 Eron Shelman (Photo: Proving Innocence)
During the investigation, officers with the Detroit Police Department spoke with Knight’s grandmother, Margret Scott. She said that Knight had left her house at about 1:30 p.m. on May 14, getting into a black-and-white car with 19-year-old Eron Shelman and two other men, one Black and one white. She did not know the white man and could not see the face of the Black man.
On June 3, 1992, detectives spoke with 19-year-old Andre “Dre” Rice, who was already in custody on unrelated charges. In a statement, Rice said he was one of the passengers in the car with Shelman and had fired the shot that killed Knight.
Rice said the shooting “just happened,” in part because he thought that Knight was going to hurt him or his family. “He thought that I had set him up to get shot last year,” Rice said. “Somebody had [gone] over to his house and shot his car up, and his mother was in the car.”
A detective asked Rice why he went to Knight’s house if Rice thought Knight was out to get him.
“I don’t know,” Rice said. “We were just going over there. I damned sure didn’t know he was going to get in the car.”
Rice was asked whether Shelman or the other occupant of the car, Floyd Ray Pennington (the white passenger), knew that Rice was going to shoot Knight. “Not that I remember,” he said. Rice said in the statement that Pennington gave him the gun a few days before the shooting, and that Shelman disposed of it a few days later.
Police arrested Shelman on June 4, 1992, and he and Rice were charged with first-degree murder. Pennington, the owner of the car, was never charged.
Rice and Shelman were to be tried together, but Rice’s attorney, Jeffrey Edison, moved for separate juries, arguing that the state's expected witnesses implicated Shelman and would harm Rice’s defense. Paul Curtis, Shelman’s attorney, did not object, and Judge Vera Massey Jones of the Wayne County Recorder’s Court granted the motion.
The trial began on December 19, 1992. Shelman’s jury did not hear about Rice’s statement to police. No physical evidence connected Shelman to the murder, and the state’s case relied on statements that witnesses said Shelman had made.
Montez Bell, who was Shelman’s cousin, testified that he saw Shelman pull up to Bell’s home in a black-and-white car on May 14 at around 1:30 p.m. He said that Rice was behind Shelman, and Bell said he heard Shelman say “he was going to take Tone out.”
Bell testified that about 90 minutes later, he ran into Shelman again. Shelman was alone and not in a car. Bell said that Shelman told him, “it hadn’t happened yet.” At around 5 p.m., Bell said, he ran into Shelman at a store down the street from Bell’s house, and Shelman asked Bell to buy him a drink. During one of these conversations, Bell testified, Shelman told him that Knight has “got to go.”
After the shooting, Bell testified, he ran into Shelman, who told him that Knight had been killed and that Rice was responsible. Bell said Rice was there “in a different room” when Shelman made this claim.
Bell had been a suspect in the shooting, and had been arrested and charged in Knight’s death. While in custody, Bell gave a statement that read in part: “About four days after the shooting, me, Dre, and Eron, was riding in my car. And Eron said we shot him and threw him in the alley. Eron said he was driving the car and Tone was in the front, and white boy was in the back.” He testified that this was a truthful statement and was the first time that he had heard about the shooting.
During cross-examination, Bell testified that the police never read him his Miranda rights and held him in a windowless room for several hours. He said the officers would not allow him to write a statement. They wrote one for him, and Bell testified that he did not read it before signing. He said he learned some of the information in the statement from the officers. Bell testified that he was not present when Knight was shot and that he never heard Shelman say that he was going to shoot Knight, had shot Knight, or had assisted in the shooting.
Bell said that he was convicted of receiving and concealing stolen property several months before Shelman’s trial.
Barbara Meyer had also been questioned by homicide detectives in the days after the shooting. She testified that the police threatened her. “They told me that if I didn’t make a statement or make any kind of statement I will be sitting in jail,” she said. Eventually, Meyer gave the police at least four statements. In her final statement, Meyer said that Shelman had come to her house on May 16, driving a black-and-white car.
She testified that she heard Shelman tell her boyfriend, William Logan, that he was being accused of Knight’s murder. She also said in the statement that she overheard Shelman say “that there was a word out that there were two more people to be killed.”
Meyer testified that she lied to the police in response to their threats. She said, “Eron didn’t say anything about two more people. It was the girl across the road was talking to someone on the phone. And she got off the phone and said, ‘Barb, there are two more people out there to be killed.’”
Logan testified and confirmed that Shelman had told him he was being blamed for Knight’s murder.
Rice’s jury began deliberations prior to the conclusion of Shelman’s case, and he was convicted of second-degree murder and a weapons charge on December 22, 1992. The jury found Rice lacked premeditation or deliberation in his actions.
When Shelman’s trial continued, Curtis asked Judge Jones if he could call Felicia Humphrey as a witness. Judge Jones denied the request, because Humphrey had sat through large parts of the trial—listening to other witnesses and violating the sequestration order.
Despite that ruling, Judge Jones allowed Curtis to make a record of Humphrey’s intended testimony.
Outside of the jury’s presence, Humphrey testified that she had heard some of Bell’s testimony at a preliminary examination and at trial and been “shocked” by it. She said she asked Bell about his testimony after the preliminary examination and that Bell told her he testified falsely because he believed he would be held in contempt of court if he did not repeat what he said in his statement. Humphrey said she approached Curtis during the trial to tell him what she knew. She acknowledged that she could have gone to Curtis months earlier, in the summer of 1992, after the preliminary examination.
During closing argument, Assistant Prosecutor Lisa Lindsay told the jury that “We don’t know who actually shot [Knight]” but that Shelman was guilty because he had aided and abetted in the murder by picking up Knight and putting him in the car.
Despite a statement from Rice saying he had shot Knight, Lindsay said Shelman displayed an intent to kill. “People don’t normally or usually survive wounds to the back of the head,” she said. “When you are shooting somebody at close range with a gunshot wound to the back of the heard, it speaks of two things, intent to kill and a certain cold-blooded calculatedness.”
The jury convicted Shelman of first-degree murder on December 23, 1992, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Rice received a sentence of 25 to 60 years in prison.
Shelman appealed, arguing that Judge Jones erred in excluding Humphrey’s testimony. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction on December 9, 1994.
More than 20 years later, on July 31, 2017, Shelman filed a pro se petition for a new trial. The petition said he was innocent and that Curtis had been ineffective by agreeing to sever the trials, which prevented his jury from learning about Rice’s statement to the police. In addition, Curtis didn’t call Rice as a witness, nor did he make any effort to interview him prior to the trial. Shelman’s motion also said that his appellate attorney had been ineffective for failing to raise these issues.
The Michigan Court of Appeals ordered the state to file a response, then put the case on hold in December 2018, after the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) of the Wayne County District Attorney’s Office expressed interest in reviewing Shelman’s claim of actual innocence. In January 2020, the CIU finished its review. Without ruling on Shelman’s claim of innocence, the CIU returned the case back to the appellate court.
In August 2020, Rachel Wolfe began representing Shelman. On June 1, 2021, she filed an amended motion for relief. Along with Shelman’s existing claims, the motion also said that Shelman’s right to a fair trial was compromised by Curtis’s conflict of interest, because he and Edison were actually partners in a law firm. Wolfe had noticed the arrangement on a transcript from a pre-trial hearing and then found additional confirmation in a law directory.
The motion said there was no record that Shelman knew of the conflict of interest. “Perhaps the matter was simply overlooked by the court,” the motion said. “Notably, the attorneys’ addresses are listed on only one transcript, and on all other transcripts, their addresses and the name of their shared firm is omitted. While this might excuse the court from any responsibility for resolving the conflict, it certainly does not excuse defense counsel.”
The motion also included affidavits from Rice, Humphreys, and M.R., a friend of Rice and Knight.
In his affidavit, dated March 10, 2021, Rice again asserted that he alone shot Knight and that Shelman had nothing to do with the crime. “Neither Eron nor Floyd [Pennington] knew I was going to shoot Tone that day,” Rice said.
Rice also said that he would have testified at Shelman’s trial if asked, “because that was my reason in making the statement I made to the police to try and clear Shelman from these charges because he had nothing to do with the murder.”
Humphrey’s affidavit repeated much of the testimony she gave outside the jury’s presence. She said she confronted Bell and asked how he could testify about events he did not witness. Humphrey said Bell told her that he had picked up information “from the streets,” and in exchange for his testimony, the state was going to cut him a deal on his own case.
In his affidavit, M.R. said he was close friends with Shelman and Knight, who had a reputation for violence. He said that Rice told him in 2020 what happened during the shooting. “Andre explained to me that he shot Knight without warning and without informing anybody prior to the shooting,” M.R. said.
The motion was later amended to include an affidavit from Jennifer Palmer, who was dating Shelman at the time of the murder. Palmer said in the affidavit that after she told Shelman that the police were looking for him, Shelman said that he had nothing to do with the killing but was driving the car when the passenger shot Knight.
After Shelman’s arrest, Palmer said, she occasionally talked to Bell to find out what was happening in the case. “I asked Montez did he think Eron would get out of jail and Montez said, ‘Eron had nothing to do with it,’” Palmer said. “I never knew while having this conversation with Montez that Montez was testifying against Eron, because Montez was adamant that Eron wasn’t involved in the murder.”
Four days of evidentiary hearings were held in 2022. Humphrey and Palmer each testified about their separate conversations with Bell.
Curtis and Edison also testified. They denied that they were ever law partners, despite a listing of “Curtis and Edison” found in the State Bar of Michigan directory in 1992. Curtis said he would not have asked Edison’s permission to talk to Rice.
Shelman and Rice also testified at the hearing. Their accounts of May 14, 1992, generally lined up. Shelman said he asked to borrow Pennington’s car and then made a plan with Knight to get their hair cut. Rice wasn’t included in those plans, Shelman said, but he showed up when Pennington arrived with the car.
After the haircuts, the four men drove around, including a stop at Bell’s house. Rice testified that he had not planned the shooting and barely remembered pulling the trigger. Shelman testified that Rice and Knight were drinking and cracking jokes while Shelman drove. He said he heard the gunshot, swerved reflexively, and hit the brakes. Knight’s body fell into his lap, and Shelman said he tried to stop the bleeding. Then he stopped the car, and Rice removed Knight’s body and ran away.
Shelman denied telling Bell that he was “going to take Tone out.” He said he did tell Bell that Knight has “got to go” but that was in reference to his plans that evening, when he had a date with Palmer and didn’t want Knight being a third wheel.
On January 26, 2023, Judge Shannon Walker of Wayne County Circuit Court granted Shelman’s motion and ordered a new trial, based on Palmer’s affidavit and related testimony at the evidentiary hearing.
“Palmer’s testimony makes a different result probable on retrial because it directly impeaches that already weak testimony of the state’s main witness, and because it is consistent with other impeachment evidence that, while not admitted at defendant’s original trial, would be presented on retrial,” the ruling said.
Shelman was released from prison on February 28, 2023. The state appealed, arguing that Palmer’s disclosures didn’t constitute new evidence; they were available to Shelman at the time of his trial.
On March 21, 2024, a three-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Judge Shannon’s ruling. The appellate court said that the testimony at the evidentiary hearing bolstered Shelman’s claim that Palmer’s information was new evidence. Palmer had testified that no one contacted her and she was unaware that she possessed impeachment evidence. Shelman testified that Palmer, whom he dated through 1993, never mentioned her conversations with Bell.
In its ruling, the court noted that Bell was dead, and if a retrial were to occur, his 1992 testimony would be read into the record.
The state dismissed the case on January 9, 2025.
– Ken Otterbourg
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