A former Kentucky sheriff was arraigned on a murder charge on Monday in the same county courthouse where he is accused of gunning down a judge in his chambers two months earlier.
The former sheriff, Shawn Stines, 43, was indicted last week for murdering a public official, which can carry the death penalty in Kentucky. He pleaded not guilty.
Judge Julia Hylton Adams, a retired judge from a different district who presided over the arraignment, ordered him held without bond.
The authorities have not revealed any motive for the shooting, which has baffled the county seat of Whitesburg, a small town in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.
Mr. Stines, who is known as Mickey, was a popular figure in Letcher County. After working 16 years as a bailiff in the district court, he was elected sheriff in 2018, and was re-elected in 2022 with 75 percent of the vote. Days after the shooting in late September, he announced his retirement. The victim, Kevin R. Mullins, 54, had been a district court judge for 14 years, according to his obituary.
At a hearing in early October, prosecutors played video footage showing Judge Mullins sitting in his chambers, one story below where Monday’s arraignment took place. In the video, he is confronted by a man holding a pistol, identified by the authorities as Mr. Stines. After the man fires, the judge falls out of his chair, and then the man walks around the desk and fires more shots.
Detective Clayton Stamper of the Kentucky State Police testified at the October hearing that Judge Mullins and Mr. Stines had had lunch together at a local restaurant before the shooting. The detective also said that there was no indication that the shooting had been planned. Citing witness interviews, he said there had been no apparent tension between the two men beforehand.
Detective Stamper said that immediately before the shooting, Mr. Stines could be seen on video making a call on his phone, and then borrowing Judge Mullins’s phone and making a call. Both calls, the detective testified, were to Mr. Stines’s daughter.
Jackie Steele, the prosecutor handling the case, said after Monday’s arraignment that there had not yet been a determination on whether to pursue the death penalty. That decision would be made, he said, “after all the evidence had been collected and thoroughly gone through, and conversation with the family’s been had to get their thoughts on the process.”
One of Mr. Stine’s attorneys, Jeremy A. Bartley, said that the shooting appeared to have risen from an “extreme emotional disturbance,” and that the defense would argue for a full acquittal. He also reiterated the defense’s conviction that the case should remain in Letcher County, even though many in the community knew both Mr. Stines and Judge Mullins.
“The presumption is, this case is heard where it occurred among a jury of his peers,” Mr. Bartley said. “His peers are here in Letcher County.”
While the reasons for the killing remain unknown, much of the public attention has focused on an ongoing federal lawsuit involving a sheriff’s deputy who has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a woman under his supervision after hours in Judge Mullins’s chambers. In the suit, Mr. Stines is accused of “deliberate indifference in failing to adequately train and supervise” the former deputy, whom he later fired. Though Mr. Stines has denied wrongdoing, he was deposed as part of the suit just three days before the shooting.
Mr. Steele did not comment on any potential connection between the lawsuit and Mr. Stines’s criminal case. But Mr. Bartley was less circumspect.
“I think that the timing of what occurred is certainly something that is going to be a crucial point in this case,” he said. “This is a large story. It’s a story that in some ways is difficult to tell. We look forward to sharing a more complete version of that as we go through this judicial process.”
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