I think this is a more convincing sign of the end of times:
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
If it's any comfort, most mental hospitals have forensics units for the criminally insane. I have personally yet to see a murderer be released as 'cured'. I've said it before, the mentally ill are in a version of hell that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
Didn't she spend time in a mental hospital that was pretty nice before the trial. Will she go back there?
This is very disturbing to me.
It seems that the more horrific the crime, the less punishment is received, because "nobody 'sane' could do something like that." It's like being rewarded for the greusomness of the crime.
God bless these precious children, and may they rest in Jesus' arms forever.
sw
From the Catechism:
2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.67So the Church does not rule out the death penalty in principle.2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."68
Moreover, while the means exists in many Western countries to incarcerate murderers for life, many convicted murderers are in fact eventually released from prison, thus becoming a threat to the public.
I had to change the channel after listening to this guy. He blames the D.A. for wasting tax payer money on two trials when she was "obviously insane" and yet he couldn't tell? They were told NOT to have anymore kids and yet he helps her pop out another - this guy should be in jail too. If he would have taken those kids away from an "obviously insane" woman - they'd still be alive today.
Mental illness is such a tough issue, and the more I've learned the more I recognize that often there just isn't a single correct choice or solution. So very sad.
The one change I do advocate is changing the law to get back to a better balance when it comes to deciding whether to institutionalize a person. As I understand it, unless they verbalize or write a specific threat against a person, it is nearly impossible to institutionalize them against their will before they actually act on it.
I think this is a more convincing sign of the end of times:
Justice would be if they arrested her husband who is sane and ignored the doctors warnings and still didn't use a condom or work to protect his children by committing her or refrain from impregnating her against the advise of doctors.
I am very disappointed in some of the posts on this thread.
I don't know. Probably. And the are not cushy places. Very spartan and simple.
Realize that the sanity will be the ultimate punishment for her. To really know what she did, versus not fully comprehending.
For some reason I just do not think our Lord Jesus would like the death penalty. So I err on the side of caution.
Perhaps numbness? She's the only living connection to the past family left. Sometimes those taught all their lives Christian concepts of forgiveness may go overboard in trying to be forgiving/noble/moving on. Maybe fighting some of their internal emotions, or worn-out, or no longer have a solid base from which to react and come to conclusions, or no idea of how to react to conflicting feelings, or a million other reasons. Grief is just a different mindset that manifests itself in a million different ways.
I have no idea what he is going through, and am not about to judge him or his reactions.
Bottom line, he didn't raise his hands to murder his own offspring, she did.
Does Medea ring a bell?
That may be the humane thing to do for horses and dogs who are sick or injured, but in this country, we don't execute people for being sick, infirm or injured.
I hope she never gets out of the state mental hospital, but if there ever was a case of insanity, this woman is it!
"....the mentally ill are in a version of hell that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy."
I agree. Before I became disabled with my arthritis, I worked as a nurse in a county home here in Indiana. Half of our residents had mental health dianosis or two, or three. A couple of my resisdents stand out in my memory. You are right, they lived/live in a hell the rest of us allegedly sane folks have no way of truly comprehending.
I desire justice in this case. My personal opinion, and that's all it is of course, is that this is as close as you can get. If I didn't believe in the fact of the severity of her mental illness, I would be standing in line with the folks calling for the needle for her.
pattyjo
AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So now let's blame the drug companies.
You people never cease to amaze me.
You belly ache about people needing help, then you belly ache about those who try to help them.
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