Posted on 07/26/2006 9:35:01 AM PDT by cajunman
HOUSTON -- Jurors reached a verdict in Andrea Yates' murder retrial Wednesday morning. The jury's decision will be announced at about 11:25 a.m. KPRC and Click2Houston will air the verdict live.
After deliberating nearly 11 hours, jurors returned for a third day Wednesday to determine if she was legally insane when she drowned her five children in the bathtub.
Before court ended Tuesday, the jury of six men and six women asked to review the state's definition of insanity: that someone, because of a severe mental illness, does not know a crime he is committing is wrong.
State District Judge Belinda Hill said jurors, who were sequestered for the second night, , could see the definition Wednesday morning.
Jurors have already deliberated longer than the nearly four hours it took a first jury, which convicted her in 2002. That conviction was overturned on appeal last year.
Yates, 42, has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. She is charged in only three of the deaths, which is common in cases involving multiple slayings.
As court was to end Tuesday, jurors asked for one more hour to deliberate. But then the panel immediately passed another note rescinding that request. Hill quoted the note, which read, "We need some sleep," prompting laughs from those in the courtroom.
The jury earlier asked to review the videotape of Yates' July 2001 evaluation by Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist who testified for the defense that she did not know killing the children was wrong because she was trying to save them from hell.
Resnick told jurors that Yates was delusional and believed 6-month-old Mary, 2-year-old Luke, 3-year-old Paul, 5-year-old John and 7-year-old Noah would grow up to be criminals because she had ruined them.
Jurors later asked to review Yates' November 2001 videotaped evaluation by Dr. Park Dietz, the state's expert witness whose testimony led an appeals court to overturn Yates' 2002 capital murder conviction last year.
Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist, testified in her first trial that an episode of the television series "Law & Order" depicted a woman who was acquitted by reason of insanity after drowning her children. But no such episode existed. The judge barred attorneys in this trial from mentioning that issue.
On Tuesday, after jurors asked for the trial transcript involving defense attorney George Parnham's questioning of Dietz about the definition of obsessions, the judge brought the jury back into the courtroom.
The court reporter then read the brief transcript, in which Dietz said Yates "believed that Satan was at least present. She felt or sensed the presence." Dietz had testified that Yates' thoughts about harming her children were an obsession and a symptom of severe depression -- not psychosis.
Earlier Tuesday, jurors reviewed the slide presentation of the state's key expert witness, Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Yates in May. He testified that she did not kill her children to save them from hell as she claims, but because she was overwhelmed and felt inadequate as a mother.
Welner told jurors that although Yates was psychotic on the day of the June 2001 drownings, he found 60 examples of how she knew it was wrong to kill them.
If Yates is found innocent by reason of insanity, she will be committed to a state mental hospital, with periodic hearings before a judge to determine whether she should be released -- although by law, jurors are not allowed to be told that.
Yates will be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of capital murder.
A capital murder conviction in Texas carries either life in prison or the death penalty. Prosecutors could not seek death this time because the first trial's jurors sentenced her to life in prison, and authorities found no new evidence
"Not guilty. Amen. If ever there were a case where someone was not guilty by reason of insanity, this was it."
I have to agree to this, though I know this will not be the majority view. I base my opinion on my personal experience of post partum depression. I suffered, tremendously, after the birth of my first son, a much wanted, loved, and desired child.
For almost one year, I could NOT function, think, or even care for my child properly. Many days were spent in tears, and depression so deep I could hardly raise my head some days. It made no sense to me, and for a long time I could not shake it. Very scary time.
SHE suffered depression MUCH more debilitating and extreme than mine. My experiece lets me understand HOW this formerly loving and attentive mother COULD have so lost touch with reality that these HORRIBLE crimes could have been committed by her.
I could be wrong, I just don't know. God will sort it out eventually. Our lifetimes are so brief in the overall scheme of things. If this verdict was unjust, He will have the final say.
She, hopefully, will be hospitalized for many, many years, and hopefully, for the rest of her life.
pattyjo
She is a serial killer and she got away with murder under the eyes of Texas.
What a shame that this is what our society has become.
She was on trial for 3 of them. I am not sure of what the next step is though. I think that is up to the DA if they want to go to trial for the other 2.
She can indeed be free again. Fox just reported that before the verdict.
Insanity huh?. Whose?
Zackly. She showed no signs of being anything but a loving mother before the incident happened. Obviously, something snapped and that's what insanity is.
A white-trash woman with a history of selling her kids, shooting drugs, stealing stuff, making jokes about murder, desperately wanting "the easy life," calling the kids a burden, or any combination of those factors would point to a different - and criminal - motive.
Andrea Yates was not like that, something very strange happened. Long history of mental problems, is that a clue? Only stupid people would not take that as a clue. Of course she will need to go to a mental hospital, probably forever. But jail isn't the right place for her. That is for people like Susan Smith. Andrea is a very different kind of case.
She wouldn't last long on the streets.
Three. So, I assume, the state can still try her for the other two.
Look - we don't murder our insane no matter how much we wish to see them suffer.
If we did, we would be guilty of murder ourselves and subject to being in front of a jury for murder for revenge - sane, supposedly.
Apparently you feel it is ok to ignore insanity and just kill off any offender. So, what does that then make you? They killed because their minds are defective, you kill because you want revenge, you want the joy of seeing a person that committed an atrocity pay for that atrocity without regard for their abilities.
I can't help but think that puts you in a worse situation than the original murderer on Judgement Day.
But - what do I know.
Yes,by all accounts, a profoundly psychotic woman. I'm not going to argue with all the flames I expect to get here today defending this verdict. Folks just have no idea how deeply mentally ill this woman is; executing her for this would be amoral.(Frankly, I don't think the prosecutor's office went out of their way to do their best work in the retrial - by all accounts, they went through the motions here, no pun intended.)She's not going free, by any means.Horrific tragedy. Sane verdict.
Murdered before your tenth birthday. Yeah, that is unfortunate, isn't.
What a despicable word choice.
It would just be a waste of time and money.
Yep. "Guilty but Insane" should be the verdict. Send her to a pshchiatric hospital and try and get her well. Then when she is well, lock he murdering ass in jail for the rest of her life. Either that of kill her. She should never, ever see the outside world again.
Do you extend this courtesy to all murderers or just this one?
Rusty is not all-there either, IMHO.
Nicely, eloquently, said.
If Kerry were president this wouldn't have happened.
Every time I think of those innocents drowned by their own mother and the oldest boy running and trying to escape from her murderous intent, I am infuriated anew. Insane or not, she herself should be put to death IMO.
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