Nashville has seen a recent string of violent suspects who have been released from custody after doctors have determined that they are mentally unfit to stand trial, only to go out and commit more alleged violent crimes.

In order to stand trial and face charges, a defendant must be able to understand the court process and assist in their defense. State and federal law prohibits the prosecution of people who are found to be mentally incompetent.

To be involuntarily committed, the court has to find that the person is a substantial risk of serious harm to themselves or others. But if the person is not considered a risk, in many cases, they are simply released from custody.

Two new state laws that go into effect in July aim to fix the system by mandating mental health evaluations and treatment for misdemeanor offenders and requiring automatic commitment for anyone deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.

Here is a close look at three, high-profile cases where mentally incompetent defendants are accused of committing violent crimes after being released from custody. None of the three have been convicted on subsequent charges and their lawyers did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Carl Jerome Hamilton

Carl Jermoe Hamilton, 34, has been in the Davidson County criminal justice system since at least 2007, raking up roughly 100 criminal charges ranging from drugs and trespassing to kidnapping.

In 2022, he was convicted of kidnapping a 24-year-old woman in the garage of a downtown apartment complex. He held the woman under a stairwell but she was able to escape with help from another resident, according to court records.

Hamilton had previously been charged with burglaries and thefts at the building.

He served less than half of a six-year prison sentence and was released from the Davidson County jail in October. Months later, he was twice arrested for trespassing at another downtown apartment complex.

On April 25, Hamilton appeared before Davidson County General Sessions Judge Merlissa Blackburn to face the trespassing charges. But his case was dropped and he was released from jail after a Vanderbilt University Medical Center 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 driver as she was delivering packages in the mailroom, according to authorities. Police said he then forced her into her vehicle and drove to an ATM, where he used her debit card to withdraw $100.

Police said he then drove her around for about an hour before fleeing. Hamilton was arrested after he returned to the apartment complex while detectives were still there investigating, police said.

Blackburn, in an interview, said Hamilton should never have been released from custody and that case somehow slipped through the cracks.

“It’s disturbing,” she said. “They’re all very disturbing. And we’re all trying to figure out how these things get missed.”

A Vanderbilt forensic evaluation on April 9 determined that Hamilton was not competent to stand trial and was unable to understand his legal situation, but there was no indication in the report that he was violent, Blackburn said.

Blackburn said she did not have information on his previous violent conviction in 2022 when he appeared before her in court for his trespassing charges.

“The right way for it to have been handled would have been for us to understand that he was a dangerous individual,” she said.

Johnson Lloyd

Blackburn also noted the case of Johnson Lloyd, 25, who was arrested in December after he allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel employee in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

According to news reports, Lloyd had previously been arrested for armed robbery and assault in Maryland and had spent five years in a mental institution.

He later came to Nashville, where he was charged in 2022 with felony burglary and misdemeanor drug possession and spent a year in Davidson County jail. A mental health evaluation determined that he was not mentally fit to stand trial but did not meet the standards to be committed to a mental institution. His case was dismissed in November, according to court records.

Shaquille Taylor

Belmont University student Jillian Ludwig, 18, was walking on a track in a park last November when a stray bullet struck her in the head. The freshman music business major laid in the park for more than an hour before a passerby found her.

Police said Shaquille Taylor was shooting at a car when his stray bullet struck Ludwig. Taylor, 29, has a lengthy criminal record in Nashville and had been released from police custody in May 2023 after three court-appointed doctors testified that he was incompetent to stand trial for an assault with a deadly weapon charge, records show.

He was also charged with robbery in 2015 and found guilty on a lesser charge of assault and in 2016 he was arrested on aggravated burglary charges before being convicted on a lesser charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Doctors has previously determined that Taylor was intellectually disabled, but he was not committed to a mental health facility because he didn’t meet the state standards for involuntary commitment.

He is now charged with aggravated assault and felony murder in Ludwig’s case. Her death lead to the passing of “Jillian’s Law.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee jails: Nashville sees Amazon rape, Belmont student death