Former Student Faces Retrial in Shooting Death of High School Administrator
A man convicted in the December 2020 killing of his former teacher is set to be retried this week in Baltimore County after a state appellate court overturned his murder conviction.
Zayeed Abdul-Muhaimin, 28, admitted during his 2022 trial that he shot Shelton Stanley in Stanley’s Pikesville home but testified that he acted in self-defense. A jury convicted him of second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
A state appellate court reversed the conviction in 2024, ruling that the trial court “abused its discretion” by failing to ask prospective jurors whether they held strong feelings about firearms.
Jury selection in the retrial is scheduled to begin Tuesday.
Stanley, 36, was an assistant principal at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Baltimore City. He met Abdul-Muhaimin years earlier as his middle-school math teacher and soccer coach at the now-closed Friendship Academy.
When Abdul-Muhaimin’s family moved farther from the school, Stanley offered to drive him each day so he would not have to transfer. During pretrial hearings, Abdul-Muhaimin’s mother testified that after riding to school with Stanley for some time, her son told her Stanley was “weird” and made him uncomfortable. She said he no longer wanted to ride with him. They eventually agreed Abdul-Muhaimin would continue riding with Stanley but would sit in the back seat, she testified.
Stanley and Abdul-Muhaimin remained in contact over the years. Abdul-Muhaimin’s mother testified that her son stopped living with her when he was about 16 years old and the two had been estranged. Abdul-Muhaimin had been staying with Stanley on and off since he was 17, he said in his first trial.
Stanley’s sister called police the evening of Dec. 27, 2020, after she went to his house to check on him when he didn't show up for a planned visit. Responding officers found Stanley’s body wrapped in plastic and a blanket and bound with tape and electrical cords at the bottom of the basement stairs of his townhome. Investigators identified Abdul-Muhaimin as a possible suspect after finding paperwork for psychiatric services bearing his name inside the home on the 4800 block of Hawksbury Road in Pikesville.
Police said Abdul-Muhaimin took Stanley’s 2016 Dodge Durango after the shooting and used Stanley’s bank card to make an ATM withdrawal. According to charging documents, he also transferred money from Stanley's account to a woman he was in a relationship with.
Abdul-Muhaimin’s defense team has maintained that Stanley sexually abused him during those middle-school drives and that the shooting years later was influenced in part by that alleged abuse.
Prosecutors dispute those claims and have said that Abdul-Muhaimin was likely motivated by money. Charging documents say benefits Muhaimin was collecting through the State of Maryland were scheduled to end in December 2020.
Judge Thomas Tompsett, who did not preside over the first trial, ruled during pretrial proceedings that testimony about the alleged sexual abuse would not be admitted at the retrial, finding it overly prejudicial and likely to inflame the jury.
Two months before the shooting, according to the defense, Abdul-Muhaimin confronted Stanley about the prior alleged sexual abuse and told Stanley he didn't want to engage in any more “man-on-man activities" with him. Stanley agreed, according to court records.
At the original trial, Abdul-Muhaimin testified that Stanley had asked him to kidnap another man. Assistant Public Defender Michael Scarantino said during pretrial hearings that the alleged target was also a former student of Stanley’s who had been involved in a romantic, sexual relationship with him.
Abdul-Muhaimin testified that Stanley gave him a gun and planned to pay him to kidnap the man, but he said he didn't carry out the plan.
After returning from the aborted kidnapping attempt, Abdul-Muhaimin testified at the first trial, he placed the handgun Stanley had given him on a bedroom nightstand. He said Stanley then became aggressive and appeared to reach for the gun, prompting Abdul-Muhaimin to get a shotgun that was nearby and shoot him. An autopsy determined that Stanley had been shot multiple times with a shotgun.
During pretrial hearings, Abdul-Muhaimin testified that Stanley told him during the confrontation before the shooting something to the effect of: “I’ve always wanted you. You’re going to give me what I was going to get from [the alleged kidnapping target]. You’re going to give me what I want.”
“This was a conversation about sex,” Scarantino said.
Assistant State’s Attorney Matt Darnbrough said Abdul-Muhaimin never mentioned the alleged abuse after his arrest in San Diego and first raised the allegation during his original trial. Darnbrough also argued that allegations of abuse dating back more than a decade were not relevant to the circumstances surrounding the killing and were intended to portray Stanley negatively.
Darnbrough further said that Abdul-Muhaimin lied multiple times on the witness stand and gave vague answers to questions that could have corroborated his claims about the alleged kidnapping plot.
Abdul-Muhaimin was found not guilty of first-degree murder at the original trial but guilty of second-degree murder. Prosecutors cannot retry him on the first-degree murder charge due to rules regarding double jeopardy. In Maryland, second-degree murder carries a maximum penalty of 40 years.
Abdul-Muhaimin is expected to testify. The trial is scheduled to last more than week.