Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Sheriff Who Shot Judge May Go For Mental Health Defense

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law & Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. There's no doubt that our client felt that there was a threat to his family and to himself. New details about Mickey Stines, the former sheriff accused of shooting his longtime friend, Judge Kevin Mullins, dead on camera as his lawyers prepare to say his mental state made him not responsible for the crime. His attorneys are here to explain what they're going for and how it could impact his defense. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Mickey Steins used to be in charge of enforcing the law in Letcher County, Kentucky. Now he's accused of breaking it it and it's all on camera. Steins stunned the world when he pulled his gun and shot and killed his longtime friend and former boss, Judge Kevin Mullins, in the judge's chambers last September 19th. The two men had had lunch earlier that day and no one noticed anything out of the ordinary. Then around 3 p.m., Steins and Mullins were in the judge's chambers talking. Detective Clayton Stamper explained during a hearing what was on surveillance video at a hearing last year. I was told that Sheriff Steins had tried to call his daughter and he had tried to call his daughter from the judge's phone also. Then, for some unknown reason, Stein shot Judge Mullins.

Starting point is 00:01:27 I wasn't present, but when he was taken into custody, I was told by one of the other officers that were there that he made the comment, they're trying to kidnap my wife and kid. Deputies raced to the courthouse for the unusual call that Judge Mullins had been shot. Go ahead. What do you got? Shots fired at the Litch County Courthouse and somebody shot Judge Mullins. You're a kid. Nosser. Just come out on the radio. Body camera footage shows Stein's being taken into custody. Make sure there ain't no weapons

Starting point is 00:02:02 or nothing now. Ain't nothing in there, bro. Yeah. Come on. Come on now. We're out here, opening up the back hatch. Come on. No, now come on. You heard Steins tell the troopers to make sure there weren't any weapons in the back of the cruiser. He then talks a little bit more.

Starting point is 00:02:31 Y'all gonna leave me in here and let me dive in? I can't get up in there. Come on now. I'm moving in there, bro. I might just be in there for a while. I can't get him. These cuffs are way too tight. Come on now, guys. Come on now. On the hour-long ride to the jail that's in another county, Steins practically sounds paranoid.

Starting point is 00:03:00 Come on now, guys. Make sure I get to the jail. At times, it's hard to hear the troopers in the cruiser, but they try to talk to Mickey Steins on that long drive to the jail. Come on now, guys. I was asking why you done it. Was it over your family? Come on now, guys, what are you doing? I'm not just talking to you. I'm just asking, was it something to do with your family or anything like that? I want to tell you about Upside. It's a free app that gets you cash back on things like gas, groceries, and restaurants. This is real cash back. It's money that appears in your Upside app that you can transfer straight into your bank account.

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Starting point is 00:04:31 after a former deputy named Ben Fields admitted to having sex with her when she was an inmate and he was supervising her on home incarceration. Atkins says she couldn't afford a GPS bracelet, so Fields offered to help her out in exchange for her having sex with him in Judge Mullins' chambers. Fields was charged criminally and served six months in jail, and he's supposed to be on probation for more than six years. Atkins told investigators with the Kentucky Attorney General's office that she saw videotapes of Judge Mullins having sex with women. But you saw the judge?

Starting point is 00:05:07 Right. Do you know for sure that was the judge? Yes. I mean, how do you know that's the judge? I'd be in front of him. His face is pretty clear on there. So did this lawsuit and what was happening in the courthouse play a role in Stein's shooting Judge Mullins? His attorneys most certainly believe so, and you're going to hear more about that here in a bit. Fast forward to a hearing for Steins last week. His lawyers want him to

Starting point is 00:05:30 undergo a psychiatric evaluation to help determine whether he is criminally responsible for Judge Mullins' murder. We do believe that there will be an issue as to criminal responsibility. We have consulted with folks with regards to that issue. The judge agreed to get the ball rolling on the evaluation. I think that's probably the best course of action to go ahead and get that in the pipeline. It is going to require, what I would recommend is that we go ahead, get the order entered in regards to competency and criminal responsibility. I might as well go ahead and address since we're going to be doing that versus we've seen it sometimes be piecemealed and I don't want to delay the proceedings if we would have to go back and redo that. So competency and criminal responsibility, these are two totally different things.

Starting point is 00:06:32 Competency has to do with whether someone is able to assist with their own defense, but criminal responsibility has to do with a person's mental state at the time the crime was committed, the Commonwealth objected to the defense's expert possibly being present during the evaluation, which would be conducted by the Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center. I'm not comfortable doing a criminal responsibility if he's going to have an expert on that position unless we know what the issues are they're raising in the criminal responsibility of their expert. So we're going to get a position where our experts at KCPC or the court's experts at KCPC are in criminal responsibility. we're going to get a position where our experts at KCPC or the court's experts at KCPC are in criminal responsibility. We're going to make a finding while their expert's present, and then he's going to go back and write his report. I don't want our, or the court's

Starting point is 00:07:15 KCPC evaluators doing an evaluation to tell him what their position is, what their expert's position is. That way he's not interfering, but he's in an evaluation for criminal responsibility. And then he gets to go back and then address issues that he thought were not discussed properly during the KCPC responsibility issue. So both sides will file briefs on that issue. Meanwhile, the exchange of evidence is well underway. I know we have made discovery, I think two weeks ago, we made another, some more discoveries, some issues. We still have some things coming in and things being tested. I would think within the next four to six months, all discovery and testing would be complete.

Starting point is 00:07:55 I want to bring in Jeremy Bartley. He represents Mickey Steins in this case. So I want you to kind of break down, Jeremy, what exactly you're looking for here with the criminal responsibility evaluation. I mean, is this something that you would present to a jury or would this be something that would be evaluated pretrial? Well, it has the potential to be both. So basically we are required if we intend to rely in part or in whole on a mental health defense concerning criminal responsibility, then once we are confident that we can announce our intention to use that as part of our defense and we have retained our expert, then the Commonwealth of Kentucky has the opportunity to have Mr. Steins evaluated by their expert. And at this point, KCPC is, there's a huge backlog of cases in the state of Kentucky. And so normally this might

Starting point is 00:09:09 be something that we would wait a little bit longer on, but in the interest of trying to expedite this case, we presented Mickey for examination now. The Commonwealth seemed a little surprised by this. It sounds like they kind of expected the competency exam request, which is different. Competency determines whether or not your client can assist in his own defense. But you said it was a joint motion. So explain to me kind of why they seemed sort of taken off guard there. Yeah. And I don't want to speak for the Commonwealth, but I have spoken with Mr. Still after.

Starting point is 00:09:54 I think potentially there was a misunderstanding between the two of us, but I will say that we have not had a reason to believe that he is not competent. And so competency for the viewers is, you know, that's an examination of whether he's able to understand the nature of the proceedings and whether he's able to assist us in preparing his case for trial. It concerns only the now. Where is he at today in terms of his ability to understand those things and to participate? Whereas criminal responsibility, that examination focuses on the time of the alleged acts. And so what we said in court is that I have no reason at this point to believe that he's unable to assist us. I believe that he understands the nature of the proceedings. But I do believe that his defense will, in part, rely upon a mental health defense. In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the statute is very clear.

Starting point is 00:11:12 A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct, as a result of mental illness or intellectual disability, he lacks substantial capacity either to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. We saw the body camera footage that was released that we obtained earlier this month. He seemed very, your client seemed very paranoid in this footage. You know, he's asking where they're taking him, all of this stuff. You know, it almost sounded like he was afraid they were going to take him in the woods somewhere and do something to him or that he was going to be taken somewhere.

Starting point is 00:11:50 I mean, did he feel an imminent threat? And was it because of this lawsuit, you know, about the sex in the courthouse and all of these allegations? If you'd like a one-word answer, yes. Yes, he did feel threatened. By Judge Mullins? He felt threatened by, you know, I'm not going to say specifically who, but at this point, but he was concerned about if he said the wrong thing or if he had already said something that could cause people to want to retaliate against him, to cause harm to him or his family. Yes, he did feel that there was an imminent threat. And, you know, is it related to the deposition? Well, in large part, yes. And there were a variety of

Starting point is 00:12:55 things that were happening there in the area of the courthouse that I think a lot of people wanted to keep secret. And, you know, I think we're starting to see, as you've reported, and about some of the things that were behind the veil were not operated the way they should be. There's been some reporting out there by another outlet. There have been some people who've floated some theories to us that even though Mickey Steins was obviously, as the sheriff, named in this lawsuit as the sheriff, that he was somehow involved in all of this with the sex in the courthouse somehow. Have you, was Sheriff Steins as the sheriff involved with the sex for favors in the courthouse?

Starting point is 00:13:53 The civil suit, the only reason that our client was named in the civil suit, and we're not representing him in that, but, um, he was named solely as the sheriff. And the allegation in that case was solely that he failed to train this Ben Fields, who was convicted of having these sexual relations with, you know, people on pretrial release in the same chambers where these acts occurred. But I've not seen any allegation concerning my client in that case that relates to those allegations. And I've not seen anything that substantiates anything of that nature against our client. Is there anything else that you can reveal to us

Starting point is 00:14:46 about what was going on in that courthouse and why he felt threatened that day? Well, I just think there are a lot of things that he certainly would have been privy to, had been made aware of. And I think that there was a concern that what he might say in that deposition could be harmful to others and you know I think that this caused him severe distress and I think you see a person in the body cam footage that you have, you see a person who is completely outside of themselves, outside of the normal way that people were used to seeing the sheriff. And, you know, the days leading up to that deposition and the days following that deposition, he was looking around every corner.

Starting point is 00:15:48 He had every reason to believe that there was a threat to his wife and daughter. You heard the testimony at the preliminary hearing that our client's statement was they were going to take or kidnap my wife and daughter. And that was a very real threat that the sheriff felt. And so I think that it's important to understand that while this is not a whodunit case, you have a video, there was a shooting, But there is a real husband, a real father, and a real human who was placed in a absolutely very delicate situation. Well, we will stay tuned. Jeremy Bartley, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. And just to be clear, the issue of criminal responsibility, that will be up to the jury to decide.

Starting point is 00:16:54 And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Sheriff Who Shot Judge May Go For Mental Health Defense

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Sheriff Who Shot Judge May Go For Mental Health Defense

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