Whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state court to consider newly discovered evidence of medical misdiagnosis that potentially exonerates a defendant convicted of murder

No question identified. : No. IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES TASHA MERCEDEZ SHELBY, Petitioner, v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, Respondent. APPLICATION FOR EXTENSION OF TIME TO FILE A PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE MISSISSIPPI SUPREME COURT To the Honorable Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., as Circuit Justice for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in which the Mississippi Supreme Court sits: The Petitioner, Tasha Mercedez Shelby, respectfully requests a 59-day extension of time, to and including Friday, March 29, 2024, to file a petition for a writ of certiorari. In support of this application, the Petitioner says: 1. On October 16, 2023, the Mississippi Supreme Court denied Petitioner's Amended Motion for Leave to File Petition for Post-Conviction Relief in the Trial Court and the appended Amended Motion for Post-Conviction Relief. Petitioner timely filed a Motion for Reconsideration and Clarification of Order on October 23, 2023. The Mississippi Supreme Court denied the Motion for Reconsideration and Clarification of Order on November 1, 2023. A copy of both orders are attached to this application. Absent an extension of time, the petition for a writ of certiorari would therefore be due on Tuesday, January 30, 2024. The Petitioner is depositing this request in the United States mail 13 days before the petition’s due date. 2. The court to which certiorari would be directed is the Mississippi Supreme Court. This Court has jurisdiction to review the judgment of the Mississippi Supreme Court under 28 U.S.C. § 1257(a). 3. The Petitioner was convicted on June 15, 2000, on one count of capital felony murder. She was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. The offense, that Ms. Shelby murdered her 2-year-old stepson by abusing him, allegedly occurred on May 31, 1997. Ms. Shelby, however, was not arrested until after the State’s Medical Examiner, Dr. LeRoy Riddick, had completed his autopsy report and submitted it to the District Attorney on July 29, 1997. The autopsy report, and death certificate filed by Dr. Riddick, declared the manner of death was homicide, and the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head later explained as Shaken Baby Syndrome. Ms. Shelby was arrested on August 13, 1997. She spent the next three years in jail waiting for her case to go to trial. After her conviction she sought direct appeal, which was affirmed by the Mississippi Court of Appeals on March 26, 2002. She did not seek certiorari review in either the Mississippi Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court. 4, Petitioner filed a Motion for Post-Conviction Relief in the Mississippi Supreme Court on July 30, 2015, and was granted leave to seek post-conviction -2 relief in the Harrison County Circuit Court on August 8, 2016. On April 24, 2018, the Harrison County Circuit Court held a PCR evidentiary hearing based on Shelby’s claim that the child did not die from Shaken Baby Syndrome. Dr. Riddick, alongside other medical experts, testified on Tasha Shelby’s behalf that the child died from a seizure disorder and a short fall, both of which Riddick had failed to acknowledge at the original trial in 2000. The State presented one expert witness, a child abuse pediatrician newly appointed to the case. 5. Dr. Riddick amended the death certificate for the child on June 18, 2018, after the PCR evidentiary hearing. The death certificate was amended to state the manner of death was an accident instead of homicide, and the cause of death was cerebral edema with herniation, hypoxic encephalopathy, and seizure disorder; additional contributing factors were asthma and blunt trauma of the head. 6. The Harrison County Circuit Court was unable to consider the amended death certificate because it was not part of the pending Motion for Post-Conviction Relief. The trial court deemed the case a “battle of the experts” and denied Shelby’s petition for PCR on December 7, 2018. The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed on Febru