Sheriff allegedly guns down judge in his own chamber in execution caught on video; indictment returned
Former Kentucky Sheriff Shawn "Mickey" Stines was indicted Thursday in the shooting death of a judge in his chambers.
A Letcher County grand jury indicted Stines on one count of murder of a public official on Thursday, according to a press release from Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman's office. His arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 25 at noon, according to online court records.
Stines, 43, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after authorities said he shot his longtime colleague, District Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, multiple times on Sept. 19 in an attack caught on surveillance footage.
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Stines pleaded not guilty on Sept. 25. He formally resigned as sheriff at the end of September after receiving a letter from Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Kentucky General Counsel S. Travis Mayo urged him to do so. He is being held two counties away at Leslie County Jail, police said.
It is still unclear what motivated the former sheriff to pull the trigger.
Kentucky State Police Det. Clayton Stamper testified at the preliminary hearing that the two men had eaten lunch together with a group in the hours before the shooting, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
According to Stamper, Stines attempted to call his daughter on his own phone, then on Mullins' phone.
"Our investigators seized the two cellphones, and they’re being analyzed," Kentucky State Police Trooper Matt Gayheart previously told the Daily Mail.
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"I was told that the judge made a statement to Mickey about, ‘Do we need to meet private in my chambers?’" Stamper testified, The Associated Press reported.
"It could be, but I don’t know that for a fact," Stamper said when asked whether Stines was motivated to shoot Mullins based on what he saw on the judge's phone.
"I talked to him, but he didn’t say nothing about why this had happened," Stamper said, according to the AP. "But he was calm… Basically, all he said was, ‘Treat me fair.’"
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When Stines was taken into custody, he allegedly told another officer, "they're trying to kidnap my wife and kid," Stamper said.
Days earlier, Stines was deposed in a lawsuit filed by two women, one of whom alleged that a deputy forced her to have sex inside the same judge’s chambers where the shooting took place. The woman claimed the deputy repeatedly sexually assaulted her for six months in exchange for staying out of jail.
The lawsuit accuses the sheriff of "deliberate indifference in failing to adequately train and supervise" the deputy.
Stines' defense attorney, Jeremy Bartley, told People that the shooting "was not something that was planned and occurred in the heat of passion."
"For us, the highest level of culpability should be manslaughter based on the partial defense of extreme emotional disturbance," Bartley said.
The shooting in the city of Whitesburg has shaken the community of Letcher County, Kentucky, where Stines served as a bailiff in Mullins' court before becoming sheriff in 2018.
"We're all in a state of shock over it," Garnard Kincer Jr., Mullins’ friend and former mayor of Jenkins, told People. "It practically immobilized us. We just can't believe it happened."