CASE WILL CHALLENGE THE MORALITY OF COERCIVE PSYCHIATRY

Kevin Owen | 26.02.2003 21:27

NATION'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL IVC CASE WILL CHALLENGE THE MORALITY OF COERCIVE PSYCHIATRY

Chester, Illinois - February 26, 2003 - The nation's most controversial case of involuntary psychiatric commitment (IVC), which has kept Illinoisan C. Rodney Yoder in maximum security for twelve years for no crime, will occasion an unprecedented challenge to the institution of coercive psychiatry.

Unless the justice system simply fails to confront the arguments, the case promises to become a second Dred Scott event, finally bringing psychiatric slavery to the forefront of Americas conscience.

The legal challenge, to be filed in federal court late next month, will come in a habeas corpus petition,seeking a remedy which has long been revered as the Great Writ of Liberty in Anglo-American law.

For centuries, habeas corpus has secured justice for people who found themselves at the mercy of
mob-dominated trials or similar, fatally-flawed legal processes, according to Yoders attorneys. They plan to argue that IVC trials never involve findings of actual fact, but rely instead on terror tactics and mythology, seducing judges and jurors into unreasonable justifications for preventive detention.
This is a violation of the most basic Constitutional guarantees of liberty.

"It is impossible to substantially prove or disprove a claim that a person has so-called mental illness, or that he or she is reasonably expected to harm another because of such illness," Yoder said. "The public is strategically deluded by scientifically vacuous claims that such questions are medical. In fact, psychiatry arbitrarily usurps the authority of criminal justice, even as Southern lynch mobs did during Jim Crow. And I might actually prefer to be hung than forever dehumanized by vicious captors pretending to be doctors at the Chester madhouse, a pretended hospital."

C. Rodney Yoders story has been meticulously documented by legal experts, as well as the media. Regular updates are available at