The suspect charged in the deadly 16th Street Mall knife attacks was released from custody months before the stabbings because of a mental competency court liaison program that state lawmakers tripled in size two years ago, an expansion that a legislative budget analyst now says needs better data collection to ensure effectiveness.

Two months before the stabbings, Elijah Caudill, 24, left the Denver jail, with the assistance of the Bridges program, a new agency in the judiciary that helps coordinate services for defendants struggling with mental health disorders.

Caudill had been in and out of custody, homeless at times, with a 15-count arrest rap sheet that included a felony menacing knife attack when Denver County Court Judge Kelly Cherry ordered him freed from the Denver jail after the Bridges program agreed to help coordinate services for him.

At the time of his release from the Denver jail, Caudill faced three separate criminal cases, ranging from the groping of a woman at a detox facility to an assault against two inmates and an incident in which he repeatedly kicked a glass door and shattered it in the jail’s recreation yard. Concerns had been raised that he was mentally incompetent to proceed to trial.

Cherry agreed to release him from custody, pending his trial, with the provision that Bridges would coordinate services for Caudill, according to court documents. He failed to show up for a pending court appointment on Dec. 20 and a warrant was issued for his arrest, court documents show.

Now police and prosecutors say he stabbed four people along the 16th Street Mall during the weekend of January 12, killing two and wounding two others, who survived.

The Colorado legislature launched the Bridges program in 2018, hoping it could alleviate an ongoing and persistent logjam in restoring criminal defendants to competency for trial. When defendants are suffering from psychosis and other behavioral disorders, judges are prevented from adjudicating them sane enough to go to trial.

The state has struggled to adhere to the terms of a consent decree it signed to resolve a federal lawsuit brought by civil rights advocates over delays in competency restoration of defendants.

Lawmakers created the Bridges program to help bring the state into compliance with the consent decree. The Bridges program provides court liaisons, who coordinate services for defendants struggling with psychosis and other disorders, helping expedite their release from jail so they can receive out-patient behavioral health services aimed at restoring competency.

Those liaisons provide feedback to prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers and judges on how defendants needing competency restoration are faring and on impediments blocking competency restoration services.

Two years ago, lawmakers made the Bridges program a stand-alone agency within the state judiciary and expanded its reach. The program is projected to cost the state $15.4 million by the end of this year, three times what it cost two years ago. By July, the program will have 112 employees. Just three years ago, the program only had 12 employees and $2.8 million in annual funding.

In the fiscal year set to end in July 2026, the program is projected to cost $18 million, with at least 120 employees.

The rapid expansion, though, hasn’t included a rigorous assessment of data to ensure effectiveness, according to a recent review by analysts for the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, which drafts the state budget.

“When we started, we had three or four people in 2018, and now our office is expanding,” said Nate Haas, a spokesman for Bridges. “This is just sort of what an organization faces as it starts getting a little bit mature.”

The program did not launch a comprehensive database and case management system until September of last year, nearly five years after Bridges’ first year of operation.

The new case management system should allow the program to share more robust data with legislators next year, said Jennifer Turner, the executive director of Bridges, during a legislative briefing in December.

“We are so excited about the data we’ll be able to share with you next year,” Turner told lawmakers.

Alfredo Kemm, a Joint Budget Committee budget analyst, said in briefing documents that’s the type of data that already should be in place.

“The state has made a significant investment in Bridges, the first policy organization of its kind nationally,” Kemm wrote in his budget analysis. “At this stage, it is critical to establish a practice and culture of good data collection and evidence-based practices for Bridges.”

The program has provided services to about 8,000 individuals involved in about 16,000 legal cases since its inception. By the end of the fiscal year set to conclude in July, the program is on pace to provide liaison services to 3,657 total participants, more than double the number of individuals who received services in the program’s first full year of operation.

“Data collection that accounts for resource inputs with participant and criminal justice system outcomes can more accurately assess return on investment, deliver targeted program improvement based on data evaluation and better illustrate the larger system impacts across agencies and government entities that can lead to greater cost savings,” Kemm stated in his analysis.

Of those receiving Bridges liaison services while in jail custody, 47% end up released from jail custody for community-based services, according to the budget briefing. Officials with the Bridges program reported to legislators, who will craft the state budget, that the program’s court liaisons collaborated on 169 mental health crisis interventions last year and helped head off 94 suicides last year.

Just how Caudill fared following his release from jail isn’t entirely known. The Denver Gazette asked the clerk of court in Denver for copies of the three court liaison reports filed from the Bridges program in one of Caudill’s pending court cases, and the clerk said the information couldn’t be released because it involved private mental health information.

Haas, the spokesman for Bridges, said he also can’t release information about Caudill’s interactions with Bridges in accordance with state law, and he declined to discuss Caudill and how the program handled him after his release from jail.

Newly sworn in Denver District Attorney John Walsh said in an interview that residents’ worries crimes, such as the stabbings Caudill is now charged with committing, are legitimate.

“There needs to be an active strategic partnership with law enforcement, the city and the state to make sure we’re doing everything possible on the prosecution side to ensure that the city is safe,” said Walsh.

The JBC budget analyst recommended that Bridges officials hire the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab, housed at the University of Denver, to develop a multi-year analysis on Bridges’ programming and develop preferred agency outcomes and goals.

He estimated it would cost about $150,000 in the fiscal year set to begin in June to have the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab take on the project. Given the tight budget year, expenses might have to be cut elsewhere in the Bridges budget to pay for those services, according to the budget analysis.

State Rep. Judy Amabile, D-Boulder, defended the Bridges program in one December budget briefing before the Joint Budget Committee. She said the program will help the state adhere to the consent decree in the federal lawsuit, which will save the state money by warding off court fines for violating the terms of that decree.

“We will not resolve the competency backlog if we don’t innovate and do things like this program,” Amabile said during the hearing in December, prior to the 16th Street killings.

“I also want to say that every single person who avails themselves of the Bridges program is somebody’s child,” she added. “Having a serious mental illness is not a character flaw. It is an illness, and no one chooses to have that illness. I want us to keep that in mind.”