A woman who drowned her five children in the bathtub was found not guilty by
reason of insanity Wednesday, a turnaround from the decision in her first trial.
 Andrea Yates (R) and
her attorney George Parnham listen as the verdict is read in her murder
retrial in Houston, Texas. Yates, the Texas woman who had been sentenced
to life in prison for drowning her five children in a bathtub in 2001, was
found not guilty by reason of insanity in a new
trial.[AFP] |
Andrea Yates, 42, will be committed to a state mental hospital and held until
she is no longer deemed a threat. If she had been convicted of murder, she would
have been sentenced to life in prison.
Yates stared wide-eyed as the verdict was read, then bowed her head and wept
quietly. Her relatives also shed tears, and the children's father, Rusty Yates,
muttered, "Wow!" as he, too, cried.
Four years ago, another jury convicted Yates of murder, rejecting claims that
she was so psychotic she thought she was saving the souls of her five children
by killing them. An appeals court overturned the convictions because of
erroneous testimony from a prosecution witness.
Yates' chief attorney, George Parnham, called Wednesday's verdict a
"watershed for mental illness and the criminal justice system."
Yates' 2002 conviction triggered debate over whether Texas' legal standard
for mental illness was too rigid, whether the courts treated postpartum
depression seriously enough, and whether a mother who killed could ever find
sympathy in a tough-on-crime state like Texas.
Yates drowned 6-month-old Mary, 2-year-old Luke, 3-year-old Paul, 5-year-old
John and 7-year-old Noah in their Houston-area home in June 2001. Her attorneys
said she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and, in a delusional state,
believed that Satan was inside her and that killing the youngsters would save
them from hell.
"The jury looked past what happened and looked at why it happened," Rusty
Yates, who divorced his wife last year, said outside the courthouse. "Yes, she
was psychotic. That's the whole truth."
Juror Todd Frank said it was clear to him that Yates had psychosis before,
during and after the drownings.
"She needs help," Frank said. "Although she's treated, I think she's worse
than she was before. I think she'll probably need treatment for the rest of her
life."
Prosecutors had maintained that Yates failed to meet the state's definition
of insanity: that she was so severely mentally ill that she did not know her
actions were wrong.
"I'm very disappointed," prosecutor Kaylynn Williford said. "For five years,
we've tried to seek justice for these children."
Prosecutors had sought Yates' execution in the first trial but could not in
the second because the first jury had rejected a death sentence.
Yates will be sent after a commitment hearing Thursday to North Texas State
Hospital in Vernon, a prison-like maximum-security facility. Experts say it can
take decades before psychiatrists decide that a patient is healthy enough to be
released, and even then a judge can reject those findings.
Yates' 2002 conviction was overturned after Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic
psychiatrist, told the jury that before the drownings, NBC ran a "Law &
Order" episode about a woman who was acquitted by reason of insanity after
drowning her children. It was later learned that no such episode
existed.