After Nearly Six Years in Jail Because of Unaffordable Bail, Kentucky Man Acquitted of Capital Murder

A Kentucky man who lan­guished in jail for near­ly six years because of bail he could not afford has been acquit­ted of cap­i­tal mur­der and relat­ed charges. Eugene ​“Red” Mitchell (pic­tured) faced the death penal­ty on charges that he had raped, sodom­ized, and mur­dered Sheila Devine, a Louisville grand­moth­er. On September 18, 2019, a Jefferson County jury found Mitchell not guilty of all charges against him. He had spent five years, eight months and ten days in pre­tri­al cus­tody, unable to post a quar­ter-mil­lion dol­lar cash bond.

“They want­ed to kill me for some­thing I knew I did­n’t do,” Mitchell said. ​“It is the most ter­ri­fy­ing thing in the world.”

Angie Elleman, one of the pub­lic defend­ers who rep­re­sent­ed Mitchell, called the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion ​“an extreme waste of resources.” The wrong­ful mur­der charges and pro­longed incar­cer­a­tion also exact­ed an extreme per­son­al toll on Mitchell. His health dra­mat­i­cal­ly dete­ri­o­rat­ed dur­ing his time in jail. He expe­ri­enced severe depres­sion, gained 100 pounds, and had to have 13 teeth extract­ed. While he was in cus­tody, Mitchell was evict­ed from his home and lost his pos­ses­sions. Although the jury ver­dict set him free, he is now homeless.

Mitchell’s case is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive death-penal­ty tri­al in which a Jefferson County defen­dant has been acquit­ted. In March 2018, a jury found Charles Washington not guilty of all charges in a fatal home inva­sion. Steve Bright, the for­mer pres­i­dent of the Southern Center for Human Rights, described acquit­tals in cap­i­tal cas­es as very rare and said the two con­sec­u­tive acquit­tals indi­cate that Commonwealth Attorney Tom Wine’s office ​“obvi­ous­ly has made huge mis­cal­cu­la­tions” in the selec­tion of death-penalty cases.

The pros­e­cu­tion claimed that Mitchell com­mit­ted the crime with co-defen­dant Guy Marcus Allen, whose tri­al is still pend­ing. DNA evi­dence sug­gests that Allen, not Mitchell, sex­u­al­ly assault­ed Devine. Mitchell’s DNA was found in Devine’s apart­ment, but in places his attor­neys described as ​“innocu­ous,” such as on the vod­ka bot­tle he had shared with Devine the day before her attack. The pros­e­cu­tion claimed that Mitchell knew details about the crime that sup­pos­ed­ly were known only to police and the killer, but facts about the case had quick­ly become the sub­ject of gos­sip in the neigh­bor­hood where Devine and Mitchell lived. A pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness told the jury that Mitchell had been bleed­ing from his neck after the killing, pos­si­bly indi­cat­ing a strug­gle with the vic­tim. However, sur­veil­lance video from the store in which Mitchell worked debunked that tes­ti­mo­ny. The pros­e­cu­tion also failed to prove that Mitchell and Allen had been in Devine’s apart­ment at the same time, and the defense pre­sent­ed evi­dence that the two men did not even know each other.

After his acquit­tal, Mitchell told the Louisville Courier-Journal, ​“It’s over with. I can’t cry over spilt milk. I’ve got to get on with my life.”