Lawyer resigns after lies exposed

A staff attorney for Harris County resigned Wednesday, just hours after testifying that he lied to investigators and in a grand jury.

Marshall Shelsy, 65, testified against a former client who is on trial for murder for a shooting almost 30 years ago.

Shelsy was a criminal defense lawyer in August 1986 when he represented William Porter in the death of Gerald Oncale.

On Wednesday, Shelsy told jurors that he found a spent bullet behind a couch while walking through the crime scene in the days after the shooting. He did not turn over the bullet, deciding instead to pocket it and keep it in

the file for his client.

After the shooting, Porter was questioned by police but claimed he shot Oncale after the man broke in to his northeast Harris County home in the 5400 block of Indianola. Porter was not charged.

Last year, cold case investigators found out Oncale owed Porter money.

They arrested Porter, 52, and accused him of gunning down Oncale and making it look like a burglary.

At trial Wednesday, Shelsy testified that when he represented Porter in the 1986 shooting, he found the bullet while investigating the crime scene with Porter’s wife.

He said he picked up the bullet and kept it in Porter’s file for 20 years.

He said he threw away the file and bullet around 2008.

Shelsy told jurors that when he was initially questioned last year about the bullet, when the case was reopened, he lied to investigators and the grand jury.

He said he later acknowledged to investigators he knew about the bullet.

He said he ultimately decided he may have committed the felony offense of tampering with evidence.

The statute of limitations on the tampering crime has long since expired. No charges have been filed against Shelsy.

Shelsy was a staff attorney for Harris County, working as legal counsel for the misdemeanor judges in the county’s Office of Court Management.

A news release issued Wednesday read in its entirety: ”Staff Attorney to the County Criminal Courts at Law, Marshall Shelsy, submitted his resignation today, effective immediately.”

Calls to the Office of Court Management and Shelsy’s home were not answered.

On the stand, the lawyer took the position that he was not violating attorney-client privilege because he was not told about the bullet, but rather traced a path through holes in the couch to find the bullet on his own.

Porter’s current attorney, Mario Madrid, took issue with the lawyer testifying, and argued in pretrial motions that any information Shelsy learned about the case while representing Porter falls under attorneyclient privilege and should not be disclosed.

The trial, in state District Judge Brock Thomas’ court, began Monday and is expected to last through the week.