Kentucky - Judge killed, sheriff arrested in Letcher County courthouse shooting - Sep. 19, 2024

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Stines has not hired an attorney. Judge have you tried to hire one? Have you spoken to anybody to try to get an attorney? Answer: No sir. they are discussing his finances and whether he can afford a private attorney. Stines owns his house outright might be worth 40 or 50K.
 
Stines says he hopes he can get an attorney within 10 days prior to his prelim hearing but cannot guarantee since it is hard to reach out to people he needs to since he is in jail.

Judge appoints PD to assist up and until his prelim hearing. Once in circuit court, that court may require him to hire independent counsel.

Oct 1, 1pm set for the prelim hearing.
 
Judge questioning Stines' financials regarding his defense. They are hashing out to know if he has the ability to pay for representation. Judge doesn't believe that he's indigent at this time, however he is appointing the public defender for the preliminary hearing.

Entering plea of not guilty!! October 1st preliminary 1:00pm, I didn't catch the location.
 
bestill said:
I agree. The not guilty plea tells us he's going to fight this. I don't think he will resign from his job either. Miller said they believe he is in the "process of losing his job" - that's not a resignation!
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yep, I picked up on that as well. Losing one's job is an indication they have no intention of giving it up voluntarily.

ETA I just don't know how one fights this. Unless he is hoping for jury nullification to get him out of the consequences of his actions.
 
What makes someone indigent? Do they expect a defendant to sell their home to pay for attorney fees or is there some consideration that he has a family that depends on him that will be without a house or would they only consider extra property/assets as things he could reasonably sell to provide for his defense? With a possible death penalty case, that could be $$.

I was surprised at his income as a sheriff.. $115,000 a year for a rural small town area seems like a good income for the area.
 
nerosleuth said:
Years ago it used to be that sheriffs in Kentucky were limited to only serving one term in office for four years and couldn't run for reelection.

Now they can serve more than one term in office.

I don't know if anyone has to meet certain legal qualification requirements before they run for election or are appointed to the Sheriffs Office in Kentucky nowadays.

I do know that years ago anyone in Kentucky could be appointed Sheriff by a county judge executive.

I've heard of death in office vacancies from years ago where the county judge executive appointed the spouse of the deceased sheriff to serve out the remainder of the deceased's sheriff's term in office.

My thinking is that the state legislature may have to update their laws as to dealing with qualifications for being a sheriff in Kentucky, situations involving sheriffs that are charged with a violent crime, protocols for removing a sheriff from office and filling those vacancies.

It might be more simpler to have the Kentucky Attorney General rather than the Kentucky Governor or the Kentucky General Assembly deal with the issues of removing sheriffs from office and filling the vacancies with someone that is legally qualified to be a sheriff in Kentucky.
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Perhaps it should be addressed. My guess is that as an elected official, a governor can not remove another elected official. Can you imagine if the governor was a different party from many of the sheriffs and had the "to the victor belong the spoils" mentality? A governor would be able to replace officials elected by their own voters in a smaller area. That would not work.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this right. But there's a good reason a governor can not remove a sheriff. I'm not sure how the Attorney General of a State works. However, if he's elected . . . well, I'm not sure it's a good idea that he have dominion over county officials.

And, just as a wonder: would Sheriff Stines have had the authority to arrest a sitting judge who was also elected?
 
bestill said:
This is an excellent point. I would imagine that a county wide alcohol sale vote could motivate a lot of people on both sides of the argument. The revenue for a struggling county could be substantial and also for businesses that serve and sell alcohol. If the county is as small as reported I don't see where there are many increase the revenue opportunities.
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Years ago when the county was dry, folks had three options to get their alcohol in a dry county.

They could go to a bootlegger that sold alcohol illegally in Letcher County, go across the state line into Virginia, or go to nearby Perry County, Kentucky that was wet and legally sold alcohol county wide.

This past May, the voters in Knott County, which is next to Letcher County, approved county wide sales of alcohol in that county.
 
tlcya said:
Miller: Sir, it is my understanding that he is in the process of loosing his job, his family cannot afford to hire him counsel.
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I'm a supporter of public defenders for anyone who cannot afford one, of course. I hate the thought a family losing everything to legal counsel for a loved one.

<modsnip: Please do not discuss rumors>

I think he expects to use this particular public defender, expects to keep his Sheriff's position, expects to escape conviction, and expects to retain public support.

What the heck is this case about?!?

jmo
 
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tlcya said:
MOO Stines is not psychotic and appears to be in full possession of his faculties.
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Allow me to add something to the list of possibilities - something physical that may be undiagnosed. Something I would never have known about until this past year.

My sister died of pancreatic cancer this summer. Months, maybe years, before her late March diagnosis, her personality was changing. Toward last fall she had what appeared to be mental issues, but you'd never spot anything wrong most of the time and unless you knew her really well.

She thought she was receiving phone calls and she went to "rescue" whichever relative she thought had called -- even though no call showed up on her phone.

In other words, she was doing what she thought someone was telling her to do.

Once the family got onto a problem, one of the first thing was that her meds were being checked. The family got her guns out of the house and were working on the problem. She lost over 40 pounds, was diagnosed with diabetes and eventually with the pancreatic-liver cancer.

Toward the end, she told me she felt like the "village idiot" because she never knew anything any more. Her daughter and I discussed how very difficult the mental aspect of this had been on her.

The doctors told her children they thought the mental "strangeness" / confusion was a result of liver enzymes. We personally had never known anyone with pancreatic cancer to have these issues.

So, just to add to the mix, even if a mental evaluation doesn't uncover anything, there might be something physical going on with the sheriff that has created the situation.
 
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I wouldn't read too much in to the "not guilty" plea. That is just standard. He will get an attorney in place and negotiate something. Or possibly depending on what was going on, he may want to actually have a trial to expose something. It is hard to say. But the not guilty plea is really just standard. Almost no one pleads guilty at this stage on these kind of charges.
 
Inthedetails said:
I honestly wouldn't put much measure into what he was wearing
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Agreed... But imo, more because in a small town, everyone often knows who the sheriff is anyway... the uniform just isn't necessary.

My longtime hometown sheriff has his own recognize able "uniform" of street clothes... He only dressed up for events.

Didn't make him any less effective, but did make him all the more approachable.
 
CuriousCricket said:
Perhaps it should be addressed. My guess is that as an elected official, a governor can not remove another elected official. Can you imagine if the governor was a different party from many of the sheriffs and had the "to the victor belong the spoils" mentality? A governor would be able to replace officials elected by their own voters in a smaller area. That would not work.

I'm not sure I'm explaining this right. But there's a good reason a governor can not remove a sheriff. I'm not sure how the Attorney General of a State works. However, if he's elected . . . well, I'm not sure it's a good idea that he have dominion over county officials.

And, just as a wonder: would Sheriff Stines have had the authority to arrest a sitting judge who was also elected?
Click to expand...
I understand what you're saying, and you do bring up very good points about the pitfalls of having either a governor or attorney general appoint a county sheriff.

Perhaps the best way to address this issue is to have the attorney general be involved in the proceedings to legally remove a sheriff from office and declaring that office to be vacant.

Then have the county judge executive to appoint someone that is legally qualified to be a sheriff to serve out the unexpired term.

A legally qualified person could be a deputy sheriff, a police officer, or a retired Kentucky State Police trooper that had police academy training and law enforcement experience to become the new sheriff.
 
WSAZ-TV from Huntington, West Virginia is reporting that the Letcher County Sheriff accused of shooting and killing a Letcher County District Judge pleaded not guilty during a virtual court appearance today.

A preliminary hearing was set for Tuesday October 1 at 1:00 pm at the Morgan County Judicial Center in West Liberty, Kentucky.

Source:

Sheriff Accused Of Killing Judge Enters Plea
 
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