Yoder being transferred to medium-security facility

CHESTER, Ill. -- After almost 12 years of fighting to be released from the maximum-security facility for the criminally insane, Rodney Yoder is finally getting his wish.

It's just not in the way he'd hoped.

Yoder's lawyer was notified Tuesday by the Illinois Department of Mental Health that Yoder will soon be transferred from Chester Mental Health Center to a medium-security facility in Elgin, Ill., which is 30 miles northwest of Chicago in Kane County.

The notice says Yoder will be moved to Elgin Mental Health Center within the next 14 days, but Yoder said it may be sooner than that.

Yoder, who made headlines last year when he put "psychiatry on trial," is skeptical, but he hopes it is the first step towards freedom.

"I'm sort of indifferent," he said. "This is just another repressive psycho ward," he said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "But hopefully it won't be long now until they'll give me my freedom."

Yoder made national news in November when he claimed in a Randolph County jury trial that mental illness is a myth, used by people as a crutch who are trying to avoid life or who don't want to work.

Delusional, paranoid

The jury didn't buy his argument and ordered him involuntarily held, agreeing with prosecutors and state psychiatrists who said Yoder is extemely mentally ill, both delusional and paranoid, as well as a danger to himself and others.

Yoder claimed his incarceration was because of a vengeful judge who had once served as a prosecutor in a case involving Yoder. Yoder had gone to prison earlier in his life for beating two women, one with a table leg.

While he was incarcerated and then later at Chester, he wrote threatening letters to celebrities and politicians threatening to do horrific things to them. He said he wrote the letters to be put into prison, where he would have a specific release date.

Yoder thinks the Northern District of Illinois may be more favorable to his case. He said that the jury pool in Chester is tainted because too many residents are indebted to the facility because of its economic importance.

"These people are totally in favor of the custody culture down here," Yoder said. "You can get a fair shake before a federal judge in Chicago."

Randolph County circuit judge William Schuwerk recommended that Yoder be placed in a less secure facility after the verdict was read in November. But Yoder thinks Illinois' new governor, Rod Blagojevich, is behind the move.

"He's inherited a very terrible situation," Yoder said. "Maybe they're moving me to a less secure facility and then on to my freedom."

His lawyer, Randy Kretchmar, agreed that the change of venue will be better for Yoder at his next involuntary committment trial.

"People in Randolph County are very unwilling to think outside the box when it comes to the mental-illness metaphor," he said.

smoyers@semissourian.com

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