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
Are you part of the Yate's defense team?
If you were sick, would you not be entitled to treatment? That's what we do in civilized societies, we treat the sick.
Anything else is taliban stuff. The taliban certainly would see it your way about killing the sick as a matter of principle and righteousness.
Zackly.
This sure feels like open season on children. Imagine how the millions of children who learned about this case feel now, knowing thier mothers could drown them at any time and not be punished.
It was bad enough that all these children know that mothers are free to kill their siblings before they are born, now they know that their lives are never protected.
Finally someone who understands! I read a long article on this woman, she scratched her head non stop in one spot until it was bald, is this normal? She would go days without saying one word, days without uttering one single word, is this normal? One day she stood all day looking at the tv, not sitting, standing... same spot, all day... staring at the tv, is this normal? Would you leave someone like this with your children? I blame the "sane" people in her life. They may not have known she would kill the children but they had to know something was very wrong and there is no way children would get proper care from someone this seriously ill.
One cannot be found "innocent" by any means; one can only be found "not guilty".
ESPECIALLY in this murdering b#$%h's case, she is guilty as sin of killing her children, and regardless of what make-shift defense is used, the fact remains and always will remain that she murdered her defenseless children.
For a jury to acquit her, they are playing games with words and socially-engineering the intent of the law. Period.
I do.
I was beginning to think you were as nuts as Andrea, but this post I actually sort of agree with. Nevertheless, she killed her kids in a calculating way and should have been found guilty for it. David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" killer, claimed that his neighbor's dog told him to do murder, but he still went up the river.
Andrea's seeking "help" may have been part of her plan all along. Society can't excuse multiple murder because the perpetrator went to a shrink before they committed the crime.
You don't think it's possible here?
No. I'm just not bloodthirsty.
NO ONE who murders another human being is entitled to be set free by claiming some "victim" status for themselves. Clearly, every murderer could claim they are "mentally deficient", and we would have no room in all the "care" centers for them.
If anyone thinks this bitch did not know what she was doing, and that it was wrong, they cannot defend this act with some "mental" excuse.
Please disregard my last post. You're nuts.
I wish there were an "Ignore Poster" feature on this site. I'll stop reading your posts now, or I'm apt to leap through my computer screen.
Sickening. I do not believe she didn't know what she was doing.
interesting points
Who wants to set her free? No one. You really should read up on the facts about this case. This is not a Susan Smith who brutally murdered her children because she wanted a man and the children were in the way. This is a very sick individual who should never have been allowed to have more than one child and that one child should have been taken away. I understand what you are saying about a woman killing her children (i.e. Susan Smith) but this woman was so obviously demented. Just read and see if this is a woman you would leave your children with. Absolutely not, this is a very sick individual who was not taking the medication required to be even halfway normal, and yet, given the responsibility of taking care of young children.
She should never be allowed to be free but I've never seen a more blatent case of obvious dementia and yet she was allowed to take be responsible for the care of children. Her husband is allegedly sane, if your wife were this sick, would you let her take care of your children?
I just heard on the radio a replay of Rusty Yates comments to the press about how "This is a victory", and "That's why I'm standing by with her."
Didn't he divorce her and marry someone else?
Didn't he divorce her and marry someone else?
Yes, he did...
Yeah....its not that I blame the spouse in a malicious sense. I criticize him as arrogant, self centered and stupid. the rest of her family was not much smarter.
Sometimes its nothing more than sheer stupidity.Sad to say.
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