Yates not guilty by reason of insanity

ilikeGW · 07-26-2006, 11:50 PM

Ex-husband: 'She was psychotic' when she drowned their children

Wednesday, July 26, 2006; Posted: 9:22 p.m. EDT (01:22 GMT)

(CNN) -- A jury on Wednesday found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity of drowning her five children in a bathtub five years ago.

The verdict, reached after nearly 13 hours of deliberation over three days in Houston, means Yates will be committed to a state mental facility in Texas until she is deemed to be no longer a threat.

Yates showed no immediate response as the verdict was read and the jurors polled individually. (Watch Yates' wide-eyed reaction -- 4:15)

The 42-year-old defendant then hugged one of her attorneys, George Parnham, who had argued she suffered from postpartum psychosis at the time of the drownings on June 20, 2001.

Her former husband and father of the victims, Russell Yates, who has since remarried, exclaimed, "Oh, wow!" and became teary, Court TV reported.

"We're happy," Russell Yates told reporters outside the courthouse. "To me, this is really about Andrea's quality of life for the balance of her life. Is she going to spend her time in a prison cell with barely adequate medical treatment and no interaction with other people and family members or is she going to spend time in a hospital and get good medical treatment and have hope of a possibly somewhat normal life later?"

Andrea Yates' mental illness predated the killings. She had been on anti-psychotic medication and attempted suicide before killing Noah, 7, John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2, and Mary, 6 months.

In 2002 a jury rejected Yates' insanity defense and sentenced her to life in prison for the deaths of three of the five children.

But a state appeals court overturned the convictions because an expert witness for the state, a psychiatrist, testified incorrectly that the television series "Law and Order" had shown an episode about a woman suffering from postpartum depression who drowned her children.

Russell Yates said the prosecution failed to understand "that Andrea was ordinarily a loving mother who fell to this disease and did an unthinkable act."

He added, "Yes, Andrea took the lives of our children. That's the truth. But also, yes, she was insane. Yes, she was psychotic on that day. That's the whole truth."

He said the state "never attempted to get to the whole truth."

He said he was proud of the jury for reaching its finding in Harris County, Texas -- "the death-penalty capital of the world."

Russell Yates rejected criticism that he should have known his wife was a danger to their children.

"We took her to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist failed us," he said.

Russell Yates said he was planning to visit his ex-wife Wednesday night. He said he and Andrea Yates are "good friends" and often reminisce together about their children.

"They were our life, they were important to us," he said.

"She needs help," one juror told reporters. "I think she will probably need treatment for the rest of her life."

Yates' attorney Wendell Odom expressed a similar view: "It's this simple: this lady never did anything wrong in her own life. She's mentally ill. She wakes up one morning, she drowns her five kids. Come on, we all know she's insane. It's a shame it took this long to finally get the right verdict."

But Harris County Assistant District Attorney Joe Owmby told reporters he was disappointed by the verdict.

"Yates was not insane when she killed her children," he said. "She knew it was a sin, knew it was legally wrong and knew society would disapprove of her actions."

Still, he said, he would not recommend that the district attorney bring further charges related to the drownings.

"The charges we filed were intended to conclude this case one way or another," Owmby said.

He said the heavy media coverage, including a series of editorial opinions in the local paper, "must have had an effect, in a general way, on the jury."

He said he was not accusing the jurors of not following instructions, "But they're human beings, and they have been living with this for the past five years."

In 30 days a hearing will be held to determine whether Yates represents a danger to herself or others and whether she will comply with a treatment plan.

Every year thereafter, a hearing before a judge or a jury will be held to decide whether she should be released into the community.

"The state is not going to be watching Andrea Yates," Owmby said. "This thing about her now being under supervision for the rest of her life is rather misleading."

freecell · 07-27-2006, 03:43 AM

Postpartum psychosis is real and rarely diagnosed in time. Normal people don�t understand this! On the other hand, a good lawyer can plea and try to convince and deceive the jury. Seems like these days anyone who gets in trouble has a condition or excuse for his or her actions. :roll:

ilikeGW · 07-27-2006, 03:06 PM

She's full of shit. She murdered those kids and KNEW what she was doing. She chased the last little boy around the house until she caught him, then left him in the tub and laid the others out nicely on the bed. If she knew enough to "punish" him by leaving him in the tub, she knew exactly what she did wrong and planned it that way.

I had post partum after baby #2 and it lasted almost 7 months. I didn't take any drugs for it and I didn't even see a therapist. I just cried for days at a time, but I took care of my baby and my older son and just dealt with it. Never once did I want to hurt them or myself. For all we know, this woman was already nuts and if she never had kids, she could have easily killed people by pushing them in front of a train or shooting up a Walmart, it just happened to coincide with her pregnancies.

Regardless of her PPD, she knew what she did and I can bet you she's even happy she did it, no matter if she stays in jail or in a hospital, she is now baby free. There are people who like to kill and kill for reasons or just for the hell of it. Her reasons, as far as I'm concerned, was that she didn't want so many kids and couldn't handle them anymore. How do you stop being a mother? You kill your children. BUT... I also think her stupid husband should take some blame too, because according to her friends and family, they watched her slowly slip into a depression and become someone different and he brushed it off and left her, more or less, secluded in the home with 5 small children. He pretty much kept her pregnant most of their marriage as he refused birth control in the household. While I believe that depression does lead people to do crazy things such as this, I still believe that people have the ability to choose and that they KNOW what they're doing, depression or not.

Mothers who kill their kids should be left with me in a room for 10 minutes, I'll take care of them and it'll cost the corrections depart NOTHING.

Fishmint · 07-27-2006, 03:54 PM

Theres no motive for this.... She was obviously stark raving bonkers. The ruling was fair in my opinion and her family is happy with it.

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She's full of shit. She murdered those kids and KNEW what she was doing. She chased the last little boy around the house until she caught him, then left him in the tub and laid the others out nicely on the bed. If she knew enough to "punish" him by leaving him in the tub, she knew exactly what she did wrong and planned it that way.

Regardless of her PPD, she knew what she did and I can bet you she's even happy she did it, no matter if she stays in jail or in a hospital, she is now baby free. There are people who like to kill and kill for reasons or just for the hell of it. Her reasons, as far as I'm concerned, was that she didn't want so many kids and couldn't handle them anymore

How do you know this? Were you there? Psychic powers? what?

Michele · 07-27-2006, 04:32 PM

Um...my quess would be the Cold Case Files....

ops:

ROFL

I also felt it was a fair and just verdict.

I think what we need to do is eliminate the "Not quilty by reason of insanity" which in effect wipes out responcilbilty and change too "Guilty by reason of insantiy". Then the penalty phase could address mental health issues but the person still is held accountable.

Invayne · 07-27-2006, 09:08 PM

Quote:

I think what we need to do is eliminate the "Not quilty by reason of insanity" which in effect wipes out responcilbilty and change too "Guilty by reason of insantiy". Then the penalty phase could address mental health issues but the person still is held accountable.

I can agree with that. Address their mental health issues, and THEN give them the needle! :twisted:

ilikeGW · 07-27-2006, 09:34 PM

100 years ago, there were no "insanity" pleas, if you committed murder you were tried and punished.

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How do you know this? Were you there? Psychic powers? what?

Did I say they were facts? No, I said "as far as I was concerned."

As for leaving one child in the tub, SHE told her husband and the police that she chased the last little boy to die because he ran away from her and he was found in the tub, while the others were laid neatly on the bed. Why would she lay the others on the bed but leave the one who ran from her in the tub? To punish him further for disobeying.

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June 20, 2001: Andrea Yates, a devout Christian home schooler, decided she had caused irreparable damage to her kids and the best thing for her to do was to kill all five of them. And that's exactly what she did by systematically drowning them after her husband left their suburban Houston home and went to work. As news of her infanticide trickled through the air waves, a Houston-area radio disk jockey called her a bitch and said she should be shot. Ironically the squad car taking her into custody was playing that very station and the arresting officer said that only then he saw her show any emotion over what she had done. Her husband, Russell Yates, said that his wife Andrea was driven to commit infanticide because she was suffering from a severe case of post-partum depression. "One side of me blames her because she did it, but the other side of me says she didn't... She wasn't in the right frame of mind," Russell Yates, a computer specialist at NASA, told reporters. Pointing to Andrea Pia Yates on a family picture, he added, "The woman here is not the woman who killed my children."

Authorities said that after calling police and her husband at his job at the Johnson Space Center, Andrea led an officer to a back bedroom of her filthy, suburban Houston home, where the wet bodies of four or her five children -- Mary, 6 months, Luke, 2, Paul, 3, and John, 5 -- were under a sheet. The fifth child, Noah, 7, was found dead in the bathtub. The husband arrived at the same time as the cops but was not allowed into the house. The Houston Chronicle, quoting an unidentified investigator, said Andrea described, in a "zombie-like fashion," how she methodically killed the children. One unidentified police investigator was quoted saying that her eledest son Noah walked into the bathroom as she was drowning his baby sister. "What's wrong with Mary," the little boy asked when he saw the body of his lifeless sister floating in the bathtub. His mother told him to get into the tub and he ran away. Andrea then chased the seven-year-old through the house and dragged him back to the bathroom where he was promptly murdered.

Her husband, who appeared eerily supportive of his infanticidal wife, said the death of her father three months ago had "sent her spiraling" into depression. Apparently she had her first bout of serious depression after the birth of their fourth. At the time she attempted suicide with an overdose of pills, but was briefly hospitalized, put on medication and made what seemed to be a full recovery. Unfortunately for her kids, she got pregnant again, had a fifth baby, and fell back into depression. This time she did not respond to several brief hospitalizations, multiple combinations of anti-depressants and a round of an anti-psychotic drug. Instead she sunk deeper and deeper into depression, stopped doing any chores at home, and decided her children were damaged by her uncaring ways and had to be killed.

Her husband, attempting to explain her actions, said Andrea was taken off the anti-psychotic drug Haldol about two weeks ago, and had gone to a doctor to have dosages of several anti-depressant medications adjusted and to discuss starting therapy. Indicating that the adjustment of medications might not have been a factor in her actions, Andrea told police she began thinking about killing her five children for several months because she believed she was a bad mother and "felt that the children were disabled, that they were not developing normally."

"She loves our kids," Russell Yates told a bank of reporters outside his home. "I want to help her through this. I want to show her I love her and support her." Yates recounted his wife's chilling phone call to his office after the murders. "She said, 'I need you to come home.' I said, 'Is anyone hurt?' She said, 'Yes.' And I said: 'Who?' And she said: 'The children. All of them.' My heart just sank."

Two days after the quintuple murder, Yates was charged with one capital murder charge for the "death... by drowning" of her two oldest sons, Noah and John. Prosecutors added that other charges in connection with the murders of her other three children could follow. Defense attorney George Parnham said his client was in "a very deep psychosis" and will probably plead insanity. "I've accumulated evidence in the last 24 hours that strongly suggests that the mental status of my client will be the issue, which means entering a not-guilty plea by reason of insanity," he told the Houston Chronicle.

Following her arraingment, the Associated Press reported rumors that the infanticidal mom tested pregnant after killing her five children. The pregnancy angle has been impossibnle to confirm and deny due to a gag order imposed on the case to avoid any tainting of the jury pool. The order prohibits any attorneys, police officers or witnesses in the case from talking about it.

According to her brother, Andrea thinks she is possessed by the devil. "I think the devil's in me," she told her brother Andrew Kennedy, "How long do you think the devil's been in me?" Kennedy said his family had been increasingly worried about his sister's mental health over the last six months, and one of her longtime friends was concerned enough that she kept a detailed diary of her severe emotional decline. Kennedy said his sister began receiving treatment for her most recent emotional problems this spring after she put a knife to her throat while visiting her mother's house and threatened to kill herself.

ilikeGW · 07-27-2006, 09:36 PM

It's always easier to blame the devil or some "disease" when you're guilty of killing, especially your own 5 children, instead of taking the blame for what you really are: a cold hearted murderer.

killacommy · 07-28-2006, 01:01 AM

This is a get out of jail free card to any woman that murders her children. Why do I say that? Because to murder your children you must be insane. The insanity defense will be used from here on out by defense attorney's. I am ashamed that a jury of my fellow texans are responsible for this.

Jeffery Dahmer was insane, Charles Manson is insane, should Mansons conviction be thrown out because he's a nut job?

I understand post pardom depression is an illness. But we as a sociaty have an obligation to protect our citizens from people like Mrs. Yates. In my opinion she is a monster that should never see the light of day again.

Fishmint · 07-28-2006, 01:31 AM

She will be in a mental hospital getting help. Her families happy with the verdict i think it was fine.

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It's always easier to blame the devil or some "disease" when you're guilty of killing, especially your own 5 children

Huh? Shes I-N-S-A-N-E.