Former KY sheriff accused of killing judge asks for indictment to be dismissed
The former Letcher County sheriff accused of killing a district judge filed a motion Wednesday to dismiss his indictment, according to court records.
Shawn “Mickey” Stines, 44, was charged last fall with killing the county’s district judge, Kevin Mullins. Stines’ attorney, Jeremy Bartley, previously planned to make a defense of insanity or extreme emotional disturbance.
Bartley on Wednesday filed to dismiss Stines’ indictment altogether.
The nine-page motion accuses the prosecution of intentionally failing to record a proceeding in front of the Letcher County grand jury and depriving the grand jury of information.
Kentucky State Police Detective Clayton Stamper testified to the grand jury in November 2024, about two months after Stines was recorded on video shooting and killing Mullins inside his office on Sept. 19, 2024.
But Bartley alleges that before that hearing, there was an unrecorded meeting between the prosecution and the grand jury.
Kentucky law mandates that prosecutors are responsible for recording all testimony before a grand jury, according to Bartlet’s motion. Failure to record such testimony can lead to an indictment being dismissed.
Prosecutors said they attended the meeting only to obtain grand jury subpoenas, and no testimony was heard, according to Bartley’s motion.
Bartley, however, argued that the prosecution can obtain subpoenas without a grand jury being present.
“Thus, it is curious what would necessitate the involvement of this independent body,” Bartley wrote in the motion to dismiss.
Bartley suggested that information must have been presented to the grand jury if jurors sought a subpoena as a result, and he said there was no mechanical issue that prevented the meeting from being recorded.
“While the Commonwealth may classify that information as something other than ‘testimony,’ it clearly related to the nature of the investigation,” Bartley wrote. “Regardless of how it is labeled or whether it was sworn or unsworn, the information provided to the grand jury constitutes testimony and should have been recorded.
Jackie Steele, special prosecutor in the case, said Thursday morning he had reviewed the motion and conferred with the attorney general’s office, which is also involved in the prosecution.
“We will be filing a response in due time,” Steele said.
Steele did not comment on the specifics of Bartley’s motion.
A grand jury is a panel of citizens who listen to evidence in private hearings and decide whether to indict a defendant on charges sought by prosecutors.
A grand jury does not have the power to convict a defendant, but it can decide not to indict a defendant if it finds prosecutors have insufficient evidence.
A subpoena is a legal document ordering a person to testify for a deposition, trial, congressional inquiry or other hearing.
Bartley also accused Stamper, the detective, of not directly answering grand jurors’ questions during the grand jury hearing. Court documents say grand jurors spent about 25 minutes of the hearing asking questions related to a separate, federal civil case involving Stines and his mental health, but answers to those questions were either withheld or not disclosed.
“Had the Commonwealth presented complete and accurate testimony to the grand jury, the decision to charge, or at least the choice of appropriate charge, would likely have been different,” Bartley wrote.
The federal lawsuit Bartley referred to in the motion alleges that Ben Fields, a deputy under Stines, coerced a woman named Sabrina Adkins into having sex with him in Mullins’ office in the courthouse in return for letting her avoid paying home-incarceration fees.
The lawsuit also alleges Fields coerced a second woman into having sex with him in his car outside her home by threatening to have her home-incarceration revoked.
The lawsuit charges that Stines did not properly supervise Fields.
Bethany Baxter, an attorney who represents the plaintiffs suing the Fields and Letcher County Sheriff’s Office, questioned Stines for several hours during a deposition Sept. 16, three days before he shot Mullins.
Stines was “tense (and) unfriendly” during the deposition, said Ned Pillersdorf, another attorney for the women who sued.
A transcript of the deposition shows that Stines asked to have several questions repeated. He seemed confused at times and said multiple times that he did not recall information.
An attorney representing Stines, Jonathan C. Shaw, said during the deposition that Stines suffers from California encephalitis.
“So when he is under stress, sometimes it causes some issues,” Shaw said.
California encephalitis is a rare viral infection of the brain caused by a virus transmitted through the bite of infected mosquitoes, which can lead to inflammation of the brain and neurological symptoms and complications, according to Yale Medicine.
“I am having a episode. Sorry,” Stines said at one point during the deposition.
Baxter’s partner in their Lexington firm, Joe F. Childers, recently filed a motion seeking approval to question Stines again, alleging he didn’t tell the full truth in his original deposition.
The motion cites an interview Bartley did with Fox News in which he said Stines was under pressure at the time of the deposition to not tell all he knew about improper acts in Letcher County.
“I think one of the big things is that my client felt there had been pressure placed on him not to say too much during the deposition, and not to talk about things that happened within the courthouse, particularly in the judge’s chambers,” Bartley said in the interview, according to Childers’ motion.
“On the day that this [shooting] happened, my client had attempted multiple times to contact his wife and daughter, and he firmly believed that they were in danger,” Bartley reportedly said during the interview. “He believed that they were in danger because of what he knew to have happened within the courthouse. And there was pressure, and there were threats made to him to sort of keep him in line, to keep them from saying more than these folks wanted him to say.”
The motion did not include information on details Stines was allegedly being pressured to withhold.
But in a response opposing the request to re-open Stines’ deposition, Shaw said Sabrina Adkins, one of the women suing Fields and the sheriff’s office, told investigators “she was aware and had observed videos of sexual acts in Judge Mullins’s chambers.”
Shaw included an excerpt of an interview detectives with the Attorney General’s Office did with Adkins in February 2022 as they investigated Fields, in which she said she had seen video footage of people having sex in Mullins’ office.
This is the part of that transcript:
Detective: Who was having sex?
Adkins: Ben and just some higher-ups up there.
Detective: Who?
Adkins: Judge and —
Detective: What did you see on the video?
Adkins: I’ve seen Judge Mullins having sex with a girl.
Detective: Who is the girl?
Adkins: I don’t know, ‘cause I don’t know a lot of people from over there.
Along with the motion to dismiss the indictment, Bartley filed another motion to set a hearing about Stines’ bond. Stines has been in custody without a bond since his arrest, and Bartley argued that all prisoners who request bail are entitled to bail.
“Considering Mr. Stines’ strong ties to the community, lack of criminal record, and family support, it is apparent that Mr. Stines would be compliant with any conditions set by this court,” Bartley wrote.
Stines does not have a scheduled court date yet, according to online court records.
Bill Estep of the Herald-Leader contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 5, 2025 at 9:30 AM.
