University of Mississippi graduate Sheldon “Timothy” Harrington is accused of killing Jimmie “Jay” Lee, a fellow UM student, in 2022. Harrington’s trial is set for Dec. 2, 2024, in Lafayette County Circuit Court. Photo by Grace Marion
Lafayette County Circuit Court Judge Kelly Luther denied a joint motion on Thursday by attorneys on both sides to seal all pretrial filings in the capital-murder case against Sheldon “Timothy” Harrington, who is accused of killing Jimmie “Jay” Lee in 2022, a University of Mississippi student who planned to start graduate school in the fall. Lee’s body has not been found.
Rep. Kevin Horan, Harrington’s defense attorney, and District Attorney Ben Creekmore, the prosecuting attorney in the case, jointly filed the motion to seal the filings. Both attorneys assert that this action will guarantee a fair trial for the defendant, a former UM student from Grenada, Mississippi.
The case has received immense media attention since Jay Lee’s disappearance on July 8, 2022. Horan has said that he believes this publicity will introduce prejudice to the trial and to a potential jury pool.
“People on social-media platforms have the tendency to post everything we do, and sometimes they get it wrong,” Horan said. “For example, this motion would only cover the filings between now and the time the jury is seated, and not the whole trial. That’s not what’s being reported, and that jeopardizes the defendant’s right to a fair trial.”
Still, prosecutors and defense attorneys filing jointly on a motion to seal case information is rare. “The state also has the ethical obligation to ensure the defendant’s right to a fair trial,” Horan said. “The coverage of this case isn’t going to diminish, and any efforts to diminish sensationalized pretrial publicity are in the best interest of a fair trial.”
‘Secrecy Lessens the Public’s Trust’
Charles Mitchell, a media-law professor at the University of Mississippi, speculated that the concern is not with what traditional media outlets are reporting, but rather with the voluminous amount of social-media posts circulated since Lee’s disappearance.
“Courts and their records are open for a reason, (and) it has to be noted that any amount of secrecy lessens the public’s trust in the process,” Mitchell said. “Judges have to balance the interests at stake when there’s a motion like this. Given the aura of public distrust in this case so far, a motion to seal anything would ramp up those who feel justice is being manipulated.”
Mitchell said the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution “has been interpreted to mean jurors will use only testimony evidence admitted at trial in deciding the verdict. It follows that the more written about or discussed a case has been before trial, the more difficult it becomes to find people who can ignore what they may have read or heard.”
Adam Ganucheau, editor-in-chief of Mississippi Today, was in the courtroom to represent Mississippi Today’s parent company, Deep South Today, and several other media outlets’ motion to intervene in the interest of public knowledge. Ganucheau also held a printed statement of opposition from the Mississippi Press Association.
Judge Luther asked Ganucheau to save his remarks, however. Luther quickly moved forward, denying the motion to seal the files, emphasizing that the file has been open for more than two years. Luther said that any further pretrial evidence would be unlikely to prejudice a jury.
Attorneys are not required to file every discovery, unlike “back in the day when all discovery was filed in the case file,” Luther said. “Everything the defense and prosecuting attorneys knew, the general public knew, and that could have been used to adversely affect the trial. That’s no longer the case, so I don’t think this motion is necessary.”
Judge Luther said he would consider making future filings private on a case-by-case basis.
DA: ‘We’ll Just Go Forward’
After the hearing, District Attorney Ben Creekmore said he anticipates trying the case “like any other case. We’ll just go forward.”
“The judge’s ruling was the right one,” Ganucheau said. “The reason we filed this motion was ultimately constitutional; these are constitutional protections that have been recognized by the Mississippi Supreme Court.”
“This is a very high-profile moment for the public’s right to information,” he added. “The public has a right to know—whether it’s a high-profile case or not—what’s in these files.”
Jimmie “Jay” Lee, 20, was last seen on July 8, 2022, after what prosecutors say was a sexual encounter with Sheldon Harrington. Lee was a well-known member of the LGBTQ communities of both Oxford and the University of Mississippi, a member of the campus chapter of the NAACP and a May 2022 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in social work.
Harrington, also a May 2022 graduate, was arrested on July 22, 2022, and indicted for capital murder. He was released in early December 2022 on a $250,000 bond. His trial was recently moved from October to December 2, 2024, on the grounds of the limited hotel space and restaurant availability for imported and sequestered jurors during the traditionally hectic University of Mississippi football season.
