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
I am always reminded of the scene from the Untouchables movie where Al Capone had bought the jury, the Judge finds out, and removes the jury, brings one in from a domestic dispute trial next door, and seats them as Al Capone goes berzerk....
I still think she's insane, though, and if we're going to have an insanity defense codified in law, she's a poster child for it. A lot of folks think there shouldn't be an insanity defense and I think three states have banned it. Count me in if somebody wants to start a campaign to ban it, or at least to change the finding to guilty but insane. But the reality is that the insanity defense is codified in law in all but a handful of states right now, and all of the fussing about it is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing unless some folks want to push to change the law.
The verdict should be read: "Not guilty by reason of jury insanity."
Postpartum depression should by now be a carte blanche to commit murder... not just of one, two, three but of FIVE small children.... sue the pharmaceutical company who created the drug she was taking when she coldblooded committed murder. Sue the devil for talking to her, sue anyone, but DO NOT place the responsibility where it belongs.
The last I heard is that she's no longer sick. She can differentiate between right and wrong, good and bad, and she expresses and feels emotions. However, she knew what she did was wrong from the get go. Waiting for her husband to leave for work - covering her dead children with a sheet and calling the police to report her gruesome crime are signs that she knew what she did was wrong.
So I got the tape of her confession to the police.
Listen how Andrea Yates depicts with so much clarity what she did; how she systematically killed her five children, covered their bodies, called the police, called her husband and then explained all this to the police calm and collected.
This isn't someone who has lost touch with reality, but someone aware of her actions. Furthermore, Andrea Yates admitted that she could have stopped the killing.
One thing, though, if you have time to check out that link I posted earlier to the long discussion ... 11 pages worth ... of the insanity defense, you'll see just how rarely it works when tried. What happened today is actually the exception rather than the rule, I think it's just magnified because of the circumstances and ... I say this gently, not meaning to stir up ca-ca, and I say it as a father who has a couple of young children, but it's my .02 from looking at the whole thread (I posted in it earlier) ... the fact that there were children involved.
so if he had killed 5 people with that hammer - instead of breaking 5 car windows - his punishment for that should simply have been compulsory enrollment for him in some program at a psychiatric hospital, is that it?
and what would we say to the 5 victims families, seeking justice from the system - "tough luck, the voices made him do it".
I don't think she will either. I don't see how how mind can heal and deal with what she would have to face. If she does though, I think she will be suicidal.
The problem with your logic is that all of the children are just as dead. There has to be a price paid for systematically murdering 5 children. How much therapy and time spent in a mental institution is 5 lives worth?
My fervent wish is that Andrea Yates gets her head straight, gets square with the Lord and then spends the rest of her natural life locked up.
a father who killed his 5 children in this way - walking into court with whatver mental health excuse you can dream up; satanic possession, pick anything you want - would NOT have been acquitted. not a chance.
Who will play Andrea, in the movie?
"In the meantime, a former cellmate of Yates has made some important claims. ABC News/AP reports: Felicia Doe, who spent four days in a jail block with Yates in 2002, told prosecutors last year that Yates instructed her not to eat, not to speak properly and not to be friendly or open in front of people if she wanted to “beat her case.” …
Yates told police she was not angry with her children, but realized she had not been a good mother to them and they weren't developing correctly. She said she had had thoughts of harming them for two years."
Juror Todd Frank said it was clear to him that Yates had psychosis before, during and after the drownings. "She needs help," Frank said. "Although she's treated, I think she's worse than she was before. I think she'll probably need treatment for the rest of her life."
Also, the DA is recommending against a trial for the other 2 kids. So basically, it's over.
..you may just be correct...this is a simple example but if someone who is raped let's say....is so traumatized they become almost catatonic....because their mind really is doing this to protect them....in Yate's case....the terror of reliving this may be just too much for her mind to comprehend thus keeping her in a permanent psychosis.
Yep it was retried but seems the info the that Dietz [sp] gave in the first trial should have helped the Defense and not the prosecution since it helped place her as watching a show about a mother drowning her kids.
You see nothing is cut in stone no matter how well educated or trained one believes to be. The first Jury ignored the insanity defense and found her guilty, the 2nd just the opposite. So now we are left with the whims of what a future judge and some experts will testify to as to her mental conditions at that given time.
The only hope in this fiasco is that if'n she does walk then they try her for the murder of the two remaining children.
its not the DAs fault, its the idiots on this jury.
was that a psychotic person I saw on the TV clip, turning to her lawyer and giving him a big hug?
I know she did. She's a coldblooded murderer. Did you hear the tape I posted? I hope it works OK.
I can't answer that because I don't know what she's doped up on.
"In the meantime, a former cellmate of Yates has made some important claims. ABC News/AP reports:
Felicia Doe, who spent four days in a jail block with Yates in 2002, told prosecutors last year that Yates instructed her not to eat, not to speak properly and not to be friendly or open in front of people if she wanted to “beat her case.” …
Sure doesn't sound like someone who "snapped", having been thinking about the murders for two years, does it?
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