Ex-officer gets 35 years in sex assault
The former cop who flashed a badge in order to abduct and molest a teenage boy received on Tuesday a sentence of 35 years to life, the maximum that prosecutors and the victim’s family had requested.
In April, a jury found Shawn Michael Shelton, 40, guilty of first-degree kidnapping and sexual assault on a minor for the May 21, 2006, incident in which Shelton took the boy from a bus stop on McLeod Drive and Desert Inn Road and sexually assaulted him.
The 15-year-old victim said Shelton, who had claimed to be a police officer investigating a murder case, handcuffed him and forced him to perform oral sex on him in the back of Shelton’s black Hummer H2.
Shelton also was found guilty of battery with intent to commit sexual assault on a minor and use of a minor in the production of pornography. The teen testified that Shelton slammed his head against his skateboard in the back seat and took pictures of him forcing himself on the boy.
“I can’t be, like, a normal kid because I have bad memories,” the victim said in District Judge Michelle Leavitt’s courtroom Tuesday.
He told the court that Shelton has damaged his trust in law enforcement. He described how he still has flashbacks of the crime. Even while skateboarding, he looks over his shoulder in fear, he said.
The sentencing was bittersweet for Lynn and Lisa James of Winnfield, La., who believe Shelton was responsible for the death of their son in Natchitoches Parish, La., on Oct. 30, 2005. Shelton was the last person seen with Justin James before he was found dead of a drug overdose, unclothed from the waist down in an apartment where Shelton was staying, Lynn James said.
“I want justice for us. I want him to answer for what he’s done,” Lynn James said.
Calls to the Natchitoches district attorney and police department were not returned. But Clark County prosecutors Mary Kay Holthus and Josh Tomsheck said Shelton is a person of interest in the investigation of Justin James’ death.
Lynn James said Justin James was at a friend’s apartment when he met Shelton and the two began talking about Shelton’s black Hummer H2. “A 19-year-old, just interested in vehicles and girls,” Lynn James said of his son.
Several hours later, according to the death certificate that declared his death a homicide, Justin James died of a combination of cocaine, morphine and alprazolam intoxication.
Six months later, Shelton was arrested in California for the Las Vegas sexual assault.
Lisa James said they came to Las Vegas to support the victim’s family and pass out photos of Justin James to media covering the Shelton case.
“At least we have our son; they don’t,” the Las Vegas teen’s father said of Lynn and Lisa James after the sentencing.
The teen’s mother wept as she recounted for the court through a Spanish interpreter how the assault has changed her son’s life. Both parents declined to be identified in court and afterward to avoid identifying their son.
“With my son, the only thing he (Shelton) did is to destroy life,” she said.
During sentencing, Holthus called Shelton “the worst of the worst.”
Prosecutors previously charged Shelton with intentional transmission of the AIDS virus. They had claimed he knew he had the virus before the attack on the boy.
In September, prosecutors dismissed the charge because of insufficient evidence.
The teen’s mother said after the sentencing that her son has been tested and was not infected.
Shelton’s defense attorney, Carmine Colucci, had advocated for leniency because of Shelton’s contributions and accolades as a police officer, including more than 40 commendations and letters of appreciation. He had asked Leavitt to run the sentences for the four felonies concurrently for a minimum of 20 years.
Leavitt ran the counts consecutively, giving Shelton the maximum sentence.
Shelton is a retired sergeant with the Manhattan Beach (Calif.) Police Department, where he worked for nine years before retiring in 2003, saying he was permanently disabled by stress and high blood pressure.
Two years earlier he had filed an internal complaint about fellow officers using homosexual slurs. When department leaders didn’t react to his liking, he filed a discrimination lawsuit against the department.
During the trial, Colucci had planned to put Shelton on the witness stand to testify that the unprotected oral sex that took place between Shelton and the boy was consensual. He said Shelton would have said the two met at the Boulevard Mall and the boy got into Shelton’s vehicle, willingly.
Ultimately, Shelton didn’t testify.
“Mr. Shelton can turn his life around. He doesn’t need to be put away forever,” Colucci said Tuesday. “He can be and is a good man when he puts his mind toward doing the right thing.”
