Views of a recently repainted dorm that houses inmates at the Fulton County Jail on Friday, July 12, 2024. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
Across Georgia, people in need of mental health treatment can be detained in jail for months — sometimes years — before they’ve been convicted or even tried for any crime.
James Michael Coates is one of those people.
In 2021, Roswell police arrested Coates, claiming that new DNA evidence had linked him to the 1988 cold case murder of 8-year-old Joshua Harmon. He had already twice been convicted of child molestation — among other charges — for crimes that happened in 1990 and 1993, records show.
“This was a tragedy that no family should endure,” Roswell Police Chief James Conroy said at a news conference. “The death of Josh and the fact that his killer remained free for such a long time is unimaginable. I hope this arrest brings your family a sense of closure.”
But, more than three years later, Coates’ trial is in limbo.
At least two separate court-ordered psychological evaluations have found that the now-60-year-old man is mentally incompetent to stand trial, and his case can’t move forward until he goes through “competency restoration,” so he can understand the charges against him and participate in his own defense.
People often have to complete the process at a state psychiatric hospital, where the average daily cost for in-patient treatment for one person is $945.51, according to Medicaid cost reports for the 2023 fiscal year.
Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Commissioner Kevin Tanner talks about offering jail-based competency restoration services with the passage of Senate Bill 533. (Matthew Pearson/WABE)
However, Kevin Tanner, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, says the issue the agency faces when creating a treatment plan is that state psychiatric hospitals rarely have an available bed for them.
“We only have about 300 beds that we actually can use for restoration services,” Tanner said while sitting in his office, his back facing the gold dome of the Georgia Capitol. “I have 700 people waiting on a bed, so at some point, we got to find a way to increase our capacity.”
Tanner is only counting about half of the state’s total number of beds, because the other half are taken up by people who have been declared “not guilty by reason of insanity.”
“So, those people don’t go anywhere,” Tanner said. “We have a lot of people that’s been there over 20 years.”
The shortage of beds means it’s possible for people to spend more time on the waitlist than the maximum sentence for the crime they’re charged with. According to the department, the average wait time for a male is 339 days, and for a female, it’s 184 days.
And unlike Coates, many of them are charged with misdemeanors that carry a sentence of up to 12 months in jail and a maximum fine of $1,000.
“They’re not out committing serious crimes,” Tanner said. “What they’re doing is public urination, trespassing, criminal damage to property, nuisance things that continue to get them into the system, because they’re just so ill.”
“It’s a flawed thought process, Here, we’re just warehousing individuals as opposed to providing services.”
-Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat during a recent tour of the Fulton Jail
In May, Tanner said the waitlist for a bed was 40% higher than the same time last year. There were also roughly 1,300 people in jail who hadn’t reached that point because they were still waiting to be evaluated for competency.
While Tanner said the backlog of people waiting on a psychological evaluation predates the COVID-19 pandemic, the problem got worse when the department lost more than 1,200 employees. Since then, it’s recovered only about half of the lost jobs. That means it’s also been taking longer to “restore” someone.
Georgia’s Senate Bill 533 is part of new push to help those lingering in jail due to long waits for a mental health bed. It allows the state’s Department of Behavioral Health to partner with the local sheriff’s office to enter a jail and provide treatment there.
Attorney Derek Johnson-Gage specializes in criminal and probate cases involving mental illness.
“It’s not a silver bullet,” he said about the legislation, “but it is a meaningful step forward.”
Johnson-Gage acknowledged jail is a dangerous place, and the environment can make someone’s mental health issues worse, but he said jail-based competency restoration programs are a good option.
“At least you don’t have somebody rotting in jail for 12 months trying to get an evaluation and into a hospital only to have to go through another nine to 12 months of treatment in a lock-down facility,” Johnson-Gage said.
During a tour of the Fulton County Jail over the summer, Sheriff Patrick Labat walked with his staff down the white-brick hallways of the facility to several housing pods undergoing renovations, pointing out issues along the way that they say can’t be fixed.
“It’s a flawed thought process,” Labat said. “Here, we’re just warehousing individuals as opposed to providing services.”
The sheriff disagrees with county officials that renovations and a new “special purpose facility” for inmates with serious mental health issues may be enough to improve jail conditions.
But, both parties agree more mental health resources are needed, highlighted by the 2022 death of Lashawn Thompson in the jail’s psychiatric wing. Thompson’s death helped launch a federal and state investigation into potential civil rights abuses.
Fulton County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Natalie Ammons said Emory University currently provides competency evaluations and mental health treatment at the jail for men, but only evaluations for women. She was unaware of any agreement with the state’s Department of Behavioral Health to expand those services.
As for Coates, he isn’t expected to be moved to a state psychiatric hospital anytime soon.
In the past few years, he’s pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, claiming in court documents that the state is using “false and manufactured evidence.”
He’s also filed dozens of motions to dismiss his public defender so he can represent himself and sent hand-written letters to the Fulton County court clerk asking for copies of court decisions that he believes could help set him free.
Coates’ lawyers and prosecutors have both raised concerns about his mental fitness.
“Defendant (Coates) has been present for numerous, substantive hearings where the swabs obtained from the autopsy of minor child J.H. were explained, in detail,” prosecutors wrote to the judge overseeing the case last November. “Regardless, defendant seems to not have any recollection of this testimony in this most recent pleading. These statements are repeated over and over in nearly every pleading filed by the defendant.”
Coates is scheduled to appear for a status conference in February to see where he stands on the waitlist for treatment.
In the meantime, Roswell police spokesperson Tim Lupo says the team that worked to crack the case allegedly involving Coates has stayed in regular contact with the Harmon family.
“The men and women of the Roswell Police Department diligently worked on this investigation for more than three decades and have now entrusted that investigation to the next link in our criminal justice system,” Lupo said.
