Word: psychologistic
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Yoder likes to say that state officials see him as a real-life Hannibal Lecter. And some do believe he is profoundly sick. Three years ago, state psychologist Cuneo said in court, "I can only think of a handful of individuals that I would consider more dangerous than Mr. Yoder at the hospital." But those who run Chester seem to have a more mundane view. Except that you pass through sliding steel doors before you get to the wards, visiting Chester isn't so different from visiting an ordinary hospital. On the day of my interview, I offered...
...wanted to ask state psychiatrists how it could be therapeutic for Yoder, who served his time for two relatively minor crimes, to live among killers. Yoder signed authorizations for me to speak with both the psychiatrist and the psychologist at Chester who do most of his evaluations. The facility declined. "[The medical director] feels that discussing cases with reporters can hurt treatment," said Tom Green, spokesman for the state department of human services, which oversees Chester. But the department then changed its position and asked me to speak with Dr. Christopher Fichtner, one of its administrators in Chicago. Yoder wouldn...
...commitment trials, Yoder only once had an aggressive private attorney, Edward Unsell of suburban St. Louis, Mo. Unsell called clinical psychologist Michael Armour to the stand in 1993. A supervisor at the big state hospital in St. Louis, Armour had been a witness for the state the year before, but he had changed his mind about Yoder when he actually spoke with him the following year. (His previous testimony had been based only on a review of Yoder's file.) "I had testified against him... and yet he was very appropriate in his dealings with me," Armour said in court...
Nonetheless, the jury sent Yoder back to Chester. Cuneo, the state psychologist, had testified that Yoder was bipolar and delusional and that he had a history of violence. Given a choice between two competing experts, the jury played it safe. Who wants to be responsible for loosing a madman? Yoder repeatedly faced this conundrum in court--convincing jurors he was sane from inside an asylum. The state had a strong case: jurors heard about Yoder's battery of women. They heard about the time he got into a scuffle with a guard and bit him. They heard about incidents when...
...transferred out of Chester to federal custody to be prosecuted for sending threatening mail. So now he tried the same tactic. He says the letters weren't sincere and were intended only to get him sent to federal prison. That strategy may seem silly--or nuts--but a Chester psychologist wrote a report in 1993, before most of the letters were sent, that clearly outlined what Yoder expected from the letters and the consequent trip to federal prison: "1. greater freedom, 2. association with non-demented individuals, 3. earning an income..., 4. having a definite release date...