Tech stabbing suspect still awaiting mental facility

This spring, the man implicated in a deadly stabbing spree on Louisiana Tech University campus was ordered to be committed to a forensic hospital, so that he could be treated for possible mental illness and eventually declared competent to stand trial for murder.

But three months later, Jacoby Johnson remains in jail in Lincoln Parish, and it may take as much as a year before he can be transferred to the treatment facility in Jackson.

Lincoln Parish Detention Center Warden J.D. Driskill said the delay is simply that Eastern Louisiana Mental Health System (ELMHS), where Johnson is supposed to be committed, doesn’t have space for him.

“What we’re waiting on right now is bed space,” Driskill said. “Waiting on that facility to notify us that he’s up, and then we’ll make arrangements.”

Johnson, a 24-year-old former Tech student, is charged with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder for allegedly killing local artist Annie Richardson with a knife outside Tech’s Lambright Sports and Wellness Center and wounding three others on Nov. 13, 2023, in what officials have called a random attack.

After a sanity hearing, 3rd Judicial District ad hoc Judge Chet Traylor originally ruled Johnson was mentally competent to stand trial. But in May the Second Circuit Court of Appeal overturned that, compelling Traylor to allow Johnson to be committed for psychological testing and treatment.

Johnson and his attorneys have claimed in court proceedings that he “hears voices” that tell him to harm himself and others.

Transcripts for a July hearing in Johnson’s case in Ruston court were recently entered into the public record. Further hearings to review his progress were delayed without date, as Traylor said there’s nothing to be done until Johnson makes it to the Jackson facility.

“I’ve been informed it may be as much as a year before they even get to the facility,” the transcript shows Traylor said. “So, there’s nothing we can do.”

Driskill said if an inmate is declared a non- emergency patient, it’s not uncommon for it to take six months to a year for a space to open up for them at ELMHS.

The non-emergency designation is determined by doctors from ELMHS who make routine visits to the jail to evaluate patients who are waiting to be committed. The label essentially means the patient’s behavior doesn’t make him an urgent case or an immediate danger to be held at the jail.

Johnson cannot stand trial for his alleged actions until he not only receives evaluation and treatment at ELMHS, but the specialists there determine he is mentally competent to understand the nature of a trial and can assist in his own defense.