FRIENDS TO THE DEATH — Funeral services were held in Jenkins Sunday for the late Letcher District Judge Kevin R. Mullins (above left), who was shot to death September 19 by Letcher County Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines (right), who served as Judge Mullins’s court bailiff until he was elected sheriff. The photo of Judge Mullins shows him cradling an infant whose mother had successfully completed a drug treatment program Mullins had ordered her to attend. Stines was photographed in April 2022 after returning to Whitesburg from a dog-training facility in Ohio with a drug-sniffing German Shepherd named Zara.
Two friends with seemingly no animosity between them, both with important jobs, and both well thought of in their communities.
But last Thursday, something broke. A 20-year friendship came to a devastating end, when Letcher County Sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines pulled his duty weapon and shot Letcher County District Judge Kevin Mullins dead in his office, with witnesses just on the other side of the door.
Rumors, apparently none true, have raced through the community, setting a torch to other relationships. The community is split between those bent on spreading salacious gossip and those determined to protect the families of two men they saw as pillars of the community.
Mullins and Stines had been coworkers and friends for years. Mullins went to work as Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney in 2001, about the same time Stines became a deputy for then-Sheriff Steve Banks. Stines went on to be a Fleming-Neon Police Officer for a short time, but then returned under Sheriff Danny Webb and acted as bailiff for District Judge Jim Wood. When Wood died of a heart attack in 2009, Mullins was appointed to replace him and Stines continued working as court security in Mullins’s court. He remained there until he took office as sheriff in January 2019.
Letcher Circuit Clerk Mike Watts was the Court Designated Worker, the person assigned to work with juvenile offenders, for 30 years before retiring and running for clerk. His office was in the same suite as Mullins’s, and he saw both men daily from the time they began work until now.
“I never knew of there being any kind of friction between them till it came to this,” said Watts, who said he would often hang out in Mullins’s office, joking and laughing with both men. He said he went fishing with Stines, and was close to Mullins as well.
“We all got along good, teased each other,” he said. “That’s just the way I am.”
Mullins and Stines continued to work together daily, since the sheriff is responsible for security in the district court, circuit court, and fiscal court. All bailiffs, formally called Court Security Officers, are employed by the sheriff. But Stines and Mullins did not only work together in that capacity. District judges are responsible for signing Emergency Protective Orders and Domestic Violence orders, and sheriffs are responsible for serving them. Deputies transport minors to and from juvenile detention, and those minors’ cases are heard by district judges.
But the two worked closest on drug addiction and recovery issues. Stines devoted the majority of his deputies’ enforcement efforts to drug cases and worked closely with Mullins to get first-time offenders into rehab. Mullins devoted much of his time to drug cases, and rehabilitation efforts. In 2018, The Mountain Eagle featured a photo of Mullins in his courtroom holding the newborn baby of a woman he had sentenced to attend a residential drug rehabilitation program for pregnant women.
“I suppose some judges want to appear ‘hard on drugs’ by locking everyone up who has committed a drug-related crime,” he said then. “I think there is a balance. If someone is a non-violent offender, but has a drug problem, it doesn’t make sense to lock them up with no treatment. It’s costly and ineffective. They’ll come right back. There is no harm in showing these people some compassion.”
Stines often expressed the same view, promising that anyone with an addiction problem who wanted help could contact the sheriff ’s department without fear of arrest and the department would get them into rehab.
In 2020, Mullins welcomed a $900,000 grant to Mountain Comprehensive Care Corp. to provide a medical rehabilitation program in jails. In 2023, his court became the first in the state to launch a pilot program placing low-level offenders with substance abuse or mental health disorders in a minimum of one year of treatment, including “wraparound” services such as housing and job placement.
Loading Comments