Across Georgia, people in need of mental health treatment can be detained in jail for months — sometimes years — before they’ve been convicted or even tried for any crime.
James Michael Coates is one of those people.
In 2021, Roswell police arrested Coates, claiming that new DNA evidence had linked him to the 1988 cold case murder of 8-year-old Joshua Harmon. He had already twice been convicted of child molestation — among other charges — for crimes that happened in 1990 and 1993, records show.
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