According to ABC News, a Black Mississippi man named Sheldon “Timothy” Herrington Jr. pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of a University of Mississippi graduate student. That student, Jimmie “Jay” Lee, was a prominent member of the local LGBTQ+ community and was also the alleged secret lover of Herrington Jr. The guilty plea led prosecutors to reduce the original charge of capital murder to second-degree. As a result, Herrington Jr. was sentenced to 40 years with 10 years suspended for the killing and another 10 years for tampering. In total, he will spend 40 years behind bars.
In July 2022, a then 20-year-old Lee disappeared from the U of M campus, and two weeks later, Herrington Jr., also an Ole Miss graduate, was arrested and charged before Lee’s body was recovered. The judge at the time had ruled Lee dead, but a mistrial was declared after jurors failed to reach a consensus after 9 1/2 hours of deliberation. This February, hunters found Lee’s remains in the woods, and a new trial began.
During the first trial, prosecutors leaned on the fact that Herrington killed Lee following a sexual tryst and, after the sentencing, said that Herrington murdered Lee to keep the relationship down low, as Lee was very popular in the city and online via social media. Evidence collected by university surveillance cameras showed Lee leaving his apartment at 4 am, returning home, and leaving again around 6 am. Time stamps show that Herrington Jr. searched online for “how long does it take to strangle someone” before Lee arrived for the second time. Law enforcement officials who testified in the trial claim that the two men previously exchanged sexual messages.
Herrington Jr. was also seen on camera running away from the parking lot where Lee’s car was found, in addition to leaving his parents’ house with a shovel and wheelbarrow.
Bottom line, bro was cooked, and there was no way to explain these behaviors. Now, he’s where he deserves to be and will be there for quite some time.
