KY Sheriff Shoots/Kills A Judge
 

Throwing this one in its own thread. I suspect it doesn't really fit into any of y'all's mega-threads....and if rumors from the locals are remotely true, it sounds like it's going to end up being, uh, interesting. (LOTS of unsubstantiated chatter that the judge was sleeping with the Sheriff's wife and/or 17yo daughter, for example.) It's a very small town (1700 people) and I'm wondering if "he needed killin'" is going to be the essence of his defense. From one article...

judge was shot by the sheriff
but was not shot by the deputy

This one has lots of angles. I had read that deputies were caught sexually assulting women in the judges' chambers. The sheriff was supposed to be giving testimony about what he knew next week.

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Prime Video has already optioned the story.

Yup, and apparently the two had worked in close proximity for a long time. He'd been Sheriff since 2018, and prior to that as a deputy, he regularly worked as a bailiff in that judge's courtroom.

I've been to Whitesburg a couple times. That whole area is incredibly remote. Not a lot of branches on the family trees.

I have an ancestor that was granted land North of there after serving in the Revolutionary War.

I was flying home when this broke on a lawyer subreddit yesterday. I actually alerted family back in KY about it, and sure enough, if became big news.

Surprised the guy decided to give himself up rather than kill himself. LE voluntarily going to jail doesn't sound like a good end-of-life situation. But I suppose this is like one of those "honor killing" situations where he did what he felt he had to do, and whatever the consequences, so be it.

The Sheriff's family's pastor has come out on behalf of the mom and daughter and said that this story is false. That they expressed that mental illness is a problem that everyone should be concerned with.

I saw that. Mental illness might have been an issue as well, but it seems the most obvious connection is to a lawsuit against the sheriff in which it was alleged that one of his deputies sexually assaulted at least one female inmate and he might have used the judge's chamber for the acts, and the sherriff was upset about that (even though the judge likely had no knowledge of it).

Shawn Stines: Kentucky sheriff pleads not guilty in fatal shooting of judge in his chambers | CNN


CNN reporting they had lunch together earlier that day and based on some quotes from locals, both may have been pretty well-liked. County prosecutor recused himself and referred to them as "two men that I have worked with for seventeen years and loved like brothers." Not guilty plea and asking for a public defender. Sounds like evidence will be presented on 10/1. LA Times also reporting that both were



Not seeing any other hints of mental illness apart from the statement on behalf of the wife and daughter.

Prelim hearing today. Per Court TV, a detective testified that in the moments before the shooting, the sheriff looked at the judge's phone, saw his daughter's number in there, attempted to call her from both his phone and the judge's phone, (unclear if he reached her,) and then started firing. Court TV's twitter feed has the surveillance video of the shooting. It's not graphic (judge attempts to hide behind/under his desk, so you can't really see him,) but still not posting it. I'm sure it'll be everywhere within the next hour or so.

Sounds like the perfect sort of well balanced, and even tempered person to have the public respect to carry out delicate law enforcement decisions.

I guess the sheriff realized this would hurt his re-election chances. His lawyer announced he is resigning his post as sheriff.

Beshear told him to resign or be forcibly removed. Last night I heard he was going to "retire."

I just listened to the detective's testimony. The most straightforward interpretation of the actual words that came out of his mouth would be that the judge had the sheriff's underaged daughter's number in his phone, that she didn't answer the call from her dad's phone, but then she answered when called from the judge's phone. That said, it's also quite possible that's neither exactly how it went down nor what he was trying to communicate. Specifically, though he made it sound like she answered the call, I'm not sure that's his understanding of the facts or that he meant to make it sound that way. To be clear, I'm not suggesting anything nefarious on the part of the detective in his testimony; it's just that the overall impression I got was that he ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I doubt he's particularly good at choosing his words precisely.

I thought the family of the Sheriff had come out and said the daughter story was a lie and rumor being spread? Has that changed?

There is often a difference between what is said to the public and what is said under oath.

Or there was another reason that the judge had the daughters phone number other than an inappropriate relationship.

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Oh, now there's a lawyer's perspective.

Good Lord. Sheriff, wife, and daughter still have FB and/or Insta pages up with significant numbers of public photos.

It makes sense given that it occurred in a courthouse and judge's chambers, but I didn't realize there was video of the shooting. The Sheriff's attorney says they are going to argue for manslaughter due to "extreme emotional disturbance," whatever evidence they have to support that argument (from his quote, it sounded like they'd be fishing for that evidence).

So, is there are growing consensus/speculation as to why he did it?

Per the detective's testimony, the video shows that Stines was seated during the conversation with Mullins, but immediately after Stines called his daughter from Mullins's phone, Stines stood up and started shooting. It certainly appears that whatever Stines saw/heard/interpreted in that instance is what either led to or finalized the decision to kill Mullins.

EDIT: I guess to answer your specific question about consensus, I don't think there is one or even could be one right now. Anything from "he was having mental illness issues and wildly misinterpreted what he saw" to "a lewd picture popped up when he called his daughter's number" seems to be on the table at this point. According to every reporting I've seen, there is no dispute among the locals that the two were long-time friends and that the sheriff was pretty much universally beloved, could be reached in the middle of the night, would go out of his way to help you, etc. So...common sense seems to indicate that he wasn't just a bully with a badge, but that something--be it mental illness or discovery of something wildly inappropriate--had to have set him off.

MY SPECULATION: Given everything above, combined with what he did after the shooting (didn't kill himself, walked out, set his gun down, raised his hands and surrendered calmly,) I am upgrading the characterization of my earliest thoughts on this from "guess" to "reasonable theory based on what we know so far": that he walked in there having already concluded that if whatever he suspected was verified, he could get at least one person on a rural Kentucky jury to agree with him that the judge just needed killin'.

You may not be that far on in some respects. I read a pretty good article this morning that discussed it. The only thing the sheriff said was "they're trying to kidnap my wife and kid" after the incident. That sounds a lot more like the mind of a conspiracy theorist or someone getting sucked into Q or the 'constitutional sheriff' zone than anything specific.



The article also went on to talk about a recent deposition he gave in a different case regarding the deputy who exchanged sex to remove an ankle monitor, and supposedly had it in the judges office. During that time, he was agitated, and used the phrase, “I don’t recall, I am having an episode. Sorry.”


The lack of a clear motive is allowing for locals to start placing their own. He was apparently well known, well liked, and there is bound to be someone who will see it the way his attorney does:

“Ultimately,” Bartley said, “the Commonwealth has to give us the information to understand what would make this man who has served so honorably in his community get to the point that he thought the only thing he could do to protect his wife and daughter was to take action on his own.”

It could just be an abusive husband who's wife was finally leaving him and he couldn't handle it. The judge may have been offering to help them leave the abusive relationship which is where the cryptic "kidnapping" comment came from. That makes far more sense than some sordid relationship with his daughter.

A grand jury last night returned a murder charge against the sheriff. No motives were discussed. The defendants lawyer stated: "Bartley said at the Oct. 1 hearing that the evidence offered there pointed to the shooting as being an act of “extreme emotional disturbance” in reaction to something Stines had seen on Mullins’ phone."

Apparently if that's true, manslaughter is the highest charge he could be found guilty of.

Bond was denied and he was charged with an additional charge of killing a public official. Good that he'll stay in jail for now.

Well...

Recordings implicate killed Kentucky judge in alleged sextortion scandal

The Sheriff's nickname was Mickey

Oh Mickey, you're so fine you blow my mind!

I have to stop opening threads here with a mouth full of soda.

Should be pretty easy for a guy who's already in jail to spill the beans without retribution on a guy who is dead if that's what the story is.

I know! I choked on my...uh....whatever it was in my mouth.

New weirdness, this time in Georgia. The judge had lost his election, and his last day was today. He went into the courtroom overnight and shot himself. He had tried to resign after he lost the election, but Gov. Kemp refused to let him. This article said he left a note for Kemp but no word on what it said.
Georgia judge Stephen Yekel shoots himself dead inside courtroom on last day in office | Daily Mail Online

Well, much as I despise Kemp, it's only fair to note that he didn't accept the resignation because it was offered in an attempt to have Kemp appoint a successor and bypass the election results. (after the race got only 6% voter turnout)

It explains the reason for the refusal (which doesn't surprise me), but it still doesn't explain the sucide. If he were doing it for political reasons (like forcing an appointment to prevent the new judge sitting), he waited too late. There must have been something bad coming down the pike.

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he had a lawsuit against him for wrongful termination but that was just because he brought his own staff in when he got the job.

I was trying to find out what party he belonged to.

He was pretty clearly a Republican. That is why he was appointed by Kemp and trying to prevent the other judge from sitting by getting Kemp to assign a new one.

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Jon brings that up about Kemp not allowing his resignation has an interesting twist. Kemp appointed him in 2022 after he had won the election for the judge position, but the judge in the seat resigned to take a position in a higher court. So i stead of taking the office as the elected Judge, Kemp appointed him because some fluke in the rules only allows a Governor to appointed a judge to replace a resigning judge even if it voids an election.
So basically, Kemp honored the election, but his term was an appointed judge and not the full term of an elected judge. That is why he was running again two years later, but he must have felt robbed when he lost the election for the full term. That why he wanted to resign and get reappointed, and Kemp refused.

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73, divorced, bankrupt(thanks to said ex-wife), lost an election ... not sure how much more explanation would really be needed

Doing it on the bench and leaving a letter to Kemp suggests it was more than personal failures.

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