For more than 430 days, Christopher Chad has been booking No. 2506305 at the Fulton County Jail outside Atlanta, Georgia.
A former dean of students at Rock Ridge High School, Chad was arrested last March and extradited to the jail on April 7, 2025, facing 12 felony charges related to soliciting a minor for sex over the internet. He was terminated from Rock Ridge last year.
In the time since, Chad waived a preliminary hearing, sending his case to either an indictment or a grand jury. He was issued a bond of $150,000.
Today, he remains in Fulton County Jail, with no movement or scheduled hearings since his April 30, 2025, appearance.
Iron Range Today reached out to multiple people at the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, and Donald F. Samuel, the attorney who represented Chad during his initial hearings. Neither responded to requests for information or updates on his case.
A Fulton County court spokesperson said no hearings were currently scheduled.
The state of Chad’s current case status is not unique to Fulton County, one of the busiest and most congested legal systems in the country. His home in the jail is among the worst conditions in the nation.
Fulton County reported a backlog of 148,000 cases as it emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, but wrapped up an effort last year to reduce that rate.
According to the ACLU of Georgia, 1,009 people housed at Fulton County Jail remained unindicted in 2025, and 243 of them were held longer than 90 days. A county dashboard on complex felony cases, which would include Chad’s, shows 1,633 cases pending for more than a year and 426 defendants held for more than a year.
“These trends, combined with ongoing discussion of new detention capacity, underscore that Fulton County has not yet resolved the underlying drivers of overcrowding,” the ACLU wrote in its report, calling the analysis of the county “a mixed picture.”
When prosecutors reach Chad’s case, they will have the option to directly indict him, refer the case to a grand jury or negotiate a plea agreement. Grand juries meet confidentially in Georgia and the public generally won’t know if a case was passed through one until an indictment is issued.
If convicted, Chad faces the potential for decades in prison. The 11 obscene internet contact with a child charges carry sentences up to 15 years, each. The count of using a computer service to seduce, solicit, lure or entice a child to commit an illegal act carries up to 20 years.
