A bond hearing for Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr. was postponed to next Thursday, Feb. 27 at 10 a.m. after originally being scheduled for today.
Herrington — who stood trial in December for the murder of Jimmie “Jay” Lee — was arraigned at the Lafayette County Courthouse on Tuesday, Feb. 11 for a new indictment that includes capital murder and tampering with evidence.
The new charge and indictment, handed down by the Lafayette County Grand Jury on Feb. 7, comes after the discovery of Lee’s remains by hunters in a wooded area of Carroll County on Feb. 1. The remains later were confirmed to be Lee’s through DNA analysis done by the Mississippi State Crime Lab.
Lafayette County Circuit Court Judge Kelly Luther scheduled the original date for the bond hearing at the Feb. 11 arraignment.
According to reporting from the Clarion Ledger, Aafram Y. Sellers, the attorney representing Herrington, filed a motion Tuesday to dismiss the new charge of tampering with evidence. Sellers filed on the grounds that the new charge no longer meets the statute of limitations.
Kevin Horan represented Herrington during the December court proceedings that ended in a mistrial after the jury could not come to a consensus. During the Feb. 11 arraignment, Luther appointed public defender Denise Fondren as Herrington’s attorney.
Lee, 20, was a prominent figure in the Oxford-Lafayette LGBTQ+ community who graduated from the University of Mississippi in 2022. He was last seen on video surveillance footage at 5:58 a.m. on July 8, 2022, leaving Campus Walk Apartments.
The morning of Lee’s disappearance, Herrington and Lee had been messaging each other, and Herrington requested Lee to meet him at his apartment at Lafayette Place Apartments. Prosecutors argued in an August 2022 bond hearing that Herrington and Lee had been in a casual relationship.
Herrington was first indicted for capital murder on March 28, 2023.
