PITTSBURGH - The man arrested for the murder of six people in a Western Pennsylvania shooting who was later acquitted won't get to take his malicious prosecution claim to trial, as a federal judge seems to think he did, in fact, pull the trigger.
On March 31, Allegheny County won summary judgment as to the claims of Cheron Shelton, thought by the county to have been one of two shooters who killed six people including an unborn child at a party in Wilkinsburg in 2016. He was acquitted in 2020.
The lawsuit of Robert Thomas, however, will move on, after Pittsburgh federal judge Cathy Bissoon denied the county's motion. Thomas was arrested but charges were dropped.
Allegheny County district attorney Stephen Zappala thought the shooting was payback for the murder of Shelton's close friend Calvin Doswell three years earlier. But neither man was convicted, and they each filed lawsuits alleging a civil rights conspiracy involving made-up testimony to establish motive in 2022 through lawyers Max Petrunya and Paul Jubas.
"Surely Plaintiffs' counsel do not suggest that the witness statements were 'manufactured,'" Bissoon wrote. "They were offered by nine different people, including the statement of a disinterested neighbor less than 13 hours after the incident."
One survivor of the attack was Lamont Powell, who was suspected by many in the community of being involved in the murder of Doswell. Shelton and Doswell were close friends who grew up together, testimony says, so cops pursued a theory the shooting was retaliation.
Shelton, who had been released from jail the day before the shooting, and Thomas called it "manufactured theory to justify their actions in framing" them.
Shelton's girlfriend said after the crime she knew there was a guy at the party Shelton "didn't like." Doswell's sister had said Shelton and Doswell were best friends.
"If Plaintiffs suggest that law enforcement 'manufactured' the Doswell motive, all the way down to inventing the many witness statements, their counsel should have supplied a roll of aluminum foil along with the alleged conspiracy," Bissoon wrote.
"The record flatly refutes the position... (A)ll of Shelton's claims fail because probable cause against him existed."
Everything cops gleaned in the aftermath concluded there was a "fair probability" of criminal activity on Shelton's part, Bissoon said. Alleging a conspiracy to frame him "would insult the intelligence of any disinterested officer of the Court (and, hopefully, bristle one's sense of morality," she wrote.
A footnote says Shelton's father visited him in jail five days after the shooting, and instead of using the two-way phone, Shelton pantomimed holding a rifle and squeezing the trigger. The evidence appears relevant to "guilt as a defense" for Allegheny County.
The timeline shows Shelton left his home around 9:30 p.m. and responded to his girlfriend's test at 10:30 that he would be home in 20 minutes. The attack happened at 10:54, and Shelton didn't text his girlfriend again until midnight.
He finally made it home at 4 a.m. wearing different clothes, claiming he "spit up on himself."
"The parallels are so strong they would make for dull fiction, and if this was a series of coincidences, Shelton is one of the unluckiest people ever," Bissoon wrote.
"Although counsel appear to have carefully sidestepped the word 'innocent,' they do allege that Defendants 'framed' Shelton. To be 'framed,' one must be innocent."
Bissoon went on to knock Shelton for not offering an alibi, but was more receptive to the case of Thomas - "His case inherently is stronger," she wrote.
Defendants admitted their investigation of Thomas was imperfect and those technicalities will let Thomas push his malicious prosecution theory, at his own risk, at rial.
"Thomas has tied himself to Shelton, for better or worse (in the Court's view, for the worse)," Bissoon wrote.
"(H)e acknowledges being with Shelton that evening and into the early morning. Thomas cannot invoke Fifth Amendment privilege at trial and have much chance of success. Nor does it seem likely that the jury will believe Shelton is likely guilty but Thomas was not."