Collins) and Brent McDaniel (McDaniel), called and asked James and Wise to come to their apartment in Natchitoches. The victim and Wise left for Natchitoches around 9:30 or 10:00 p.m.

The young men visited on the balcony of the third-floor apartment for two or three hours and saw Shelton at the apartment complex. According to Wise, Shelton said he had flown in from Hollywood, and someone had stolen his black ^Hummer vehicle. Collins, however, testified that Shelton told them he was waiting for a friend to return with the Hummer. McDaniel recalled people at the apartment complex gathered around a black Hummer. This was the same vehicle owned by Shelton in which Nevada police found cameras, and photos of young males, nude from the waist down. Some of the photos were taken inside Shelton’s Hummer.

When it “got kind of late,” Wise went inside and went to sleep on the couch, while James remained on the balcony of the third-floor apartment. At some point, James woke Wise and told him that Shelton had invited him to come down to his apartment; he asked if Wise wanted to go. Wise declined, and at 3:35 a.m. on October 30, 2005, the victim called Collins’s cell phone from a number Shelton identified in a written statement as his. Collins told the victim to come up to his apartment, and he then went to sleep. James never returned to Collins’ apartment.

During the early morning hours, James sent several messages to the telephone of his sister, Destiny James (Destiny), from an AOL account. Although Destiny believed the messages were received around 4:00 a.m. to around 6:00 a.m., a printout of the messages introduced into evidence showed they were sent from 2:01 a.m. to 4:26 a.m. The messages indicated James had met “a pretty cool dude” named Shawn Shelton who was a producer for a movie company. The messages were sent from Shelton’s computer.

Contrary to his representations to James, Shelton was no movie producer. Kirk Kepper (Kepper), a movie producer, actor, and principal in Skinny Giraffe Productions, filming a movie in Natchitoches at the time of the victims’ death, testified. According to Kepper, Shelton was originally hired for security work associated with the movie, and then worked as a runner and production assistant. Kepper told him he would have the “vanity title” of assistant producer when the movie was released. He further testified that Shelton had not been employed with | ?,Kepper for approximately three weeks to a month pri- or to his meeting James on October 29, 2005.

The record reveals Shelton was anything but a “cool dude” or movie producer. Shelton was a former California police officer convicted of sexually assaulting a fourteen-year-old boy in Nevada while the current charge was pending. He was later convicted and is serving a thirty-five year to life sentence in prison. Shelton used subterfuge to lure the young boy in Neva[515]*515da to accompany him. In that episode, Shelton posed as a law enforcement officer investigating a crime. Shelton used a Polaroid camera to take pictures of the Nevada boy as part of his scheme to sexually assault him. Other photos of young men nude from the waist down were found in Shelton’s possession in his black Hummer. These young men appear to be in drug induced states while being sexually assaulted.

Kepper was driving Shelton’s black Hummer to Natchitoches on October 30, 2005 after staying overnight in Lafayette with the Hummer when he received a call from one of Shelton’s roommates, saying something was wrong at the apartment. Apparently the roommate was unable to make a 911 call and “was kind of freaked out.” Kepper was then successful in calling 911.

Randy Williams of the Natchitoches Police Department was dispatched to the Frog Pond Apartments in response to the 911 call. Upon arrival at Shelton’s apartment, he saw the victim, nude from the waist down, wearing only two t-shirts, lying on the floor with his legs inside a bedroom and the rest of his body extending into the living room. Shelton appeared to be performing CPR on him. Williams noticed a brownish substance in front of the closet in the bedroom with a blanket on top of part of it, and he saw drag marks on the floor leading from Shelton’s bed to where the body was lying in the doorway. He testified it appeared to him that someone made an effort to clean the scene and hide the substance on the floor.

14James arrived dead at the hospital. He died as the result of ingesting lethal quantities of morphine and cocaine allegedly distributed or dispensed to him by Shelton. Williams testified that he observed the victim’s body at the hospital while it was being examined by the assistant coroner. He observed that there was a shiny substance on the victim’s rectum and that his rectum appeared “opened”. He further testified that the victim’s “rear end” was “very clean,” which he found very odd, considering that in his experience when a person dies their bowels empty and, as he stated, “that’s not the part you want to look at.” In his experience, the area was too clean under the circumstances.

Detective Corporal Jayson Linebaugh of the Natchitoches Police Department also responded to the call. He took a statement from Shelton in which he claimed he woke up and saw the victim on the floor. He claimed the victim did not respond when he tried to wake him, and that the victim vomited when he tried to rouse him. Testimony at trial established that a brown substance, which appeared to be the victim’s vomit, was observed on the pillow case, comforter, and afghan in Shelton’s room. Shelton further stated that earlier in the evening, the victim asked if Shelton had a computer to email his sister. Shelton claimed he went to bed, but the victim kept coming in throughout the night, using the computer while he slept. According to Shelton, when he found James, he was not breathing, and he tried to revive him with CPR.

Linebaugh testified that it looked like someone had unsuccessfully tried to clean the brown stain on the carpet in the bedroom and that he too observed smear marks “like it had been ground down into the carpet.”

Testimony by James’ sister and friends established that James was not a drug user and had not used drugs in their presence on the day he died.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
75 So. 3d 512, 11 La.App. 3 Cir. 22, 2011 La. App. LEXIS 1123, 2011 WL 4465535, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-shelton-lactapp-2011.