Word: yoder
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Less than a month after the original ruling against Hardy, the warden sought another way to keep Yoder from going free: he petitioned the court to commit Yoder to a mental hospital. The court was provided with a copy of another foul letter signed with Yoder's name. Addressed to a state judge, it describes, quite graphically, how the writer would rape His Honor...
...Hardy's petition omitted less colorful details. It said Yoder was "hostile and delusional in that he believes he is the victim of a conspiracy"--but failed to mention the lost-credit incident that had made Yoder hostile or the courtroom evidence that Yoder had been the victim of a conspiracy. Hardy checked a box on the petition saying he was "not involved in litigation" with Yoder, when in fact he had just appealed Yoder's victory. Hardy now says such errors were unintentional and "didn't really make any difference in the validity and justification for him being committed...
...Yoder's life approached normalcy in the '80s. Not long after leaving Chester, he met Shirley Peters, a plainspoken woman who lived in the apartment under his mother's place. He and Shirley married and moved to Tacoma, Wash., and had two kids, Jennifer and Loren. Yoder attended Fort Steilacoom College and got straight A's in political science. He also sold real estate. "He was a pretty normal guy, really, except when he drank," says Shirley. They eventually moved back to Illinois, and the relationship unraveled. "There were times I ran around with black eyes," she says. They divorced...
...Yoder had his second terrible fight with a woman he had loved. Monumentally drunk, he argued with Shirley about whether a man who baby-sat was molesting the children. "I went berserk and...hit my ex-wife in the head with a table leg," he later wrote. Shirley says she had nine stitches. Yoder pleaded guilty and went to prison, where a psychiatrist examined him. The doctor said Yoder was hostile and negative but didn't meet the standard for involuntary hospitalization. He wasn't a danger, the doctor wrote, and there was "no indication of acute psychopathology...
Always vigorous--even frenetic--in his own defense, Yoder spent the next year initiating court proceedings. Saying his guilty plea had been coached out of him, he tried to change it. The court blocked the move. Yoder also sued prison administrators, alleging various mistreatments. That won him a reputation as a problem inmate who couldn't manage his rage. It didn't help that he wrote "file my motherf_____ pleadings NOW" to a court clerk. In June 1991, Mary Flannigan, one of the administrators Yoder was suing, sought to have him involuntarily committed for a second time. On her petition...