#508 Maggie Freleng with Eron Shelman

Last year, I spoke to Iron Shellman, who served almost thirty one years in prison for a crime he did not commit. When we spoke, prosecutors in Wayne County, Michigan were appealing the court's decision to grant him a new trial, and Eiron didn't know if he would have to go back to prison. Well, I have great news. Earlier this month, Ereon was officially exonerated.

It's hard to put in the words how I felt. It actually took a few days to like, let's start sleeping. Then I began to come to the realization, Dad, it's really open. Thirty years later, free.

And today we're going to re air my conversation with Eiron. May fourteenth, nineteen ninety two started as a normal Thursday for Iroon Shellman. He called up a few of his buddies to hang, Andre, Floyd and Antonio. Floyd came buying his car, and they all headed out to get haircuts, pick up some liquor, and bounce around Detroit.

We had fun, we laughed, we joked. All of those things happened.

Eron was driving Floyd's car, with Antonio beside him in the passenger seat and Floyd and Andre in the back. Suddenly he heard a loud.

Bang and it startled me to a degree where I almost crashed the car. And as I was trying to stop the car and gain that back, Antonio leaned over and fell into my lap. I had my dearest friend laying in my lap bleeding out the back of his head.

Antonio was dead. The man who shot him confessed to police and gave a full statement.

And he said, you know, I just I just lost it. I didn't even think about it. I just took the gun and I just shot him.

But Ieron was arrested, charged and tried for his murder, and in the end Iran was the one who was convicted.

I'm Iron Shelman. I've served thirty years nine months in prison for a first degree murder that I didn't do.

From LVA for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today, Iaron Shellman. Iaron Shellman was born in Detroit in nineteen seventy two.

Yeah, I grew up on the inner city Detroit, Michigan. Mother was a Desiree Salman and my father was a Theodore Right. My mother did a bunch of stuff early on. She worked at at and T for a spell, and she worked at Blue Crossing Blue Shield for a spell. My father was in and out of correctional facilities.

So your mom pretty much raised you by herself.

Yeah, yeah, with a handful of cousins and family members and stuff that you know also participated in the rearing of me. I have one sibling, she's ten years younger than I am. I have a host of cousins. They all think that they're my brothers and sisters.

How would you describe Aeron overall?

I would say, if I had to give it words, gentle giant.

Right, this is Eeron's cousin, Sonya Shulman. She's nine years younger than Aaron.

Sometimes when you see people who are larger in stature, you have a sense of intimidation, and that has never been that with him because he's always had a very soft voice, and so his words always came out really soft and graceful and kind. But when it was time to be protective, you could hear change, Right, don't do that, put that down. You're gonna get in trouble, you know, those sorts of things. Growing up, it was just like that.

Measure sort of way.

So the older cousins or you know, of that nature hovered over all of the younger ones such as myself, in a way that felt very brotherly and sisterly.

Yeah. My grandfather, you know, he would give us a few dollars every weekend and we would all pile into city bus and catch the bus downtown and watch kom Fu movies when we were children.

What movies do you remember, Oh.

We watched all of all of the Komfu movies at the Fox. You know, we were kids, like late seventies, early eighties. It was fans of the guys with the rings firstly.

That's who it was, right, Okay.

Yes, there you go.

Although his extended family was always there for him, Iron's home life was unstable.

You know, again, I'm pretty young, but you know, all signs showed that, you know, it was drug abuse and those types of things that were happening in the home.

Aron spent less and less time at home, more and more time out in the streets. Before long he was starting to get in trouble.

You know, typical story as as a household deteriorates and you know, it's no real real person that's making you do this or making you do that. You know, so you tend to start running with people that you should.

And so what was that in your neighborhood? What was going on? It was?

It was a lot. It just was. It was, you know, guys that did this and guys that did that, drug dealing, you know, breaking in houses. I was away a lot, you know, juve our delinquency, youth homes, training schools and such.

How much of your childhood do you think you spent in some sort of facility or incarceration.

I'm fifty one years old, and last I tried to do the math. I think I may have spent maybe fourteen years free.

Do you think growing up with your dad in prison had any effective on how you kind of chose to live your life?

Must have, right, Like you know, like my grandfather, he chipped in, he did the best he could. He worked a lot and such, but he come by every day and check on me and spend a few minutes with me a day. But for a child like me, and you know that was going through all that type of family drama, you kind of want a strong individual. You long for a father figure right to teach you, you know, what not to do and what to do.

So you have these friends, you're kind of living this little bit of street life getting into some trouble. Can you tell me about your relationship with Andre Rice and Antonio Knight?

Both of them was real good friends of mine personally, Like we grew up as like really really good friends at those ages. At the thirteen and fourteen, I lived on a street with Antonio from the age of twelve thirteen. We caught the same bus to school for like many years, I spent I spent nights over their house. I ate at their house, you know, when my mother was kind of going through her things, you know, and we weren't

What was Antonio like?

Early on? He was like us pretty much, you know, kid trying to find his way right, trying to figure out which side of the tracks he's going to fall on, you know. And as I would come back to the neighborhood, as I was released from this facility, or I would get a break from that Foster home. I seen the change in it that it shifts. It was never really wholesome, but it stopped being that and more street.

And then tell me about Andre. You said you were really close with him.

Yeah, it was kind of like a kid brother. You know. We would go out and dance and like a little like partying and such. You know, nothing really crazy, but you know, he went to school every day and he had a strong mother influence wouldn't allow him. Yeah. Yeah, she was really you know, big with church and you know, and that type of stuff, so she really wouldn't let him veer off too much.

In May of nineteen ninety two, Ieron was nineteen years old. He was still hanging out with Andre and Antonio, who also went by the name Tone, as well as some of the other neighborhood guys. One Thursday morning, Aaron decided he needed a haircut and Tone wanted to come along. Eron called up his friend Ken, who ran a barber shop at his house, and Ken said, sure, come on by.

So we called Floyd, which was my buddy you know what I'm saying, and he would drive us. So he pulled up and picked me up and we started to accumulate more and more people Ieron.

Floyd, Pennington and Andre headed over to Antonio's to pick him up, and Eeron went inside to get him. While he waited, he chatted with Tone's grandmother and little sister.

It was really just me being goofy with the kid's sister, and grandmother said something or another to me. You know, y'all be careful, y'all, you know, stay out of trouble. You know. She was big on that type.

Of The four of them went over to Ken's and got haircuts, then drove around in Floyd's dodge for most of the day.

I don't recall who was sitting where first, but I drove because I didn't drink as much as them. Throughout the day, there was shifting in the seats. We made a couple of stops, including like liquor stores, the barbershop, something to.

Eat, and they did at one point stop at Montese Bell's house, so that's Aaron's cousin. They stopped there and chatted for a couple of minutes.

This is Rachel Wolf, Aaron's post conviction attorney.

Montes said at this time, like hey, guys, like what are you doing? Like where are you going, And that's when Aaron apparently said, we're you take Tone out or we're going to take Tone out.

At some point that day, Andre and Antonio they have gotten into some kind of disagreement. But if there was anything wrong between them, Eron was unaware of it.

I was in and out of a car, going in and out of cousins house, talked to him back in, so I don't know the full between those two. When we traveled back up towards Antonio's house, it was kind of quiet from Andre, but everyone else was still in the mold that they were in. We laughed, we joked, you know, all of those things happened.

Eron was driving with Antonio in the passenger seat beside him, Floyd was sitting in the back seat behind Tone, and Andre was sitting behind Iron. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Ieron heard a loud bang.

And it startled me to a degree where I almost crashed the car. And as I was trying to stop the car and gain that back, Antonio leaned over and fell into my lap. I looked back, I seen the faces of Floyd and Andre, and I had my my my dearest friend laying in my lap, bleeding out the back of his head.

Do you remember if anyone was like, what the hell just happened? Like what did you do?

I don't know if anyone really screamed out. I really don't. I think it was what now, right? I think I think that that's that's the emotion. What now? Like you know what to do? What what happens? Now? Right?

So what did you do?

I drove? I stopped here. I stopped there, and before long we were in an alley, uh like maybe two three blocks away. They told me to stop. The gun was still in his hand, you know, it was pull over here. Stopped the car.

Andre and Floyd pulled Antonio's body out of the car and left it there in the alley, and then Eron drove.

I was just so scared, you know. I didn't want to be the one that was labeled to snitch or any of that.

So they found the body in the alleyway. I believe somebody who ran a shop nearby in the area found the body in the alley and called the police.

An autopsy showed that Tone had died of a single gunshot wound to the back of his head. Almost immediately, the Detroit police were out looking for the killer, and a number of suspects were rounded up for questioning.

I do know that they arrested at least three people who were, you know, maybe witnesses. They suspected that these three individuals, as Montes Bell and then this other woman, Barbara Meyer and her boyfriend William Logan were all arrested, charged with the homicide, and then held for many hours

A few weeks later, Andre Rice was arrested as well. Uron was still laying low.

You know, I'm nineteen years old. I'm ducking in the dodge and I only really came out once I found out that they had arrested Andre, so I kind of let my guard down after that. I'm like, oh, okay, police arrested it, like you know, it's over with, right, But it wasn't.

The statements from Montez, William and Barbara along with Tone's grandmother had placed Iran in the car when Tone was shot, and the investigation was now focused on him and Andre. Before long, the police found him at his cousin's house and took him down to the station.

I didn't speak to him. They took me back to the sale for hours. When I come back down, they had a confession from Andre Sweat. He told me he showed me a paper with a signature on it, said he had everything he needed. And I said, well, if you got everything you needed, you got a confession, surely I can go, right. Was it the case? They said they needed me to put some nails in the coffin of him and to pull Floyd into it. I said, I don't know nothing.

On June thirteenth, nineteen ninety two, Andre Rice confessed to shooting in to He told the police that Aeron and Floyd had no idea it was going to happen, and they had nothing to do with it.

What Andrea says is that Tone had been threatening him and threatening his family, and so Andre says he had been drinking and he said he was sitting there and thinking, this guy's going to hurt my family. It's totally unprovoked. You know, I just lost it. I didn't even think about it. I just took the gun and I just shot him.

So you stay quiet, he confesses, How do you think you got involved in this?

I was tied to it either way, right, So I just assumed that since I didn't help anybody, and I didn't help the investigation, I would be thrown in somehow, right, That's what I was thinking. I don't know, you know, at the time, I didn't. I surely didn't think that it would garner me a first degree murder conviction and send me away for thirty plus years.

You're listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. On June seventeenth, nineteen ninety two, Ivon Shellman and Andre Rice were both charged with first degree premeditated murder. Their trial started six months later.

The trial was actually pretty short. It ran over the course of five days December seventeenth through the twenty third of nineteen ninety two. They were tried together, Andre and Ieron, but they had separate juries.

The judge was Vera Massey Jones and the prosecutor was Lisa Lindsay. Ireon's defense attorney was Paul Curtis and Andre's attorney was Jeffrey Edison.

He was partners with Paul Curtis. They were law partners. They were operating out of the same office. There is a potential conflict of interest there.

But the trial moved forward with very little to go on. There was no physical evidence for the state to present.

They never found a murder weapon in the case. According to the police, they never found the car. Floyd went away with the car. The car was never seen again, so they couldn't fingerprint it or do anything like that.

That.

The prosecution's few witnesses included a medical examiner and one of the police officers.

And then there was Antonio. Knight's grandmother came in and testified about what had happened when they came to pick Antonio.

Up that day.

In what she saw, there were three people in the vehicle, well for if you count Antonio himself. One of them was never charged, never arrested, never interviewed.

That was Floyd Pennington, the owner of the car.

He was the one white man in the car, which I also find interesting. You know, so their only evidence that Iran was guilty was this testimony of his cousin.

Montes Bell was the state star witness. He was the one who said Iran had told him they were going to take tone out.

He was the one that was going to make it difference, and his testimony was incredible. There were lots of ways to impeach him and discredit him, just using conflicts in his own testimony, conflicts between what he said at trial and at the exam, the fact that he had charges pending, the fact that he was facing the homicide charge initially, so he just the trial attorney really just focused on cross examination.

Did the police convince anyone to testify against him that maybe made something up?

I don't know.

I will say that one of the investigators on the case, her name was Barbara Simon, has been alleged in several other cases of pressuring witnesses eliciting fabricated testimony. So it's possible, and especially knowing what we do about the Detroit Police

Now.

To understand what happened next, it's important to know how the trial was conducted. Ivon and Andre were co defendants and they were tried together before the same judge and prosecutor. But they had two separate defense attorneys and two separate juries.

So the way they do that is, you know, they'll do partial testimony from one witness. They'll present the things in front of each jury while the other jury is out of the courtroom, and anything that pertains to both cases, they'll have both juries in the courtroom. It's something they do a lot to save time.

This means that potentially each jury could get a very different picture of this same set of events.

Andre didn't testify at the trial, but they had a police office or take the stand and read his initial statement into the record. This is the very first version of events he told police. You know, he went in there, they interviewed him. He said, we were all in the car. I shot him. The other two people in the car with me didn't know anything about it. I didn't even think about it. I just acted right. That same evidence was not presented to mister Shelman's jury, ever.

He was convicted. First, he was charged with first degree murder and felony firearm. They reduced his to second degree murder with felony firearm, and they just left me at first degree murder.

And in this case, Andre I believe got twenty five to sixty years was his sentence.

I just I'm just still wondering how that happened, because it isn't it true that Andre also said like you were not involved, you didn't know anything.

That information was never read in my trial. Jury never heard that. The jury only heard that I was a bad kid and I went picked my buddy up and something terrible happened to him. If you only hear a certain side, it's all you can make your opinion. And so I don't blame him at all.

So, because the jury had not heard the evidence that allowed Andre Rice's jury to say, oh, there was no premeditation and deliberation, Ieron Shulman's jury did not have any idea. They didn't hear Andre's statement. So if they believed that he was involved, even in the slightest they believed they were looking at something that was the first degree homicide. That's the charge that was put to them, right, and

So Rice got a lesser sentence.

I know that you explained a little bit of that because of the testimony that was not allowed into Eeron's trial. But that was not a Brady violation, correct, It was not hidden. The defense attorney just did not.

The defense attorney knew about it, you know, and it's I don't know, you know. We interviewed Paul Curtis, We called him at the evidentiary hearing to explain his reasoning, and the only reason he gave was that he assumed Andre Rice would plead the fifth and just refuse to testify, and so what was the point of talking to him? And when I asked him, well, why wouldn't you use this statement. He didn't need Andre, he really didn't have an answer.

When you're sitting at try.

And they present this for Andre and then not for you, did you say to your defense attorney, like, what is going on?

Why isn't this coming into my trial?

I didn't have a clue. I didn't have a clue. No, No, nineteen year old No. I really believed that like someone would see the truth. Right, that's what you hope, right, You hoped it like like you know, you got me down for a murder. I don't have a gun possession to nothing, it's just a murder, right, and you have the other guy down for the murder and the gun, and you're assuming that like someone will say, like, because what was his involvement then?

Right?

You know, so it just didn't happen for me. Prison is like a microcosm of like the worst of the worst. That's what I think prison is. It's, you know, you got your elements that's really bad and terrible, and then you got maybe a little bit of a sentil of goodness, right, and it's up to you which side you want to you know, attach yourself to when you go to prison. The older guys that tell you it's sheeping, its wolves

Sonya was just ten years old when her beloved cousin Aeron, the gentle giant who watched over her, went to prison.

It was a milestone, and not in a good way for our family. The impact was felt through the entire family unit and it was visceral. You could see it. People changed, things changed. It was a loss. It was a grief and loss experience for the family.

And you know, he mentioned we talked about how he was in and out of some foster homes, juvenile detention.

He got in a lot of trouble. When he gets charged with murder. Was that surprising to everyone?

It was?

It was he was nineteen we went to prison, right, there were teenage things, you know, joy riding or you know, running away from home or we can't find you for a week because you're hiding with a lady or a girl or whatever. You know, you never heard of violence, not from the gentle giant, right, So that was that was a major shock to our family.

Did everyone believe in his innocence at first? Or was there everyone did?

Yes? That was it was clear because we know him, we know him. So part of that grief and loss also included that charge and persons were not able to articulate what that meant and how we disagreed or how we couldn't even imagine something like that could happen. We didn't have a skill set. The adults lost their ability to rationally behave emotionally. You saw lots of crying and anger and who missed court and who went to court? And who should be finding money? And what should we

What do you do? Where do we go?

That shift was painful to watch.

Wow.

After the initial shock, the family rallied together to support Eron, and as Sonia grew older, she took on more of a role in his fight for innocence.

Our relationship began to get very strong. In my teen years, and so I would ask him questions and he would say things like, you're smart enough to handle this. And so he would like tell me what he was doing in appeals and send me what he had and I would read and so I knew early on about the confession.

Yeah, So, at what point did things start to change for you in prison?

Do you remember when that.

Was my last like seventeen eighteen years were without incident?

Right?

In fact, my last eleven years and three months. I was a member of the TGIA Dog program where I helped train rescue greyhounds.

Wow.

So I did that, but it allowed me time to really get back into my case and research some other avenues of my case. And that's what we did, me and a fellow inmate, you know, we started going back through it and kind of looking at it from a different vantage point, and we kind of stumble up on a couple of things.

So he filed his post conviction motion for a leaf from judgment in twenty seventeen. He had written it himself and maybe he had the help of a legal writer or something. He had written it. They held his cases called in abeyance. The judge didn't decide it. They referred it to the Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit, that's the Prosecutor's office's own division to review these cases.

Around that time, Aaron heard about Rachel from a fellow prisoner reached out to her. She had just started her own practice.

So Ereon's case was one of my very first cases. It was the first case that I filed in the Wayne County Circuit Court under the name Wolf Law. So it's been a long road together for both of us.

The first thing that Rachel did was to sit down and go through Eiron's trial transcripts to see if she could uncover a basis for a new trial.

So when I read a trial transcript, I'm looking for all of the things the jury would have been looking at, all the things the prosecutor argued to prove guilt. And in some cases there is a ton of evidence. You know, there's video evidence, there's DNA evidence, there's multiple eyewitnesses. In this case, we have none of those. There's zero physical evidence in this case. So their only evidence that Iran was guilty was this testimony of his cousin, Montes Bell,

That he was there.

Earon said we're going to take Tone out. So yes, he testified on the stand. I took that to mean they were going to kill him. So the prosecutor's case was an aiding and a betting theory. So they argued throughout that Andre was the shooter. There was never really any question about that. Their argument was that Iran took part in the planning of the operation.

Is that because he said we're going to take Tone out? Yes, yes, oh my god.

Okay, which Iran later explained at the He testified at the evidentiary hearing we had later and explained He's like, no, I you know, we're going to take Tone out, like we're going to go do something. We're going to go to the club, you know, something like that. So the two statements they had that Iran apparently made that montes Bell said he made were both also ambiguous.

Rachel filed a motion for a new trial based on actual innocence, ineffective assistance of counsel, and newly discovered evidence. Their investigation had uncovered several new witnesses who testified on Eiron's behalf. One was a woman named Jennifer Palmer.

She had had several conversations with Montesbell in which he admitted that he knew Iran had not been involved, and he knew that Iron wasn't going to be convicted because Eron never had anything to do with it. So direct impeachment evidence against Montesbell their main witness.

And there's someone else who testified on Eiron's behalf, someone who knows the truth about what happened that day, Andre Rice. Andre, you remember, had gotten a lesser sentence twenty five to sixty years, and thanks to good behavior, he was relieved after serving less than twenty five years of that and he had already tried to help Eron.

Andre Rice has been out for over a decade. After he was released, he wrote up an affidavit. So when Eiron filed his own motion and wrote it himself, it was based on Andrea's affidavit. And Andrea is also the one that went to the Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit and said, hey, you know, I know this man is in prison. I'm the one that committed this crime. Please look into this case. The challenge for Andre is that in order to get a new trial, you have to have new evidence.

Since Andre's confession had been presented at the time of trial. It was not considered new evidence when Eiron filed his appeal.

If there is a new trial, Andre's testimony can and will be presented at that new trial. And so when the judge is looking at, Okay, what's the evidence we're going to have on retrial? Is there a chance that the outcome will be different? She does get to consider what Andre has to say, but his testimony alone was not going to be enough legally for us to argue that Aaron was innocent deserved a new trial. He'd been wrongfully convicted.

Fortunately, when she reviewed the new evidence, Judge Shannon Walker found it credible, and in January of twenty twenty three, she vacated Eiron's conviction and ordered a new trial. Two months later, Aaron was officially released from prison after nearly three decades. Eiron soon found work at a chemical plant and got his own apartment. He still has to wear a GPS monitor and stick to a curfew, but he's been enjoying getting to know his three adult children and their families.

They're all Gobris Dan. When I went to prison, one was barely what six months, and that was my youngest son Aaron, and his sister Alex and my oldest son Xavier. They were like almost three four when I went to president. I went in when I was nineteen years old. I was a kid, like I'm fifty one years old now, right. It's crazy sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror and I see my grandfather right, Like, I'm gray

Unfortunately, Eeron's journey isn't over yet. In August of twenty twenty three, Wayne County prosecutors appealed to the court's decision to grant him a new trial.

What happens in these cases that are thirty years old is that when a new trial is granted, you know, they lose witnesses. Monteese Bell is deceased, Antonio Knight's grandmother is no longer available, And what happens is the prosecutor's office is facing the possibility that they won't be able to retry him at all.

But if the court order is reversed and the conviction is reinstated, there's still the possibility that Ireon could be sent back.

And it's terrifying. We're terrified. It is extremely likely that they will order mister Shellman to report to the Michigan Department of Corrections and go back to incarceration, while we then would need to file another motion for a leaf from judgment or ask the court to reconsider the issues that she didn't address in her first ruling.

Are you worried about potentially going back.

I'm of the mindset now that if this all turns out to be like a great vacation from what I had been living for almost thirty one years, I'm okay with that too. It sent God's chans to me, so I don't stress anymore about it as much as I did early on. And again, I'm thankful for the opportunity to come out and rejoin society at this later stage and get to know my kids and my grandkids in a way that I couldn't from behind those bars. Right.

The blessing of having him out alone is just his presence is absolutely breathtaking. It's almost like a butterfly, you know, coming from a caterpillar. Yeah. I enjoy watching him pay bills. I enjoy watching him ask about budgets. He enjoys it. He was like, this is a grown up bill. Look how I got my budget. I just want him to enjoy these things. I don't know anybody. I don't know any other humans who enjoy paying paying bills.

I'm a big proponent of you know, I look for the little blessings as much as I look for the big ones. Right, You're more likely to stumble across the little ones than the big ones. You sit around and wait for that big one you know may not never come.

But I'm okay, you are very graceful. I'm always so shocked that, after spending thirty years in a horrible place, that you guys are all just so so graceful and have such humility. And you're kind of breaking my heart right now.

No, listen, once you meet me, you kind of can see that. You know, I'm much more than just my case, right, It's just the truth of the matter. My case happened a very long time ago. I'm sure for that family that you know, every year is a reminder of that, right, you know, it was traumatic. I'm a victim of something, right, But I'm not the victim. I'm just not the victim. Isn't here anymore, Maggie and so I tell people all the time, like pray for them, pray for that family.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freelink. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in the episode description to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason Flam, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis, as well as senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Kathleen Fink, story editor Hannah Beal, and researcher Shelby Sorels. Mixing and sound design are by Jackie Pauley, with additional