10/10/2025
Chase died alone in the woods behind Target. His body lay unclaimed for several days before someone happened to stumble upon it. Chase’s death wasn’t announced in the news. His remains were interned quietly, without pomp and circumstance. A life snuffed out with hardly a tear shed.
I knew Chase because I was his judge. I saw Chase dozens of times over the past four years. From a young age, Chase battled severe mental issues. He spent his adult life as a wanderer. He lived in the woods mostly because he couldn’t make it in society. Since he didn’t have a place to call home, Chase was known to carry his possessions with him. These possessions often included a machete or knife. When Chase drifted into town, these weapons, coupled by his appearance and demeanor, would understandably terrify people. Even when he wasn’t on drugs, Chase couldn’t last long in public without causing a scene and inevitably coming to jail. Chase was arrested for a slew of low-level misdemeanor crimes: disorderly conduct, public intoxication, criminal trespass. He also had a few shopliftings mixed in, as he would sometimes steal food to keep from starving.
When he came in front of me, Chase was a kind, sincere, thoughtful individual. He knew that he wasn’t like most people; that he wasn’t normal; that he didn’t fit in; that his brain didn’t work the same way as most people’s. He was hurt by how others perceived and treated him, but he understood why they did. I tried to help Chase, while also protecting society. Given his lengthy record, Chase flattened out most of his misdemeanor sentences in jail: 30 days on C-misdemeanors (e.g., disorderly conduct), 6-12 months on more serious misdemeanors (e.g., shoplifting). Jail wasn’t the best option for Chase, but it was all too often the only place I could put him. With help from the Bradley Coalition, we tried to provide Chase with the life skills and tools to lead a somewhat normal life. We also were able to send Chase to an intensive in-patient rehab program in Kentucky once. Unsurprisingly, Chase did not remain in the rehab program long before wandering off into the woods and eventually making his way back to Bradley County. In spite of our best efforts, Chase was never going to be able to function in our society. Under the current system, his tragic demise wasn’t just predictable, it was inevitable.
So, why am I telling you about Chase? Because Chase is not alone, there are thousands upon thousands of Chase Scogginses 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. Since the mental institutions were shuttered, our nation’s jail and prison populations have skyrocketed. Today, there is woefully little mental help for the people who desperately need it. With nowhere else to send them, almost all of the people with mental health issues in Bradley County come to me. As a criminal judge, I am sick and tired of being our county’s busiest mental health professional. I’m sick and tired of watching people like Chase die in the woods and on the street. I’m sick and tired of watching innocent people get harmed by mentally unstable people. I’m sick and tired of putting mentally disabled people in jail, when they belong in a mental institution. I’m sick and tired of watching mentally unstable people reoffend over and over again because they are incapable of leading normal lives. I’m sick and tired of witnessing the hopelessness and despair of mentally disabled people and their families, as their pleas for help fall on deaf ears.
People often blame us judges when people like Chase get out of jail time and time again and commit crime after crime again. I’m not about to defend every judge out there, but most of the criminal judges that I know do their utmost to follow the law and hold criminals accountable. We often sentence people like Chase to the maximum, which is less than a year in jail on all misdemeanors. However, regardless of whether someone like Chase is held in jail for a few days or a year (or longer), when he gets out, he will inevitably reoffend. No amount of jail or prison can deter a mentally unstable person from acting mentally unstable.
Because they cannot function in society, people, like Chase, end up spending their entire adult lives in and out of jail. Infuriatingly, the only time that our society devotes the appropriate mental health tools and resources to those who need them is when those individuals commit heinous crimes, like r**e or murder. How incredibly backwards. A man like Chase is allowed to die alone in the woods, but had he hacked an innocent person to death with his machete first, then, and only then, would he have received the appropriate mental health care that he needed. Absolutely ridiculous. When it’s already too late; when the foreseeable worst result has happened; when the blood and pain of a victim cries out for justice; then our mental health system jumps into action? What a maddening, sick, dangerous charade.
In honor of Chase’s memory, I’m done keeping my mouth shut on this issue. Our county, state, and nation’s mental health systems are indefensible. If we can send billions of dollars to foreign countries, fund thousands of nonsensical pet projects, give tax breaks and incentives to transnational corporations, and provide billions in welfare benefits to non-citizens, then surely, surely, we can figure out a way to help people like Chase, while also protecting innocent people and improving our society. We need to bring back the asylums and mental institutions. We can make them humane. We can ensure that people like Chase live their best lives. We can treat them with dignity and respect. Almost any step we take in this direction would be better and more humane than letting the Chase Scogginses of the world die alone in the woods. Our current system is completely broken, but it doesn’t have to stay this way.
One final thought, it’s easy to place the sole blame for America’s mental health crisis on the government because it absolves us of responsibility. That said, this isn’t just the government’s fault. Our mental health crisis is complex and has numerous causes (e.g., drug use, the disintegration of the traditional family unit, churches and Christians turning a blind eye, etc.). To my fellow believers and to the myriad of churches in our county, I would issue this challenge: how can we better show the love of Christ to people like Chase? Many of you are already doing remarkable things for Christ, but the need is great. Many of us could certainly do more, myself included. There is a mission field in our own backyard. If you want to be a missionary, you don’t have to go to some exotic, distant land. You can start right here in Bradley County, serving your own people.
RIP CHASE
-Judge Clay Collins
