WHITESBURG, Ky. — The sheriff charged with murder in the shooting of a rural Kentucky judge in his courthouse chambers was accused in a federal lawsuit of failing to investigate allegations that one of his deputies repeatedly sexually abused a woman in the same judge’s chambers.

The preliminary investigation shows that Letcher County Sheriff Mickey Stines shot District Judge Kevin Mullins multiple times on Thursday following an argument inside the courthouse, according to Kentucky State Police.

Mullins, who held the judgeship for 15 years, died at the scene, and Stines surrendered without incident.

Just what the two men were arguing about wasn’t immediately made clear.

Stines was deposed on Monday in a lawsuit filed by two women, one of whom alleged that a deputy forced her to have sex inside Mullins’ chambers for six months in exchange for staying out of jail. The lawsuit accuses the sheriff of “deliberate indifference in failing to adequately train and supervise” the deputy.

The now-former deputy sheriff, Ben Fields, pleaded guilty to raping the female prisoner while she was on home incarceration. Fields was sentenced this year to six months in jail and then six and a half years on probation for rape, sodomy, perjury and tampering with a prisoner monitoring device, The Mountain Eagle reported. Three charges related to a second woman were dismissed because she is now dead.

Stines fired Fields, who was his successor as Mullins’ bailiff, for “conduct unbecoming” after the lawsuit was filed in 2022, The Courier Journal reported.

The killing of the judge sent shock waves through the tight-knit Appalachian town. Whitesburg is the county seat of government with about 1,700 residents located about 145 miles southeast of Lexington. Rather than hold the sheriff in the local jail, authorities booked Stines into the Leslie County Detention Center, two counties away, where he remained Friday morning.