Posted on 02/02/2006 10:59:32 AM PST by presidio9
Andrea Yates left jail early Thursday for a state mental hospital where she will await her second capital murder trial for the drowning deaths of her young children.
Yates' attorney posted her $200,000 bond, releasing her from incarceration for the first time since the five children were drowned in the family bathtub in June 2001.
State District Judge Belinda Hill set the bond Wednesday.
Yates, 41, didn't speak as she left the jail. She carried a brown paper sack and wore jeans and a blue-and-white striped shirt as she entered a car with her attorney and a private investigator for the drive to the mental hospital.
Her attorney, George Parnham, said he would answer questions after returning Yates to East Texas, where she previously spent more than three years at a prison psychiatric unit.
The judge said she couldn't order Yates to commit herself to the Rusk State Hospital, but said she set the bond based on Yates remaining there until her March 20 trial. Once the trial begins, Yates will return to the Harris County Jail. The trial is expected to last four to six weeks.
Yates faces capital murder charges for drowning three of the children and has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.
A jury rejected her original insanity defense in 2002 and sentenced her to life in prison for the drowning of 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John and 6-month-old Mary. Prosecutors presented evidence about the drownings of Paul, 3, and Luke, 2, but Yates was not charged in their deaths.
An appeals court last year overturned the convictions based on testimony by the state's expert witness about a nonexistent episode on television's "Law & Order" series. The expert, Park Dietz, said a show about a woman with postpartum depression who drowned her children had aired shortly before the Yates children were drowned.
Yates should be given the old Andy Sippowitz's push her head down in the toilet trick three time a day for the rest of her life.
I hate that. Guilty but insane I can understand, but just because you lose your mental capacity, it doesn't make you innocent.
The wording is important. It shouldn't be "innocent," it's "not guilty."
Big difference.
I expect that this complete charlatan and liar, Park Dietz, will not be prosecuted for perjury, will not serve any time in prison and will be paid as an expert witness at other trials in future.
I hope that the truth about this fraud is spread far and wide, so any prosecutor faced with him on the witness stand can make him admit before the jury that he is a perjurer whose testimony is worthless.
I too have a hard time with that too; I think most people would agree, killing your children IS insane, but guilty should be the charge.
Am I wrong or is it different in some states? Is is EVER "innocent by reason of insanity" is is that a mistake made by the media?? (The same ones who call weapons "guns," ships "boats" and marines "soldiers.")
Think she'll stay?
They need to let Scott Peterson out too. He had some sort of depression or whatever I'm sure, it's time to let all the killers out of jail if that nut-case vicious murderer of babies is out.
It's not guilty, rather than innocent in all states, I believe.
As I recall, after she drowned the children, she called her husband at work sounding pretty grim. He asked if something was wrong, and she said yes. He asked if it was with the kids, and she answered yes. He asked which one, and she answered words to the affect of "all of them; you'd better come home right away." Sounds to me like the actions of someone who knew exactly what she had done, and that it was bad - hence knew the difference between right and wrong. Doesn't sound like insanity to me.
The legal standard is "Not Guilty". A moral standard is "Innocent". The correct disposition, at least in New York, by plea or verdict, would be "Not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect". Reporters, from whom the information is usually gotten, are too lazy, ignorant, or both to learn and use the correct terminology.
Insanity may make you legally "not responsible" for your crimes, but it should guarantee that you never walk free again. Someone who is insane is always a risk to the rest of the world... and you'd have a hard time convincing me that Scott Peterson is a risk to anyone else.
I think that she should spend the rest of her life in a prison for the criminally insane.
She is nuts! It is obvious to anyone with eyes, who saw her when she was escorted from her house to the police car that she was as nuts as you get. Its a travesty that her husband and family didn't take her away from her family until/if she got better.
The death of those children shouldn't be in vain but used to promote the research into the chemical imbalance that occurs in some during and after pregnancy instead of shluffed off as "in their head".
Doctors and husbands should be held accountable for letting a crazy woman care for children.
None of this is happening....no good will come of this tragedy because people wont admit that hormones during/after pregnancy can cause insanity.
"I hate that. Guilty but insane I can understand, but just because you lose your mental capacity, it doesn't make you innocent."
Agreed. Here, she's clearly a nut.
She was not merely a depressive, but had been involuntarily committed to the looney bin several time for hallicinations and "being a danger to herself and others."
She was on a pharmacy of drugs to mediate her behavior and had a LONG history of being a complete whack job.
Note, I am not saying she's innocent, but I am saying that, if we have "insanity" as a defense, she's the poster child for it.
Moreover, IMHO she should NEVER be let out of confinement because she'll inevitably have a bad spell and go do something like this again.
No, she should be given the Andy Sippowitz lie detector with the extra-thick phone book. Everytime she tells a lie, he goes: "BEEP-BEEP!", and cracks her over the head with the telephone book.
That'd be my choice.
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