For more than a decade, Carl Jerome Hamilton has been in a revolving door in the Davidson County criminal justice system.
He’s racked up roughly 100 criminal charges in Nashville since 2007 as he struggled with drugs and mental health issues, court records show. His crimes grew increasingly violent.
In October, he was released from Davidson County jail after serving two years of a six-year sentence for kidnapping a woman in the parking garage of a downtown apartment complex where he had previously been arrested for burglaries.
He held her under a stairwell, but the woman escaped with help from another resident.
Months after his release, Hamilton, 34, was back accused of committing similar crimes at another apartment complex in town, where he was twice arrested and charged with trespassing this year.
He appeared in Davidson County Superior Court to face those charges on April 25, but the case was dropped and he was released from jail after a doctor determined he was not mentally fit to stand trial.
The next day on April 26, he allegedly returned to the apartment complex and raped an Amazon delivery driver in the mailroom. He now faces felony charges of kidnapping, rape and robbery.
He’s not the only offender in the revolving door.
Hamilton’s case is the latest in a string of high-profile incidents in Nashville where violent felons have been released from custody after being deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial, only to go out and be accused of committing more alleged violent crimes. In the nation's criminal justice system, not competent means a defendant doesn't have the mental capacity to understand their charges and can't assist in their own defense.
In a push to fix the problem, two new state laws will go into effect in July that would mandate mental health evaluations and treatment for misdemeanor offenders and require automatic commitment for anyone deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.
Mental health and disability advocates, however, worry the laws will lead to more people languishing in overcrowded jails due to the lack of treatment programs and staffing for psychiatric beds.
Eliot Pinsley, who heads the Behavioral Health Foundation, a Nashville nonprofit policy center, said Tenneessee doesn’t yet have the infrastructure to handle an increase in people requiring civil commitment under the new laws.
“It’s like we’re building the plane while we’re flying it,” he said. “We’re trying to use parts that don’t even exist yet.”
Davidson County General Sessions Judge Melissa Blackburn said she’s also concerned that more people will sit in jail awaiting treatment, but with few options, the laws are a step in fixing a broken system.
“With these new laws, we won’t see the incidents that we've seen recently where people are falling through holes in the system and committing these horrible crimes,” she said. “I'm hoping that we're able to close those holes.”
A shift under Jillian’s Law
A breaking point came last year in the death of Belmont University student Jillian Ludwig, who police said was shot in the head by a stray bullet fired by Shaquille Taylor.
Taylor, 29, who has an intellectual disability, had previously been deemed incompetent to stand trial for another violent crime but did not meet the standards for involuntary commitment.
In response, lawmakers with bipartisan support passed “Jillian’s Law,” which requires a criminal defendant found incompetent for mental health or intellectual disability reasons to be committed to a facility for mental health treatment. The defendants are also barred from possessing or buying guns under the law.
While lawmakers have lauded the bill, Pinsley said the law lowers the bar for commitment to include a broader group of Class A Misdemeanors, like DUI and theft, which could rope in a swath of nonviolent offenders and lead to an influx of people waiting for treatment.
“We would be further traumatizing people who are waiting in jail for a hospital bed,” he said. “There has to be available resources that can meet the needs of people right away and provide long term support, and we just don’t have that.”
Pinsley said the bill also doesn’t take into account the different needs of those with mental illness and people, like Taylor, with permanent developmental disabilities.
Tennessee currently has just four beds in the entire state for criminal defendants with developmental disabilities, all at the Harold Jordan Center facility based in Nashville.
Jillian’s Law adds about $1 million in state funding for two additional beds. The governor’s budget this year provided for a total of $2.1 million to implement Jillian’s Law.
“Only six beds for the entire state just isn’t enough,” Pinsley said.
Meanwhile, the daily costs for such beds have skyrocketed, as facilities struggle with staffing shortages.
The costs for daily occupancy at the Tennessee’s Harold Jordan Center, which houses developmentally disabled defendants, ballooned from $828 in 2017 to more than $4,000 this year, according to the state budget.
Tennessee’s Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities in a statement said the center is licensed for eight beds for those committed by court order, but staffing currently only supports four beds.
“The nation is experiencing shortages in finding direct support staff, and we are not immune from those challenges, particularly supporting those with very challenging behavioral needs,” the agency said.
The agency said it is working with stakeholders to prepare for an “anticipated increase in commitments” once Jillian’s Law takes effect.
Waiting for mental health, psychiatric treatment
Those who are already incarcerated can face lengthy waits for psychiatric beds.
A report last year from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit, found that Tennessee ranks in the bottom five states for psychiatric bed space, with the average incarcerated patient waiting up to 60 days in jail for placement.
Of about 550 staffed psychiatric beds in Tennessee, about 15% included incarcerated individuals. On any given day last year, about 150 people were waiting in jail for a state hospital bed, the report found.
Tennessee isn't the only state facing a backlog.
In Colorado, it was estimated this year that about 400 people deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial were sitting in jail cells waiting for a state hospital bed. Lawmakers there are pushing for an additional $68 million in funding to help reduce the waitlist.
In addition to Jillian’s Law, a second new Tennessee law mandates an additional $3.3 million in state funding for mental health evaluations and treatment for misdemeanor offenders believed to be mentally incompetent.
Davidson County for the past two years has budgeted its own funding of about $600,000 for mental health evaluations through a pilot program, said Blackburn, who oversees the county’s mental health court.
While the additional state funding will help, Blackburn said she worries about the many counties that don’t yet have such programs. And that could mean more people languishing in jails, she said.
“They don't have the infrastructure yet to implement what's in the law, so they’re starting from scratch,” she said. “We've been dealing with it, but others haven't.”
Blackburn said the state funding in Davidson County can help pay for a jail-based competency training program. If a defendant is deemed mentally incompetent, they could receive training and treatment in the jail to restore their competency and help them understand the court proceedings.
But no program is yet in place.
A broken system
Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall, who oversees the jail system, has advocated for greater mental health support.
But Hall said he doesn't want his jails used as holding pens while the state scrambles to provide mental evaluations and treatment.
“I don't think this is a terrible law,” he said. “But the real problem is, where do you want these people to be? And here’s the scary part, what if someone is incompetent and they can never be restored, where do they go from there? Because it truly can’t be in a jail setting.”
The nation’s mental health crisis has grown worse in recent decades following the mass closure of psychiatric hospitals in the late 20th century and an increased number of individuals suffering with psychiatric problems.
And without a robust mental health system, the burden has shifted to prisons and jails, Hall said, adding that about 30% of people in his jail system have some form of mental illness.
“We're the only modern country in the world that would take a naked man singing in the park and put him in jail,” Hall said.
In 2021, Davidson County officials formed a task force to study the growing problem of repeat offenders and what they called a “crisis in competence to stand trial.”
The study found a population of 182 individuals in Davidson County who have been in a revolving door of misdemeanor charges and have been deemed incompetent. About 60% of those individuals were expected to be rearrested within 90 days.
The task force made several recommendations for improving the crisis, such as pre-arrest diversion and better coordinated programs, but progress has been slow.
In one form of support, the Behavioral Care Center inside the Davidson County Jail provides comprehensive mental health care and has garnered attention as a national model.
The center is staffed for 60 beds but typically operates below 50% capacity. Hall, who spearheaded the effort, said the center is not a lockdown facility and doesn’t take violent offenders. Participants also have to be willing to accept help, he added.
On a recent visit to the center, staff were dressed in medical scrubs and the light-filled rooms had serene Tennessee nature murals. Hall said the center was designed to have a calming effect.
While he hopes more jails can implement such programs, he said the real support should not be based in the criminal justice system.
“We still have this elephant... we need a mental health system,” he said.
Solutions for the future
While mental health advocates are concerned about the rights of those who are incarcerated, supporters of the new laws say victims also have rights.
House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland, who sponsored both bills, in a statement said overcrowded jails “matter little to a victim or family who has lost a loved one to a violent, senseless crime.”
“The biggest threat to public safety lies in allowing dangerous criminals to avoid accountability and continue to hurt people,” said Lamberth, a former Sumner County prosecutor. “The resources needed to follow through with implementing Jillian’s Law have been funded and the cost is well worth the peace of mind and safety of the public. If we must build more jails or expand mental health resources to restore competency, we will.”
As she works under the new, Blackburn said she’s planning for more community-based programs that can help break the revolving door.
The judge said she’s working with a local nonprofit called Park Center on a support housing program that could provide medication and a safe place to sleep.
“These people don't need to be out on the streets, and jail isn’t the right place,” she said. “They need to be receiving treatment.”
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