A Few Questions

Q&A with Judge Melissa Blackburn

BY JUDITH TACKETT

Judge Melissa Blackburn was elected in 2014 to serve on the Division II General Sessions Court. In addition to her duties in General Sessions Court, she presides over the Mental Health Court and the Veterans Court in Davidson County.

Both specialty courts are set up to divert non-violent participants who have encountered legal difficulties, diverting them from jail stays by connecting them with treatment and services. Specialty courts such as the Mental Health and Veterans courts are typically run by judges and involve prosecutors, defense attorneys and other court personnel. In addition, they are strengthened by community partnerships to link people to mental health providers, substance use experts, vocational trainers, housing specialists, and more. The programs are optional, and participants’ progress is monitored by the judge.

Judge Blackburn also established the Davidson County Mental Health and Veterans Court Assistance Foundation to help supplement the cost of the courts. To learn more about the courts, visit davidsonmhc.com for the Mental Health Court and dcvcourt.com for the Veterans Court.

You have been on the bench for 10 years. What was your area of focus before becoming a judge?

In the last two years [before being elected], I joined my husband in his practice where I was dealing with employee rights and making sure that children who are victims of sexual assault by their peers were properly represented and protected in schools. I not only covered Davidson County but also Robertson County, Rutherford County, and some of the other contiguous counties where we were representing children — all of them were in elementary schools, believe it or not.

How did you get to lead the Mental Health and Veterans Court?

When I decided to run, I first decided what division to run for, and I decided to run for an open position, not to take on an existing judge. I knew that Dan Eisenstein was not going to run again. He was the Mental Health Court judge. I had a great interest in the Mental Health Court and felt like I could make a difference there and do good for the citizens of Davidson County.

Was there already a Veterans Court in place at that time?

They were [in the process] of starting one. So, we went to the legislature and obtained funding for the first Veterans Court in Davidson County. There had never been funding in the state of Tennessee for Veterans courts, and that funding we obtained is still in existence and will continue to be in existence for any county in Tennessee that wants to start a Veterans Court. There is money sitting in the state coffers for that. We also got a federal grant that supplemented those funds for us to be able to start a Veterans Court, and we started that in October of 2014.

How is the Mental Health Court funded?

When the Mental Health Court was originally founded in 2001, it was funded with a portion of fees from DUI convictions. Over the years, those DUI convictions have dwindled and the fund that was used to operate the court had pretty large drop offs in the amount of money available. Lyft and Uber are great for keeping people from having DUIs and keeping them off the streets, which dramatically decreased the amount of funding we had to run the court. So, we worked with Megan Barry when she was mayor. She supplemented some of the drop off in the DUI funding. Then in 2022, we were able to work with the legislature to get Mental Health Court funding passed for the first time ever in Tennessee.

What are the costs of the courts?

The employees of the court are Metro employees. They're all funded by Metro. The great thing about that is, all the money that we received from the state, which is $300,000 per year, and any funds that we also still received from the DUI fund, all go to direct support of people in Mental Health Court. So, for the full body of all our clients, there is about $300,000 a year for assistance for them.

How many clients do you see a year?

We try to keep a cap on it at 25 per case worker because best practice says that above that you’re harming more than doing good for each person. So, we try to cap it as 125 per year for the Mental Health Court.

The Veterans Court is a smaller operation and has one caseworker. It runs at serving probably 35 to 40 clients per year, and it gets a supplement of $169,000 a year, as of this month, from the state. And again, that employee is also a Metro employee, so all the money that we receive goes directly to assist our clients.

When we talk about assistance for our clients, we talk about dental work, glasses, housing, bus passes — anything that a person could need. That’s what we’re paying for.

How do the courts work and what makes each one successful or not?

What makes each one successful is you take the person as you find them however they are. They're evaluated by a state evaluation system that everyone uses across Tennessee. It has a recovery core. Based on that we accept them into the court system.

From there, the case worker comes up with a plan as to how to work with each person [and determine] what’s going to happen next. Are they going to an inpatient treatment facility? Are they going to a halfway house? Do they need to see a therapist? Do they need clothing? Do they need medication? Do they need to go to AA or NA meetings? I mean [we consider] everything they need.

From the very start, there’s a plan that's laid out, and from there you help that person. Every single one of them is coming from jail and most of them have absolutely nothing, so you have to start and help the person put their life back together again. You have to surround that person with all of the love and support that they need to help them get out of the situation that they’re currently in and back to a much better situation in society.

How much does homelessness play a role in your courts?

I would say a third of our clients are homeless. A big part of the problem that we deal with for this specific population is that they tend to refuse services and refuse medication. We are a voluntary program, so a lot of times you have to convince them that this is in their best interest.

We also run into a situation where a lot of the housing placements and halfway houses that would normally work with court programs are reluctant to take people with a severe and persistent mental health issue. We sometimes also deal with people’s desire not to be in a housing situation that we offer like a halfway house or another placement.

Our caseworkers do yeoman's work in terms of locating and securing housing for our clients. And sometimes it takes two or three housing placements before they stick.

What happens if someone refuses to participate in the program even though they had initially agreed to do so?

If they absolutely refuse to take medication or they refuse to stay clean and sober, they go back to jail. Depending on how severe their violation is [determines] on how long they sit in jail and have some time to think about what they've done and decide whether they really want to do this [program]. And after talking to their attorney and having basically a timeout to decide whether they really want to do this, then the client specialist will find the time and make the effort to find them another housing placement and start over.

We will not release anyone to the street. Absolutely not. They have to have a housing placement. And they will not go to the Mission (Nashville Rescue Mission) either. The Mission to me is [like releasing them] to the streets because there is no supervision. There is no accountability as far as the medication is concerned. That’s not a viable solution.

In general, what other jail diversion programs would you like Davidson County to invest in?

Davidson County really is ahead of the curve when it comes to alternative and diversion programs. We’ve got Ana Escobar, one of our judges who has the Human Trafficking Court, which is called Cherished Hearts. Judge Gale Robinson who started the DUI Court also runs the Recovery Court, which used to be called Drug Court. Judge Rachel Bell has her Community Court.

So, we have six or seven specialty courts that are focused on not making jail the first and only answer when someone needs help and avoid that they’re just getting a jail door slammed in their face. Davidson County is really leading the way in this and it’s something we’re really proud of.

Are you aware of our Incompetency Docket?

No.

We are, I believe, the only one in the country doing it. If someone is having some type of an unusual behavior, their attorney can ask that they be evaluated by Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt evaluates them, and if they decide that they need further evaluation, they are then evaluated at MTMHI (Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute). And MTMHI can tell us then what they need. Are they competent? Are they incompetent? Do they need additional services? And if so, what services they need.

There is an entire docket that’s created from the very point that their attorney says we need to have this person evaluated. And those cases moved to the incompetency docket. If a person is determined to be incompetent, they get out of the regular justice system, and we try to give them a soft landing with the support they need to try to keep them from committing additional crimes.

When did the incompetency docket begin?

It started in 2021. Larry Brown on April 16 of 2021 attacked five nurses going to work at Saint Thomas Midtown. He attacked them in the parking garage as they were coming to work. He was the impetus for the incompetency docket.

He was found incompetent, and his cases were nolled (nolle prosequi is a legal term referring to when a prosecutor drops a case). Two weeks later, he committed some more crimes, and his cases were nolled. At that point I called the District Attorney, Glenn Funk, and the Public Defender, Martesha Johnson Moore, and said, “OK, we’ve got to do something. This isn’t working.” And the three of us put our heads together and got Centerstone, MTMHI, Mental Health Coop, Park Center, anyone in Nashville how dealt with this population.

Over the next year, we put a study group together to try to figure out how to properly address this population. We found that there were 182 people at that point in the prior 18 months who had been deemed incompetent and had not been addressed. We figured out that there was such a need in Davidson County that we had to address these individuals. We asked the Mayor for $1.9 million, and he gave us $600,000. And every year since then we have been reupping our $600,000 to address this population.

Can readers support the Mental Health or Veterans courts you lead?

Absolutely. These courts are community-based programs and members of the community can get involved if they want to. For instance, in the Veterans Court we have a mentor program and people that have served in the military who want to assist their fellow Veterans can become mentors in the program. And that's just being there, a shoulder to cry on, and being someone who understands their military experience in a way that a lot of us can’t.

People can also contribute because we now have the Foundation. We will use any donation to supplement items that we cannot pay for with grants because they don’t fall under the state guidelines.