BATH — A Sagadahoc County jury has found Tyon Shuron not guilty of murder in the shooting death of Andrew Sherman in Richmond in 2019.

The jury also found Shuron, 46, of Augusta, not guilty of felony murder in the case, but convicted him on one count of witness tampering for trying to get his girlfriend, Chanda Lilly, to change her account of the night Sherman died.

The verdict came as the trial entered its third week in the Sagadahoc County Superior Courthouse in Bath. The jury deliberated more than 13 hours over three days before delivering its finding shortly after 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Members of Sherman’s family, many of whom traveled to the courthouse daily during the trial, were silent as the verdicts were read. They immediately left the courtroom.

Ronald Bourget, attorney for Shuron, moved for immediate sentencing on the witness tampering charge, which is a felony.

Suzanne Russell, an assistant attorney general and one of the prosecutors in the case, objected to that but said the state would agree to a bail of $5,000, which Billings ordered.

Under the conditions of the bail, Shuron is to have no contact with the Sherman family, or Lilly, Lilly’s parents or Shuron’s ex-wife, who is Lilly’s sister, for now.

He will be sentenced at a later date.

“There is a lot of discussion in our country right now about the rule of law and respect for the rule of law and respect for the processes that are part of that, whether people agree with the processes or not,” Superior Court Justice Daniel Billings said, noting the case had been well argued by the attorneys. “That applies equally to the criminal justice system. We need to respect the process. If the process works well, we need to respect the results. I hope everybody can do that here.”

Shuron was arrested in February 2020, and was indicted later that year on charges of intentional or knowing murder, felony murder and tampering with a witness.

Lilly was arrested the following month and was indicted later that year on a charge of felony murder.

Under Maine law, felony murder is causing the death of another person while committing another crime like burglary or murder.

Prosecutors say Shuron traveled with Lilly in late September 2019 to Sherman’s home in Richmond for a fatal confrontation over explicit photos that Sherman had taken of Lilly. Sherman had paid her for the images after they met through an online platform that connects models and photographers.

In the days that followed, prosecutors showed that Shuron had taken pains to delete digital information and texted Lilly in code.

While investigators found in Shuron’s car a case for a gun he owned that matched the make and model of the gun used in the killing, they never recovered the gun. Nor did they find other items taken from Sherman’s home, including computer equipment, digital storage media or cameras.

Lilly, 34, pleaded guilty in March to a robbery charge and agreed to testify against Shuron.

While Lilly was consistent in saying Shuron shot Sherman, had taken pains to avoid leaving evidence at Sherman’s home and had burned other evidence days later in Appleton, she also testified she has schizoaffective disorder bipolar type and has problems with both long-term and short-term memory.

Shuron’s attorneys capitalized on inconsistencies between what she said in interviews and what she said on the stand. And they focused on information she gave to detectives in February 2020 while hospitalized in the high acuity psychiatric unit at MaineGeneral Medical Center.

While it was not the first time detectives had interviewed her since Sherman’s body was discovered four months earlier, it was the first time she implicated Shuron.

“Right on the heels of that interview, she’s telling her medical providers that her parents made her lie to the police,” Darrick Banda, one of Shuron’s attorneys said, following the verdict. “Tyon didn’t have access to her and there was not time for him to tamper or coordinate stories. That is catastrophic, I think, to her credibility.”

And without Lilly’s testimony, he said, the rest of the evidence was not enough for the jury to conclude he committed the murder.

The witness tampering charge arose from notes that Shuron and Lilly exchanged while they were both at Two Bridges Regional Jail in which Shuron urged her to change her story about what happened.

After the trial, Russell said prosecutors were disappointed with the verdict.

“We have to honor the jury’s decision,” she said.

Joanne Jamison, Shuron’s mother, traveled from Maryland for the trial, and attended daily with her sister.

Following the end of Wednesday’s court session, she paused briefly outside the courtroom, visibly shaking.

“I don’t have words,” Jamison said. “Blessed.”

She said she would let the other members of her family know and would return home as soon as she could. She said it’s too early to know if Shuron would stay in Maine or return to Maryland, where he grew up and went to college.

Following the verdict, Jamison went to the District Court in West Bath to post $5,000 bail for Shuron.

Shuron has been held at Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset since his arrest. Initially, his attorneys had not sought bail, but requested earlier this year that bail be set.

At a hearing in February, Billings denied that request after prosecutors argued it wasn’t merited. He said granting cash bail at that time was not appropriate, given the murder charge and the substantial evidence that had been gathered.

During deliberations, the jury sent out several notes. In one, they asked to view two video clips, including dash cam video captured in Sherman’s car immediately after the photo shoot. In another, they asked for a laptop and speakers to review some of the digital evidence presented during the trial.

They had also asked for transcripts of testimony given by both Lilly and Shuron.

Billings told them that no transcripts were yet available but offered to have testimony, given over the course of more than eight hours, be read back to them. The jury did not hear that testimony.

Lilly had been charged with felony murder, but she pleaded guilty in March to robbery and agreed to testify against Shuron.

The trial started four years and a month after Sherman’s body was discovered in his Kimball Street home. It was the longest pending murder case in Maine.

In March 2020, shortly after Shuron and Lilly were arrested, the COVID-19 pandemic closed down businesses and government offices — including courts — as well as schools. Those closures created a backlog of trials in Maine with COVID outbreaks in courthouses and jails creating further delays.

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