Vanessa Kachadurian-Corrupt and Crazy Attorneys

Poor Catherine Shelton, first a murder trial where she is disbarred, then a shoplifting case.
Former Dallas lawyer Catherine Shelton gets probation for shoplifting

12:00 AM CST on Saturday, January 17, 2009

By JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News
jemily@dallasnews.com

A disbarred Dallas defense lawyer with a long history of questionable ethical and criminal conduct – including as a murder suspect – was sentenced Friday to probation for shoplifting.


Former lawyer Catherine Shelton has had a series of run-ins with the law. Catherine Shelton, 60, pleaded guilty in exchange for three years' probation. She will serve a two-year prison sentence if she violates her probation, which will be moved to Harris County, where she lives.

State District Judge Michael Snipes told Shelton that he felt sorry for her but that she had brought shame and discredit to the legal community.

"Mendacity, cunning and guile have been your moral compass," the judge told her as she stood before him after showing up to the hearing more than 30 minutes late.

Shelton wore a tan trench coat and black loafers as she testified briefly in a soft voice. She asked that Snipes defer her sentence so she would not have a theft conviction if she completed her probation. Snipes denied her request.

Her sentence stems from a November 2007 arrest in which she was accused of shoplifting a $1,195 Marc Jacobs purse, two shirts worth $326 and an $8 candle from the Nordstrom store at NorthPark Center.

"I was apparently seeking to carry everything that I could," she testified about the day she tried to steal from Nordstrom. "I was under an enormous amount of stress at the time. I failed to live up to the very high standards of the world."

She testified that she is working for $8.50 an hour and is in a government computer training program. She also is undergoing psychiatric care.

"I'm doing a lot better," she told the court.

Shelton told Snipes that she wanted to live "a quiet, unobserved life" in Houston.

She declined to comment after the hearing, whispering "please don't."

This is not the first time Shelton has been in trouble. And her brushes with the law have been the subject of many news stories and were profiled in national television programs.

She was suspected but never charged in the December 1999 shooting death of her office manager's husband, Michael Hierro. Clint Shelton, her husband, is serving a life sentence for the crime.

Marissa Hierro, the office manager, filed and then dropped a wrongful-death lawsuit against Shelton over her husband's death.

Shelton also faced a wrongful-death lawsuit in 1980 when her former lover, a Houston anesthesiologist, was bludgeoned to death in his garage. Shelton was suing him for divorce at the time, arguing that they had a common-law marriage and that she was pregnant. He was found dead the day they were to appear in court.

The lawsuit, filed by the doctor's estate, alleged that Shelton and one of her former clients conspired to murder the doctor. That suit also was dropped.

Shelton later was convicted of aggravated assault for shooting a former boyfriend. She also was convicted of assaulting a pregnant former friend.

She also has faced numerous complaints from legal clients and has been disbarred twice. But those disbarments were reversed, and her license was reinstated – once because she was not properly notified about a hearing and another time because paperwork was missing.

She lost her law license in May because she was a no-show at two hearings while serving three years' probation for misrepresenting herself as an immigration lawyer.

The suspension ends in 2010. But Shelton testified Thursday that she could not imagine seeking to reinstate her law license when her suspension expires.

"I don't even think about that anymore," she told the judge