Earlier this month, a Bradley County judge posted on Facebook about mental health after a man who appeared before him frequently was found dead in the woods.
Judge Clay Collins is a criminal judge in the county. During his three years in the county, many came through his court room, including Chase Scoggins.
“Chase had been in the criminal justice system since he was- even before being- 18,” he says. Collins adds that Scoggins has appeared in his court room more than 30 times for various low-level crimes, like trespassing, theft, and possession of drugs.
Judge Collins post got more than 100,000 shares on Facebook. In the post, Collins describes Scoggins has a nice young man who suffered with some mental health issues. Often times, Collins says, Scoggins would enter and leave rehab only to return to the same issues.
Collins says Scoggins was found dead and alone in the woods near a Target store in Bradley County.
“I posted about him on Facebook, and that blew up more than I ever thought it would. And it just blew up because people see the need.”
He says there are many people across our nation like Scoggins.
“There are thousands upon thousands of Chase Scoggins in our nation. When we shut down the mental asylums and institutions en masse in the 1970s and 80s, we replaced them with jails and prisons.”
He also says “no amount of jail or prison can deter a mentally unstable person from acting mentally unstable.”
“We just pushed these people out to the streets and into prisons and jails,” Judge Clay Collins says.
For Scoggins and others, Judge Collins believes that it should not cost someone their lives in order to address mental health within the judicial system.
“It’s really not okay as a society to let people just wander in the street talking to themself and just look the other way and hope,” he says. Collins adds “you know, hope when they die, we don’t have to see it or deal with it, because that’s what’s happening right now.”
Local 3 did reach out to the Bradley County Medical Examiner’s Office to learn the cause of death for Scoggins. We have not heard back yet, but will update you once we do.