Rodney Yoder's prison sentence ended nearly 10 years ago, but he's still locked up at the Chester, Ill., Mental Health Center.

State-paid psychologists have repeatedly convinced juries that Yoder remains dangerous, and would be dangerous if freed.

But several lawyers who have represented him and a growing number of medical professionals say he's no more a threat than many people who are not locked up.

Yoder, 42, has been at Chester since June 26, 1991, after he finished a criminal sentence for beating up his former wife.

Involuntary commitments are not unusual in Illinois, but one of Yoder's length is. Illinois has held about only two dozen people longer than 10 years in involuntary commitment.

Yoder is also unusual in the persistence and intensity he brings to attracting attention to his incarceration.

Yoder calls himself a "psychiatric prisoner," in custody because he has angered people with power.

He has filed numerous suits, winning some, and his name is known among opponents of "forced psychiatry" as far away as South Africa. His supporters include Patch Adams, a physician in West Virginia who has crusaded for new approaches to health care and whose story was made into the Robin Williams movie.

Yoder "has no business being where he's at," said Edward W. Unsell, a lawyer in East Alton who represented Yoder in a court hearing on one of numerous involuntary commitments to the facility.

Dr. Loren Mosher, a psychiatrist in San Diego, Calif., has never met Yoder but has talked with him frequently by telephone. Mosher said: "He seems to be quite rational. I don't get it. He served time and instead of being let out, he's sent to a psychiatric institution. This country does not allow preventive detention."

Robert A. Kassin, a lawyer from Edwardsville who represented Yoder in a Social Security case, calls Yoder one of the brightest people he has ever worked with. Kassin said Yoder "makes cogent, well-reasoned and appropriate legal arguments. I believe he can take care of himself. If I had been in custody as long as he has, I'd be angry, too."

The Chester center is operated by the Illinois Department of Human Services. It is the state's only maximum-security mental health facility. The cost of keeping a patient there is high - $108,342 in fiscal 1998, according to a state audit.

Tom Green, a spokesman, said department officials cannot comment on Yoder's case because of confidentiality laws and would not respond to his comments even if he waived confidentiality.

While most admissions to Illinois mental health institutions are voluntary, any adult may apply to have someone else admitted. A "qualified examiner" - a psychiatrist or other mental health professional - must certify that the person is mentally ill and dangerous, or unable to care for himself or herself.

Green said Illinois courts ordered 3,046 involuntary commitments in fiscal 2000. He said there are 22 patients in the system who have been involuntarily committed for at least 10 years.

In Illinois, involuntary commitments last 180 days, after which another hearing is required.

An official with the Missouri Department of Mental Health said about 7,000 involuntary commitments take place in Missouri each year, ranging in length from 96 hours to a year. Hearings are required before any commitment longer than 96 hours.

After an initial 96-hour commitment, patients can be committed for 21 days, 90 days or a year at a time before another hearing.

The official said only a relative handful of patients are held for more than 90 days, but he did not have precise numbers.



Angry or mentally ill?

Officials at the Chester center have repeatedly obtained new commitments for Yoder - but he said he had never been evaluated by a mental health professional who wasn't paid by the state and only once had a lawyer who wasn't on the public payroll.

Daniel J. Cuneo, a psychologist and clinical director at the center, has performed all but one of Yoder's evaluations.

Cuneo testified in a hearing in 1999 that Yoder suffers from paranoid personality disorder and has the delusion that he is being persecuted.

Cuneo said then that he believed Yoder was more dangerous than all but a few patients he has seen in years of practice. Cuneo said Yoder would "erupt" and hurt people.

Yoder insists he is not mentally ill. He believes mental illness is a fictitious label used by people to control others. He has consistently refused medication and therapy.

"The government says I have psychotic delusions - I misperceive their benevolence toward me," Yoder said.

Mosher, the San Diego psychiatrist, said: "He is angry, and that puts people off. As far as I can tell, based on telephone conversations, he's not psychotic."

Yoder blames his plight on what he claims is a vendetta against him by Stephen L. Hardy, director of the Chester facility.

Yoder, from Iroquois County, on the Indiana border, pleaded guilty of felony battery and got a four-year prison sentence for punching a girlfriend in 1979. He said he learned while in prison that the victim did not suffer facial fractures as a prosecutor had claimed and that he should have been charged with a misdemeanor.

Working on his own case, Yoder won an order for his release, but his activities drew the attention of the prison warden, the same Stephen L. Hardy who is now the director of Chester Mental Health Center.

Yoder said Hardy threatened to prevent his release by claiming he was mentally ill, and made good on the threat. Instead of going free, Yoder was taken to Chester Mental Health Center and held pending a petition by Hardy for involuntary commitment.

He was released after 10 weeks.

Yoder moved to Tacoma, Wash., with a woman he later married. He took college courses, bought a home, sold real estate and started a family. He returned to Illinois with his family in 1985 and farmed and ran a machinery repair business from 1986 to 1989. In 1989, the marriage ended in divorce.

Yoder said that in late 1989 he drunkenly confronted his ex-wife over an issue involving one of their children. Yoder hit her and again was charged with aggravated battery.

He pleaded "guilty but mentally ill," based on admitted alcoholism. He wound up at the Menard Correctional Center, where a psychiatrist told him he would be committed to Chester Mental Health Center when his sentence was up. That's what happened in 1991, beginning what Yoder calls his "extrajudicial, natural-life incarceration."



The stakes are high

The Chester center holds criminal defendants found unfit to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity, as well as patients from other state hospitals who have severe behavioral problems. Yoder says he has been attacked by residents and mistreated by guards. He says his rights under the state's mental health code are repeatedly violated.

He has no access to a law library or a copier.

"Preparing a pleading is a physically demanding ordeal," Yoder said. "We get two-inch pencils and the guards won't sharpen them."

Last year, a friend donated a computer to Yoder, but Chester officials have refused to let Yoder have a scanner, or a computer disk that contains the Mental Health Code.

"I guess they believe the law is subversive," said Kassin, the lawyer who sent the items to Yoder. "I would send him a CD-ROM drive and a word-processing program if I believed he would get them."

Green said center residents aren't allowed to receive computer disks that are not commercially produced.

"It is a potential security threat, not knowing what's on a disk," Green said. "At the present time, they are not allowed." He said the policies are under review.

Yoder is hopeful. He expects to have experts testify for him at future hearings. He is seeking to transfer the next hearing out of Randolph County where, he believes, jurors are inclined to go along with state officials because so many of them have state jobs or have relatives who work for the state.

Yoder said the stakes are high.

"If I fail, I die here."

Reporter Terry Hillig:\E-mail: thillig@post-dispatch.com\Phone: 618-659-3638