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
Maybe, maybe not because she certainly isn't INNOCENT. The term 'not guilty by reason of insanity' needs to be changed imho. It sounds like 'innocent' to me.
My bad... I read your post wrong.
I forgot to mention...at the last moment,the bomber decided he did not want to be rewarded that particular day.
A victory for NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and NOW
Why are you yelling at me? I'm not arguing with you.
"With their gender perhaps?"
Of course.
So I repeat, to all of you who sympathize with Andrea Yates as a "sick woman who needs help", why not a treatment program, for say poor Ted Bundy and his insane addiction to pornography and sadism.
I see little difference.
That is my fear. I know mental illness is real, I have witnessed it first hand. However, I am more concerned by how much we have cheapened life and this verdict cheapens it a little more. I just hope she never gets out of whatever facility she is put in.
Oh good grief.
Will the jury be safe on the streets of Texas?
Having lived a while in Texas, I do believe that if Texans said not guilty because of insanity, then they must have felt really strongly that it was, cause Texans, as a rule are hard nosed about this sort of thing, even in cases where I felt differently about it. They don't lightly rule like this. It's not part of the Texan view of justice.
"Now she gets to get three hots and a cot"
That’s not the worst of it. As soon as she can convince her shrink that she has been "repaired" , they will turn her loose.
That’s the REAL flaw in this, IMHO
Her husband is looney and now he's married off to someone else. Andrea is yesterday's news to him.
That I don't know. I don't think they were married that long ago.
Look at the douchebag response to the verdict at DU if you really want to barf (it's either Yates' husband's fault or society failed to help her).
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2414710
The chemicals she needs are sodium pentothal, chloral hydrate and potassium chloride.
As to either one of them, should they retain the 'right' to procreate again? Should either have kids with anyone else?
Do blondes have a button for that?
For those who think the woman can be rehabilitated, let one of them be the first to hire her as a Nanny to "babysit" their own children when she gets out. (Any volunteers?)
sw
Click 2 Houston said earlier and just not repeated, she was "acquitted by reason of insanity".
People have no idea what Post Partum depression is like. You have no control over your feelings, and in her case it progressed into a psychosis. This is not your "average" depressed person. She had a chemical imbalance, that did not get treated properly. Her husband is the one to blame. She was in the hospital the week before I believe. If your wife had just been released from the hospital with a heart condition, you wouldn't leave her alone.
I don't know what her punishment should be, that is a tough one, because she did kill her children, but I do know this is not a Susan Smith case. This woman was ill. I wish she would have just killed herself, as she tried to in the past, but I don't believe she was a "blood thirsty murderer" either.
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