Atlanta lawyer Joe Whitley, a former U.S. attorney here, called the Justice Department’s entry into the Atlanta case a potentially significant development.

970124 - Atlanta, Georgia - Joe Whitley , lawyer, will do essays on the Fred Tokars trial. Shown here on January 24, 1997. (AJC Staff Photo/John Spink) Credit: John Spink Credit: John Spink

“This is not something they ordinarily would do,” Whitley said. “Apparently they’ve seen things that caused them concern. The role of the civil rights division and the Department of Justice is often necessary to assure that people who are confined are treated in a manner consistent with the Constitution.”

Sarah Geraghty, a lawyer for the Southern Center for Human Rights, welcomed the Justice Department’s interest in the case.

A woman lies on a thin mattress in her cell with water pooled at the foot of her metal bed, as seen during a midday visit at the South Fulton Municipal Regional Jail. This image is included in a federal lawsuit filed in April by the Georgia Advocacy Office and two women being held at the jail. The lawsuit includes graphic photos from a recent visit to the jail — among them this one — and details unimaginable conditions for the women detainees.

“The fact that it chose to weigh in shows the gravity of the human rights violations at issue,” said Geraghty, who represents the female inmates. “The conditions being challenged in this case are strikingly similar to those found to violate federal law at the Hampton Roads jail.”

Some of the mentally ill women at the Union City jail have been found incompetent to stand trial for their alleged offenses. M.J., for example, was arrested in October for criminal trespass while proselytizing at The Mall West End. The 20-year-old woman has been unable to post $500 bond.

The lawsuit against the Union City jail included graphic photos of unsanitary jail cells and detailed grim conditions for the women detainees. The conditions “can result in dramatic worsening of symptoms, decompensation, psychosis, self-mutilation and suicide,” the suit said.

Some inmates at the South Fulton Municipal Regional Jail use their issued bedding to soak up water that floods the cell floors, according to a federal lawsuit filed in April by the Georgia Advocacy Office and two women being held there. Inmates who use their bedding to clean up flooding are left with no sheets or blankets to sleep on, the lawsuit says. This image is included in the federal lawsuit.

In recent court filings, Fulton County attorneys say plaintiffs M.J. and K.H. and other inmates “present unique security concerns as a result of their psychiatric disabilities.”

“(Their) disruptive, if not violent, behavior and their significant hygiene concerns dictate that their time outside their cells must be limited,” the county said. “The penological interests of safety and security for M.J. and K.H. and their fellow inmates, the staff and the general public who visit the jail dictate the amount of time inmates spend in their cells.”

The county has asked Ray to dismiss the lawsuit and to deny an injunction sought by the plaintiffs’ lawyers that says the women inmates should be allowed to spend four hours a day outside their cells, including one hour of outdoor time.

In a recent court filing, the plaintiffs’ lawyers included a sworn statement by their forensic psychiatry expert, Jeffrey Metzner, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The south Fulton Jail’s so-called mental health pods are essentially solitary confinement units that warehouse the female detainees, he said. “Such warehousing, in conditions of confinement that include very little out-of-cell time, results in many of these detainees’ mental illnesses either deteriorating or not improving despite such illnesses being very treatable in an appropriate setting.”