Despite a video showing what appears to be a cold-blooded murder, the attorney representing former Sheriff Shawn ‘Mickey’ Stines insists there’s more to the case than meets the eye. On September 19, 2024, in the quiet courthouse of Letcher County, Kentucky, Stines allegedly walked into the chambers of District Judge Kevin Mullins and shot him multiple times. The entire incident was captured on surveillance footage, and the images are as damning as they come—Mullins, caught off guard, scrambling to take cover under his desk while Stines keeps firing. But according to defense attorney Jeremy Bartley, what happened in that office wasn’t just the result of a single moment but years of tension, legal battles, and alleged threats.

“It’s extremely complicated,” Bartley told Court TV’s Vinnie Politan, pushing back on the apparent open-and-shut nature of the case. “This isn’t just about what’s seen on the video. There’s a bigger story here.”

At the time of his murder, Mullins was a key figure in a lawsuit involving allegations of sexual misconduct against a deputy who worked in the courthouse. The lawsuit accused former deputy Ben Fields of coercing women on house arrest into sexual favors, with at least one incident allegedly taking place inside Mullins’ own chambers. While Stines wasn’t named as a defendant in the suit, he was questioned under oath just days before the shooting.

“In the week prior to and the week of the deposition, lots of people noticed that Mickey had become more increasingly paranoid, that he became sleepless, had gone nights without sleep, and there was an overwhelming amount of pressure on him,” Bartley said, painting a picture of a man under immense psychological strain. The deposition, combined with what Bartley described as “a number of people very interested in the outcome,” had allegedly put Stines in a heightened state of distress.

Attorney Ned Pillersdorf, who represents the plaintiff in the lawsuit, recalls Stines’ deposition as being out of the ordinary. “It wasn’t your typical deposition of a sheriff in a civil rights case,” Pillersdorf said, describing Stines’ behavior as “odd” but stopping short of speculating on how the lawsuit might connect to the murder. “But having said that, I have no idea why his defense attorney keeps saying that my litigation, the litigation me and my co-counsel are involved in, was somehow a motive in all this. But he keeps saying that.”

Stines’ attorney claims his client truly believed his family was in immediate danger at the time of the shooting. “Was the threat as imminent as he perceived it to be? Maybe not,” Bartley admitted. “But there was an objective threat to his family.”

That’s a major claim—one that raises as many questions as it answers. If Stines was, in fact, paranoid and sleep-deprived leading up to the shooting, how much of his fear was rooted in reality? What exactly did he think Mullins—or anyone else, for that matter—was planning to do to him?

In early March 2025, Bartley filed paperwork indicating that Stines will pursue an insanity defense, arguing that his client was in an extreme emotional state at the time of the shooting. The move isn’t just legal strategy—it’s also practical. “We wanted to get Mickey on the calendar for an evaluation,” Bartley said, explaining that Kentucky’s backlog means psychological evaluations are currently running 12 to 18 months behind.

As the case heads to trial, the legal battle will center not on whether Stines pulled the trigger—that part is indisputable—but on why he did it. Was he, as the video suggests, executing a judge in cold blood? Or was he a man consumed by fear and paranoia, reacting to a perceived threat that only he could see?

One thing is clear: Letcher County lost a judge, a sheriff, and any lingering sense of normalcy in a single, shocking afternoon.

#KentuckyCourthouseShooting #JudgeMullins #ShawnStinesTrial #LegalDrama

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