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
Conceivable, I suppose. THat would be a tough one. I don't know...in that case, some mercy should be extended.
BS.
What if she is sorry and asks for forgiveness?
This has nothing to do with that.
Do you think the jury was composed of feminazis?
Mercy.
Found this. Many good points.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0322-02.htm
(excerpt)
"Rusty Yates is Culpable, Too
Father's Bizarre, Domineering Actions Played a Role in Children's Deaths
by Barbara Robinson
Who is responsible for the death of Noah, John, Paul, Luke and Mary Yates? A jury unanimously voted Andrea Pia Kennedy Yates, a registered nurse, guilty of killing her children. Interviewed after the verdict, some of the jury members have said her husband should have been on trial instead of Andrea.
OK, so the demeanor of Russell (Rusty) Yates -- all-American, Eagle Scout -- didn't persuade me. I couldn't understand how a man could repeatedly impregnate a mentally ill wife and force or allow her to home-school their children. Yates exhibited a sense of arrogance as he explained why his children had to be home-schooled: "The social integration that the world claims is so essential is exactly what we need to protect our children from." So the Yates didn't integrate with their neighbors, who didn't agree with Rusty's beliefs.
Rusty Yates claims he and Andrea jointly made decisions -- including Andrea giving birth to all five children without pain control measures; Andrea abandoning her nursing career to become a homemaker; Andrea home-schooling the children; the family moving from their four-bedroom house into a 38-foot trailer and an adjacent 350-square-foot motor home.
On June 26, just six days after the Yates children's deaths, Harris County, Texas, Judge Belinda Hill imposed a gag order prohibiting Rusty and any persons who had given statements to the police and to the district attorney from discussing how Andrea got to this point. This prevented Rusty, his family and Andrea's family from speaking to the press until the trial was over.
Since the day after the trial ended, Rusty and the families have appeared on every major television network to recite their version of what happened. In his need to share the blame for the deaths of his children, Rusty asked why anyone would blame him for Andrea's condition when a doctor trained to deal with mental illness wasn't able to predict her actions.
Rusty has repeatedly shared his disgust with the medical system's handling of Andrea's case. He has asked how she could have been so ill while the medical community failed to diagnose her, treat her and protect the rest of the family from her. He plans to sue Andrea's last psychiatrist, Dr. Mohammad Saeed, who took Andrea off her medication three weeks before she killed her five children.
Andrea's family, the Kennedys, claims Rusty was not attentive enough to Andrea's mental health needs. The Kennedy family has a history of mental illness that affects several members. Time magazine has reported that Andrea's brother and sister both suffer from depression, another brother has bipolar disorder, and the father who died after years of Alzheimer's may have had depression. This family demonstrates the genetic nature of mental illness. "
That school of thought is not at play here. You seem to think that because some think one person might be insane and not responsible that those same people think there is no evil in the world.
I call it a strawman.
Are you a Christian?
I see you've already been corrected, so I'll just add
LOL!!!
Why?
I guess "the devil" better not give a command that would make it easier for her to succeed, like waiting until she was alone.
Because that "proves" that she's sane!
We don't talk behind people's backs on FR, especially when we misrepresent them.
Most Christians don't believe in demon possession anymore.
WWJS?
So Rusty wasn't the leader of his family?
He had no responsibility to his children?
upon her death, she's headed straight for the hell realms
Why do you say that?
You're right....I had an employee in Houston who worked with Rusty at NASA and she absolutely had nothing good to say about him....hell, before Andrea was even found guilty the first time he had a girlfriend....he's going on with his life and this woman will spend the rest of her life in a mental institution knowing what she did to her babies. I would not be shocked if she offed herself one day!
BTW - did you see Tay Tay on Good Morning America on Friday? I love him!
Doesn't matter what you or anyone else thinks, the truth is that Manson and the rest of them ARE insane..
The other part of this "insanity" is that a woman who BRUTALLY drowned her children one by one, was let off the hook.
But the Jury looked at the dead kids photos for all of ten minutes, before they decided to let Mommie Dearest go to a nicer place.
There was no justice for the THREE dead kids..NONE.
I pray they will bring her up on charges for the OTHER TWO and she rots in jail for the rest of her pitiful, useless life..
sw
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