LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Three days before police said Travis Hall pulled a woman behind a wall and raped her in broad daylight in downtown Louisville, prosecutors 3 miles away in Clark County, Indiana, tried to keep him in jail for a mental health evaluation.
They lost.
"I hate more than words can say what has happened. The justice system is obviously broken," Clark County Prosecutor Jeremey Mull said. "It's a nightmare that an individual that I'm trying to keep in jai — who keeps getting released over my objection — goes out and does something like this."
The case against Hall in Indiana has been pending for three years. It stems from a night in November 2020 when clerks at a liquor store in Jeffersonville called police saying he thrashed about inside using racial slurs. Body camera footage taken by Jeffersonville Police officers that night shows Hall told officers his name was Walt Disney and that Michael Jackson was his dad.
The state of Indiana wants a mental health evaluation, but the trespassing and disorderly conduct charges are a low-level misdemeanor case. So Hall is continually released with no bond and told to go to what's called pre-trial services for it to be scheduled.
"My office three times filed motions to have this person put in jail because he was not doing what he had been told to do," Mull said. "Every single time he was arrested, he was released again on his own recognizance. And this happened over and over and over again."
And so continues the revolving door all detailed in dated court documents. In Kentucky, Hall was ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial in four misdemeanor cases in December 2022.
A mentally incompetent court order with the tag "not likely to regain" competency in the foreseeable future basically wipes away criminal proceedings. It halts the prosecution of pending criminal cases, but that lack of competency does not guarantee psychiatric treatment.
In Kentucky, those deemed incompetent to aid in their defense are then sent to a hospital for another evaluation to determine if they're a danger to themselves or the public. If they're stable at that moment or won't benefit from treatment, by law, doctors can release them.
Court records show Travis Hall was found mentally incompetent to stand trial on charges connected to four different cases. Months later he was back on the street and accused of rape.
Louisville police working the downtown beat know Hall has outstanding charges in neighboring Clark County. So when he's not picking up new charges in Louisville, they bring him right back across the river to Indiana. The most recent occasion played out in August 2023, days before his rape arrest. Court records show he was picked up in Louisville at 2:30 a.m. Aug. 13, 2023. Hall was eventually brought to the Clark County jail on a warrant related to his 2022 arrest in Jeffersonville. After a bond revocation hearing on Aug. 22, he was once again released on his own recognizance and ordered to receive a mental health evaluation. On Aug. 25, he was back in Louisville, no evaluation and charged with raping a woman at 1st and Jefferson streets at 9 a.m. as work traffic poured into the city.
"Unfortunately, I have seen a number of cases where individuals who have lower-level charges — that I have tried to keep in jail — have been out let out and ultimately go on to commit more serious felonies," Mull said. "I see it on a regular basis."
The heart of the problem is a justice system that struggles to balance compassion for those with mental illness with public protection. Mull said he is frustrated with that system that treats seriously mentally ill people like human pinballs, bouncing from courts to jail to the streets.
Nancy Brooks, who leads the Louisville chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said hospitals are just as big of a part of the cycle as the courts
"We need medical reform that allows people to stay longer," Brooks said. "It can't just be released them (to the streets) and then find them again later."
Brooks said the Kentuckiana lacks enough mental health providers and enough options for residential care, options that are not as restrictive as a psych ward or jail but provide more of a group-home-like setting where services can be provided.
"I certainly think that a housing facility that could be providing that sort of long-term care would be the best solution and not just this rapid cycling through the justice system," Brooks said. "That's not helping anybody."
Brooks said stigmas associated with mental illness and a lack of funding are barriers to that solution.
In the meantime, more courts are piloting mental health dockets. There's a new one in Clark County and in Kentucky a similar effort called Tim's Law, in which Brooks said courts assign people a doctor, a therapist, support peers and more.
"They're looking to really wrap themselves around this individual and make sure that they stay on their regimen," she said.
Tim's Law is Kentucky's version of Assisted Outpatient Treatment, which is being implemented in states through the county and been shown to reduce hospitalizations, incarceration rates and homeless nights among people suffering with serious mental illness.
Research from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national nonprofit focused on best practices treating mental illness, showed hospitalizations dropped 77% and arrests incidents declined by 83% in New York after it implemented AOT.
Brooks said filling the gap provides the best solution to break the cycle, and protect those suffering from serious mental illness who pose a danger to the public and themselves.
"We all need people in our lives who help care for us," she said. "We all need a place to feel safe and we all need some sort of a purpose."
Travis Hall suffers from mental illness, according to court records obtained by WDRB News.
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