PRESTONSBURG, Ky. (LEX 18) – The judge in the Floyd County murder case of Amber Spradlin ruled Monday morning to grant work release to one of the men charged in the case and found another defendant’s attorney guilty of contempt of court in the case.
Well-known local dentist Michael McKinney II was released on $250,000 bail earlier this month and sentenced to house arrest and GPS monitoring. He later filed a motion to go to work. During Monday’s hearing, the judge decided to grant him release so he can train another dentist to “save” his business.
McKinney is accused of aiding and abetting evidence tampering in eight counts.
His son, Michael “MK” McKinney III, is accused of murder and eight counts of aiding and abetting evidence tampering in the case.
Family friend Josh Mullins is also charged with eight counts of aiding and abetting tampering with evidence. Mullins’ bail was set at $100,000, and Coleman reduced his bail to $50,000 cash on Monday, despite objections from prosecutors.
At the time of his arrest in July, MK McKinney’s bail was set at $5 million. His attorney withdrew a motion to reduce the bail.
Spradlin was found dead in the home of Michael McKinney II last June. The three defendants were arrested on July 30 of this year.
On August 9, District Court Chief Judge Eddy Coleman ordered Randy Martin O’Neal, MK McKinney’s attorney, to “show cause, if he has any, why he should not be charged with contempt of court.”
The order was issued in response to an alleged problem with case law citations in a motion to dismiss filed by O’Neal.
On Friday, O’Neal filed an answer in court explaining that he mistakenly filed the wrong version of the motion to dismiss, which did not contain the correct footnotes and case citations. He further argued that while the cases he cited did exist, they were not the case citations he wanted to include in the motion to dismiss.
During Monday’s hearing, Coleman said he believed the jurisprudence issues were due to the use of artificial intelligence and called the citations used in the original motion to dismiss “incorrect.” Coleman ultimately found O’Neal in contempt and fined him $500.
O’Neal made no comment at the end of the hearing.
The three defendants also went on trial Monday on their latest charge of aiding and abetting evidence tampering, alleging that they placed a knife in the sofa on which Spradlin was killed “to create the impression that it was the murder weapon, even though it was known that it was not used in the crime.”
