OXFORD, Miss.—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, Miss.
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
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