On June 8, Robert Foor filed a grievance with the Illinois Department of
Corrections seeking a transfer out of Tamms Correctional Center and into a
mental health prison, plus proper treatment and medication. Last week, on June
23, Foor was found unresponsive in his cell, and within hours was pronounced
dead at Union County Hospital. He was 33 years old, and had been held in
solitary confinement for more than 10 years.
Darryl W. Rendleman, the Union County coroner in charge of investigating Foor’s death, says preliminary autopsy results reveal no bruising or obvious cause.
Foor was incarcerated in 1994 for residential burglary. Though he had no record
of violent crime in the free world, in prison he accumulated three convictions
for aggravated battery: one against a fellow inmate, and two against peace
officers. His latest conviction was in 2000. He was scheduled to be paroled in
October 2012.
Foor’s death has reignited calls for prison reform from Tamms Year Ten, a nonprofit
organization that has for 18 months been asking IDOC to address the mental
health needs of Tamms inmates, and to develop objective criteria that would
allow Tamms inmates to “step down” from this all-solitary-segregation “supermax” prison [see “Tougher than Guantanamo,” June 18].
IDOC spokesman Derek Schnapp says Foor was housed in Tamms’ F-1 wing rather than J-pod, the special treatment unit for seriously mentally
ill inmates. However, Jean Maclean Snyder, a Chicago attorney who filed a
lawsuit on behalf of a few mentally ill Tamms inmates in 1999, says IDOC has
long been aware of Foor’s mental illness, according to medical records she obtained years ago.
“He had been in Menard [Correctional Center] psychiatric unit two times before he
was transferred to Tamms. His diagnosis was one of these that’s kind of trivial. It would not meet the department’s criteria for serious mental illness. However, it was serious enough that IDOC
kept treating him,” she says.
In his June 8 grievance, Foor complained that Tamms had withheld medications as
well as therapy since March 9, after he filed a grievance against IDOC’s contracted psychiatrist. Januari Smith, IDOC communications manager, said she
could not comment on Foor’s mental health or treatment due to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
However, Foor’s mother, Deb Elshoff, says Tamms warden Yolande Johnson told her on the phone
that Foor was not receiving any medications at the time of his death. “To this day, I still don’t know why Bobby died,” Elshoff says.
Nancy Meyer, a Chicago-area mental health professional who had corresponded with
Foor for several years, says Foor told her that he had been mentally ill all
his life, and that his illness came through in his letters. She sent some of
his writings to IDOC officials in hopes of persuading them to transfer Foor. In
2006, he was sent to Dixon Correctional Center for testing, but was returned to
Tamms.
Foor and Meyer corresponded about twice a week, and Meyer, who considered Foor
to be like a brother, says she saw a “sweet” side of a troubled man. “He would always send me cards, for Mothers Day, my birthday, any kind of
occasion. He would tell me to go plant a rose bush and pretend like it was from
him,” she says.
Elshoff also describes her son as having a “good heart,” recalling the time when he was working at a telemarketing company and spent his
entire paycheck on her 40th birthday celebration, then had to ask her for money to buy cigarettes.
“That was Bobby. He didn’t think; he would just do things on impulse,” Elshoff says. “He had dimples and blue eyes and the longest eyelashes you’ve ever seen. He was good natured, but if you made him mad, he had a temper on
him.”
In the supermax, Foor became so violent that he was sent to the security wing
three times, according to his own grievance. He also became more mentally ill,
mutilating himself by cutting and biting, and attempting to hang himself.
At her son’s request, Elshoff had never visited him in Tamms. She had last visited him in
2006, during his brief time at Dixon. “When I seen him in Dixon, I seen it on his arms, where he was cutting his arms,” Elshoff says.
She’s awaiting the final results of his autopsy, but holds no hope that it will
answer her questions. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to find the truth,” she says.
This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2009.
