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
You are getting in the way of prideful righteous indignation.
You're wrong - he did - she wasn't allowed to work, was made to home school the kids - made to live in a school bus for a time - and as I said before, he traveled all the time! I know I'm strong as hell and would probably beat the heck out of some a55hole who treated me like he did her but bottom line, look at all the abused women in this country (and she most definitely was abused) that never stand up to these jerks.....we'll never truly know what happened in that home but it wasn't good! Her family has absolutely nothing to do with him and in fact when he was talking about suing her doctors, they stood up and said they'd testify for the docs as they felt he was a big part of Andrea's problems.
Not according to California.
This woman was gravely mentally ill before she had her last child. The doctors strongly recommended she not have more children as she was already so stressed and struggling mentally.
I give the majority of blame in this tragedy to her husband. He encouraged her to have another child, he discouraged her from taking medication she needed. He ignored the doctors and social workers concerns...allowing her to be isolated with her children and home schooling them.
This woman was a walking time bomb. The signs were all there as clear as could be! Now she will remain in a mental institution most likely for the rest of her life, even if she does stabalize. The awfullness of her crime will not allow her discharge.
I don't know him. I don't hate him. I wish they had known but I guess they do too. Nothing to do with Andrea Yates because I really believe she was and will remain mentally ill but I have no sympathy for any woman that is abused and puts up with it.
"It's just beyond belief.
This will infuriate anybody who has ever lost a child."
I am with you on that one Howlin...
I am afraid to even mention it to my sister(my niece died in 2006)...
She is Pg. again..and I am seriously thinking that it is not good for her to hear this news.
I am thinking of you.
Truth is stranger than fiction..
sw
I would like to send you a (((HUG)))
I am so sorry for the situation you have faced.
It is unimaginable to me.
Evidently not, she survives her children. Had she been a time bomb, she would be dead along with the 5 youngsters she methodically murdered. One would think that Andrea, having given birth to the 'devils spawn', would have offed herself along with ther children so she could never again give rise to 'evil children'.
I think a walking time bomb is the wrong analogy.
I would hate to think a mother could sanely kill five of her children.
But, there is blame for the husband who failed to protect those children - he surely knew she was insane.
___________________
I've always thought the same thing - no rational woman could kill one after the other - I think this is different than the woman who put her kids in the car and then let it roll into the lake. I believe Andrea Yates former husband should be held responsible for the deaths of the children. He saw his wife slide into unspeakable behavior and just watched it happen....
I don't hope she commits suicide as another poster does, but I do hope she gets help so she doesn't do that. I know God forgives us even of horrible things, but I don't know how our own mind would allow forgiveness of such a thing.
You're assuming too much. Just keeping her talking with others probably was a slight sanity lifeline. All alone with her thoughts, all kinds of nuttinesses popped up and nothing was there to check them.
Catherine what ever her name is...doesn't run our courts. We always have a bed for people like this.
What you posted has already played out on our 6PM local TV news in Houston. The anchors are already just saying "Andrea Yates has been found not guilty!" Period. End of sentence.
They talked with a jury member earlier - he may have been the foreman, but I wasn't paying enough attention to note that.
He said 5 of them argued over the wording, because they wanted it to be "GUILTY BUT INSANE." I wish they could have worked something out along those lines.
DA Rosenthal is still "thinking it over" about whether to try her on the charges for the other children.
Yup, NGBROI just becomes "Not Guilty." And Rusty is glad she will be able to have a normal life some time in the future.
She'll be the last one out. Hospital officials will release less controversial ones, so as to stay out of the public eye. They don't like public criticism.
I don't know if that is true....
why all the hate towards the husband?.......he was fallible, like a lot of people.....and he thought he knew better and what was best for his wife and children....
I don't think he deliberately set his children up for this terrible death.....
I mostly really blame the doctors.....
they had an inkling that Andrea was not right, yet somebody took her off HALDOL shortly before this episode happened...
people are on Haldol for very severe reasons.....taking them off too quickly, as in most anti-psychotics, can have devasting effects......
Isn't it obvious? I'm a child killer. I am obliged to defend all other child killers. It's part of the code of being a child killer. Comes with the secret handshake.
I so agree with you about Rusty being disgusting!
He was told after they had their fourth son, that she should not have anymore children due to her EXTREMELY fragile mental state by a psychiatrist, and he went ahead and impregnated her for a fifth time!
He is a big fat dope!
Yea sure, go fourth and multiply, but with exception.
I just hope, that as her punishment(and yes I still believe that she should be punished) she should remain hospitalized for the rest of her natural life, never to see the light of day! If she was so sick that she was capable of killing all of her children in such a grisly way, than that should be the case.
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