PANAMA CITY\u00a0\u2014 Just a few months after Hurricane Michael blasted through Bay County,\u00a0Justin Drinkard waived his right to a speedy trial.<\/p>\n
Now,\u00a0almost four years after his arrest,\u00a0the Southport man remains behind bars inside the overcrowded Bay County Jail.<\/a><\/p>\n Accused of what authorities said was a middle-of-the-night, meth-fueled\u00a0baseball bat beating death of a 20-year-old Lynn Haven man following an attempted sexual assault of the victim’s teenage girlfriend,\u00a0Drinkard\u00a0still hasn’t had his day in court.<\/p>\n “I figured I’d be here a long time. I didn’t know it’d be that long,” Drinkard\u00a0told a News Herald reporter last week\u00a0from behind a white\u00a0jail-issued COVID mask as he sat dressed in black-and-gray jailhouse stripes inside a Bay County Jail visitation booth.<\/p>\n 2019 murder:<\/strong>Last of 5 men accused of killing PCB man found guilty<\/a><\/p>\n Expansion at the jail:<\/strong>Bay County jail getting new medium-security wing focused on inmate substance abuse treatment<\/a><\/p>\n Andre Bivins<\/a> of Tallahassee was in jail more than 900 days before he went to trial for the shooting death of a Panama City Beach drug dealer.<\/p>\n Chipley resident Jorge Perez<\/a>, the man who had been accused of orchestrating the robbery that ended in that\u00a0homicide, spent 903 days behind bars before he was freed at his trial by a jury.<\/p>\n Although prisoners booked into the county lockup are legally entitled to be tried by a jury of their peers within 175 days, the average time they spend behind bars awaiting that trial is 144 days, according to Ruth Corley, public information officer for the Bay County Sheriff’s Office.<\/p>\n\n As of Aug. 9, Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford, whose agency oversees the jail, was responsible for 1,365 prisoners in a facility with a\u00a0stated capacity of 1,134 prisoners.\u00a0<\/p>\n One hundred of those 1,365 were sent to Walton County for the jail there to house, but that leaves another 130 prisoners for whom jail employees must find bed space.<\/p>\n\n “We still have room inside the facility. It just becomes more challenging,” Ford said.\u00a0“It just makes it much more difficult to isolate the population.”<\/p>\n It also makes problems that break out more difficult to control.<\/p>\n “From April to June (of this year), we had 18 inmate batteries on staff and 15 inmate-on-inmate fights,” the sheriff said.<\/p>\n It’s also expensive. The sheriff’s office paid $1.6 million to house prisoners elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n The sheriff used COVID\u00a0money to buy GPS ankle monitors for a conditional release program he supervises. That program takes about\u00a035 to 40 prisoners out of the jail.<\/p>\n And, he said, “We’re currently working with the court, the state attorney’s office and public defenders” to address the overcrowding.<\/p>\n “Historically, our intakes are down,” Ford\u00a0said, adding that he and his deputies began noticing the jail population rising in 2017.<\/p>\n![\"Overcrowding](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2022\/08\/09\/NTNH\/6c170262-2a17-4caa-ae68-c8fb717d8c6e-003_080922_Jail_overcrowding.jpg?width=660&height=402&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\nCost of overcrowding<\/h2>\n
Rising jail population since 2017<\/h2>\n
![\"Overcrowded](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2021\/06\/17\/NTNH\/ef61d365-0d3c-40ea-a60f-fae4504f824f-001_061721_Bay_Co._Jail_overcrowding.jpg?crop=4269,3183,x0,y0&width=660&height=493&format=pjpg&auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\n![\"As](\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2021\/06\/17\/NTNH\/b1745da7-6dd1-4b4b-b938-09408211e00a-004_061721_Bay_Co._Jail_overcrowding.jpg?width=300&height=201&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp\")
<\/figure>\n