Judge declares mistrial after jury deadlocks over killing of gay University of Mississippi student

A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the case of Sheldon “Timothy” Herrington Jr. in the 2022 killing of Jimmy “Jay” Lee, a gay man who was prominent in the LGBTQ+ community at the University of Mississippi.

Jurors said they were unable to reach a verdict after over nine and a half hours of deliberation.

Lee’s body has never been found, but a judge declared him dead.

Herrington, 24, showed little emotion as he left the courtroom with his attorneys and several relatives. He remains free on bond and is still charged with capital murder, which Mississippi law defines as a killing committed along with another felony — in this case, kidnapping. Prosecutors had said they would not seek the death penalty. He faces life in prison if he is tried again and convicted.

Jurors on Wednesday were told they could also consider lesser charges of first-degree murder, punishable by life in prison; second-degree murder, 20 years to life; or manslaughter, up to 20 years.

Circuit Judge Kelly Luther said he will consult with prosecutors and defense attorneys about setting another trial.

Both Herrington and Lee had graduated from the University of Mississippi. Lee, 20, was pursuing a master’s degree. He was known for his creative expression through fashion and makeup and often performed in drag shows in Oxford, according to a support group called Justice for Jay Lee.

Lee disappeared July 8, 2022, in Oxford, where the university is located and the trial was held.

Police arrested Herrington two weeks after Lee vanished. Investigators testified that they used warrants to obtain electronic records including explicit messages between social media accounts belonging to the two men and online searches conducted by Herrington, including one inquiring how long it takes to strangle someone.

Prosecutors said during closing arguments Wednesday that Herrington and Lee had a sexual encounter that ended badly and Lee left Herrington’s apartment. They said text messages showed that Herrington, who was not openly gay, persuaded Lee to return with the promise of more sex. Prosecutors said Lee was killed after going back.

“Tim Herrington lived a lie — lived a lie to his family,” District Attorney Ben Creekmore said. “He lied to Jay Lee to coax him over there, promising to do something with him.”

Herrington’s attorney, Kevin Horan, has said prosecutors cannot prove Lee is dead without having a body. He told jurors Wednesday that text messages showed Herrington did not lure Lee to his apartment.

“He’s the one that’s being dominant anchoring this particular conversation,” Horan said of Lee.

Lee, 20, has not contacted friends or family, and his financial transactions and once-prolific social media posts have stopped since the day he disappeared, investigators testified.

Police arrested Herrington two weeks after Lee went missing. Authorities interviewed Herington twice that day, and he gave conflicting information about the hours before Lee vanished, Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen testified Tuesday.

Before officers interviewed Herrington, they had already obtained explicit messages exchanged between social media accounts belonging to Herrington and Lee during the final hours Lee was known to be alive, McCutchen said.

Google records obtained through a warrant showed that Herrington searched “how long does it take to strangle someone” at 5:56 a.m., University Police Department Sgt. Benjamin Douglas testified last week.

The final text message from Lee’s phone was sent to a social media account belonging to Herrington at 6:03 a.m. from a spot near Herrington’s apartment, McCutchen said Tuesday. A cellphone tower in another part of Oxford last located any signal from Lee’s phone shortly before 7:30 a.m., the police chief said. A security camera showed Herrington moments later jogging out of a parking lot where Lee’s car was abandoned, investigators testified earlier.

On the day Lee vanished, Herrington was also seen on security cameras buying duct tape in Oxford and driving to his own hometown of Grenada about an hour south of Oxford, police have testified.

Herrington's relatives sat behind him in the courtroom, and Lee's sat behind prosecutors. When Luther dismissed court after the mistrial, he instructed the two groups to leave separately.

Jurors were chosen from another county about 250 miles (402 kilometers) to the south. They heard eight days of arguments and testimony.

The judge twice urged jurors to continue deliberating when they said they were deadlocked. After the third such message, Luther declared the mistrial and thanked them for serving, adding: “I’ve asked a lot of you."

Sheldon "Timothy" Herrington Jr., foreground, who was on trial for the murder of University of Mississippi student Jimmie "Jay" Lee, and his defense team leave court after a mistrial was declared, at the Lafayette County Courthouse in Oxford, Miss. on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (Bruce Newman/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, via AP, Pool)

Sheldon "Timothy" Herrington Jr., center, who was on trial for the murder of University of Mississippi student Jimmie "Jay" Lee, and his defense team leave court after a mistrial was declared, at the Lafayette County Courthouse in Oxford, Miss. on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (Bruce Newman/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, via AP, Pool)

Sheldon "Timothy" Herrington Jr., center, who was on trial for the murder of University of Mississippi student Jimmie "Jay" Lee, joins family as they leave court after a mistrial was declared, at the Lafayette County Courthouse in Oxford, Miss. on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (Bruce Newman/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, via AP, Pool)

Judge Kelly Luther presides over the case of Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., who is on trial for the murder of University of Mississippi student Jimmie "Jay" Lee, at the Lafayette County Courthouse in Oxford, Miss., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (Bruce Newman/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP, Pool)

Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., center, who is on trial for the murder of University of Mississippi student Jimmie "Jay" Lee, talks with his attorneys as the jury deliberates on the case, at the Lafayette County Courthouse in Oxford, Miss. on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (Bruce Newman/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP, Pool)

Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., who is on trial for the murder of University of Mississippi student Jimmie "Jay" Lee, sits at the defense table as the jury decides the case, at the Lafayette County Courthouse in Oxford, Miss., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (Bruce Newman/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP, Pool)

Sheldon "Timothy" Herrington Jr., who is on trial for the murder of University of Mississippi student Jimmie "Jay" Lee, leaves the courtroom as the jury is sent back for further deliberations, at the Lafayette County Courthouse in Oxford, Miss. on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (Bruce Newman/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, via AP, Pool)

Sheldon "Timothy" Herrington Jr., who is on trial for the murder of University of Mississippi student Jimmie "Jay" Lee, gets up from the defense table as the jury is sent back for further deliberations, at the Lafayette County Courthouse in Oxford, Miss., on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. (Bruce Newman/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, via AP, Pool)

Stephanie Lee talks with family during the capital murder trial of Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., who is charged in the 2022 death of her son, Jimmie "Jay" Lee, in Oxford, Miss., on Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (Antonella Rescigno/The Daily Mississippian via AP, Pool)

Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., who is on trial in the 2022 death of University of Mississippi student Jimmie "Jay" Lee, enters the Lafayette County Courthouse in Oxford, Miss., Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (Antonella Rescigno/The Daily Mississippian via AP, Pool)

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Madison Chock and Evan Bates danced their way to a record-setting seventh U.S. Figure Skating title on Saturday night, showcasing their trademark creativity, athleticism and precision in their final competition before the Milan Cortina Olympics.

Now, the countdown is on for the moment they have waited for the past four years.

“We like to build momentum through the season,” Bates said, “and it's a great feeling going into a big event knowing you skated well the previous event. So we're going to roll with that momentum into Milan.”

Chock and Bates have dominated ice dance ever since they finished fourth at the Beijing Games, arguably the most disappointing and frustrating placement for any Olympian. They have won the past three world titles, the past three gold medals at the Grand Prix Final, and they have nobody within sight of them when it comes to competing against fellow Americans.

Performing a flamenco-styled dance to a version of the Rolling Stones hit “Paint It Black” from the dystopian sci-fi Western drama “Westworld,” Chock and Bates produced a season-best free skate inside Enterprise Center and finished with 228.87 points.

Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik were second with 213.65 points and Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko were third with 206.95, making those two pairs the likely choices to join Chock and Bates on the American squad for the Winter Games.

There wasn’t much drama in the dance competition.

At least for the top step.

Yet sometimes the winning programs aren’t necessarily the ones that win over the crowd. And while Oona Brown and Gage Brown only finished fifth, the sister-brother duo — former world junior champions — earned the first standing ovation of the night for their moody, creative and almost cinematic program set to selections from the film “The Godfather.”

“I think that was one of the best — if not the best — performances we’ve had,” Gage Brown said afterward.

The Browns ended a stretch in which several couples taking the ice made some kind of significant mistake, whether it was a skater stumbling to the ice, someone getting out of synch with their twizzles, or some other calamitous misfortune.

Then it was a parade of near-perfect programs, each couple trying to upstage the previous one.

Emily Bratti and Ian Somerville were the first to knock the Brown siblings from first place, then reigning bronze medalists Caroline Green and Michael Parsons took over first place with their program, set to “Escalate” by Tsar B and “Son of Nyx” by Hozier.

Carreira and Ponomarenko, the U.S. silver medalists the past two years, knew a podium spot would probably earn them a spot on the Olympic team when they took the ice. And they delivered with a sharp program in which they seemed to channel the feeling and the characters from the 2006 psychological thriller film “Perfume: The Story of a Murder.”

“We had a bit of a rocky start to this season,” said Carreira, who was born in Canada but receiver her U.S. citizenship in November, making her eligible to compete at the Olympics. “I'm happy we got our act together and delivered a good performance here.”

It wound up being good enough for bronze.

That's because the 23-year-old Zingas, who made the difficult witch from singles to dance about four years ago, and the 24-year-old Kolesnik quickly assumed the top spot with a program set to music by Sergei Prokofiev from the ballet of “Romeo and Juliet.”

“It hasn't been an easy journey,” Zingas said, “and I think our unique approach to this season, and our unique style on the ice, really helped us, and it's really an emotional moment to be sitting here.”

Zingas and Kolesnik only held the top spot for about four minutes — the length of the free skate by Chock and Bates.

It almost seemed to be a forgone conclusion that they would win Saturday night. But the real pressure now begins: Chock and Bates finished eighth at the 2014 Olympics, ninth four years later, and came in fourth at the Winter Games in 2022.

Yes, they helped the Americans win team gold in Beijing, but even that was somewhat tainted. They never got a medal ceremony there because of a long investigation into Russian doping, which pushed their presentation all the way to the 2024 Summer Games.

They would love to help the U.S. win another team gold. But their target is unquestionably the ice dance title itself.

“It’s going to be a lot more of what it has been — we know what to do, we have our plan and we’re executing,” Chock said. “We don’t plan on deviating from it. We’re going to stick to it. Trust ourselves, trust our team and do what we know to do.”

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko skate during the free dance competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik skate during the free dance competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik react to their scores after the free dance competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Madison Chock and Evan Bates watch for scores after finishing the free dance competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Madison Chock and Evan Bates skate during the free dance competition at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)