AP Features, July 4th, 2007
A retired California police officer was sentenced Tuesday to 35 years to life in prison for flashing a badge, ordering a teenage boy into his vehicle and sexually assaulting him.
Shawn Michael Shelton, 40, was given the maximum consecutive sentences for four felony charges: first-degree kidnapping, sexual assault of a minor, battery with intent to commit sexual assault, and use of a minor in the production of pornography.
"This man is the stranger who snatches your child off the street," prosecutor Mary Kay Holthus said. She called Shelton "the worst of the worst" and accused him of threatening to shoot his skateboard-toting victim if the boy told of the May 2006 attack.
"You're supposed to trust police, but what he did ... I can't trust," said the boy, now 15, whose name was withheld on the judge's order before he spoke from the witness stand Tuesday. "I can't, like, be like a normal kid."
Shelton's lawyer, Carmine Colucci, said he will appeal. Colucci had asked the judge for leniency, citing the support of Shelton's family and commendations Shelton accumulated in a 15-year career as a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy and Manhattan Beach police officer.
"He can be, and is, a good man when he puts his mind to good things," Colucci said.
A jury convicted Shelton on April 13 after the teen testified that Shelton had claimed to be a police officer investigating a case and ordered him into an SUV near a Las Vegas mall.
The teen said Shelton handcuffed and searched him, then drove him to the desert before forcing him to perform oral sex. Shelton photographed the boy, and police later matched DNA evidence on the boy's shirt to Shelton.
Shelton was a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy for five years before becoming a police officer in Manhattan Beach in 1994, authorities said. He was promoted to sergeant in 1999 before taking an extended medical leave and then retiring.
