Former Letcher County Sheriff Shawn "Mickey" Stines was charged with murder after he allegedly fatally shot District Judge Kevin Mullins inside his chambers at Letcher County Courthouse on Thursday, September 19, 2024. Now, reportedly, Stines is planning to offer an insanity defense once his trial starts, as court records show.
Videos by Wide Open Country
According to the court records obtained by PEOPLE, in addition to a defense of insanity, Stines will also present a defense of "extreme emotional distress." His defense attorney, Jeremy Bartley, told PEOPLE that, while the situation is "tragic all around," they are feeling "confident that there will be evidence that his mental health was impaired."
"We believe that the evidence will show there was an extreme amount of pressure placed upon him to be careful in what he said in the civil suit," Bartley said.
Said "extreme emotional distress" stems from another case which involved Judge Kevin Mullins as well as Sheriff Shawn Stines. Back in September 2024, three days before the shooting, Stines was deposed for five hours in a civil lawsuit. Said lawsuit was filed by two women who claimed Deputy Sheriff Ben Fields had raped one of them inside Mullins's chambers.
According to CBS News, Fields pleaded guilty to all charges. He was sentenced to six months in jail followed by six and a half years of probation for rape, sodomy, perjury, and tampering with a prisoner monitoring device.
Extreme Emotional Distress
Following Stines's deposition, he showed worrying signs such as not sleeping for days. According to Bartley, Stines's family even had to stage an intervention and sought the help of a medical provider. This happened one day before Mullins was shot dead inside his chambers. Moreover, Bartley said that Stines even feared for his life and that of his family. He believed other people would harm them.
"I believe that there is reason to believe that there was an objective threat," Bartley told PEOPLE. "But we believe his mental health impaired his ability to determine the immediacy of that threat."
The very same day of the shooting, both Stines and Mullins ate lunch alongside others. Later that day, however, video footage shows Stines entering Mullins's chambers and then engaging in a heated argument with him. He would then pull his gun and aim at Mullins's head. Eventually, while Mullins attempted to turn away, the footage shows Stines allegedly shooting Mullins multiple times. Shawn Stines surrendered himself and was arrested without incident.
Back in October 2024, Jeremy Bartley, Stines's attorney, called the shooting an incident stemming from "the heat of passion." "It was not something that was planned and occurred in the heat of passion," Bartley told PEOPLE. "For us, the highest level of culpability should be manslaughter based on the partial defense of extreme emotional disturbance."
