Jury poised to begin deliberations in Andrea Yates case

HOUSTON - Andrea Yates is mentally ill but must be convicted of capital murder because she knew drowning her five children was wrong, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday in closing arguments at Yates' trial.

"She may have believed it was in the best interest of the children to drown them one after the other, but that's not the law in Texas," Harris County assistant prosecutor Joe Owmby said.

"It's not that I am without sympathy or that you are without sympathy," Owmby said. "You have to decide this case based on the facts of the law."

Defense attorney Wendell Odom termed mental illness a medical condition and compared the situation to a truck driver running over and killing five children after suffering a stroke.

"You wouldn't find him guilty of murder," he said. "Mental illness is a disease. It's a defect. We continue to treat it like it isn't."

Odom said the state was looking for a technicality by alleging Yates had a general concept that the world perceives drowning children as wrong.

"Does a loving mother kill her children if she knows it's wrong? It's just common sense," Odom said. "... If we have an insanity law, and if Andrea Yates is not insane, then we just don't really have an insanity defense, do we?"

Each side had 90 minutes Tuesday morning for summations before the jury was to begin deliberations.

Before the defense rested Monday, the jury saw a taped interview in which Yates told a psychiatrist that drowning her children "was a bad choice" and didn't make sense five months later.

"I shouldn't have done it," Yates told Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist hired by the state to evaluate her.

Dr. Lucy Puryear, called as a rebuttal witness, testified later Monday that Yates' comments in November were a retrospective look on her actions, which she did not know were wrong until after she called police to her home June 20.

"Psychosis is something that's so real (to Yates) ... and it's crazy to everybody else," said the psychiatrist, the last person to testify.

Puryear said under cross-examination she didn't know Yates regularly watched the television series "Law and Order," which aired an episode before June 20 about a woman who drowned her children and was later found innocent by reason of insanity.

Yates, 37, who has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, faces life in prison or the death penalty if convicted in the drownings of 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John and 6-month-old Mary. Charges later could be filed in the deaths of Paul, 3, and Luke, 2.

If Yates is acquitted, the court will have to wait at least 30 days before deciding whether she should be committed to a mental hospital or go free.

Neither the state nor the defense is contesting she suffered from a severe mental disease or that she killed her five children.

What expert witnesses during the trial disagreed on, however, was whether Yates knew killing her children was wrong.

In Texas, a defendant is presumed sane. To prove insanity, defense attorneys must convince jurors Yates suffered from a severe mental disease or defect that prevented her from knowing her actions were wrong.

Here is the Houston Chronicle story today:

Jury set to decide Yates' fate
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/topstory/1291320

March 12, 2002, 12:12PM

Jury set to decide Yates' fate

Testimony completed in deaths of children

By CAROL CHRISTIAN
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

After hearing from 38 witnesses and seeing some 300 exhibits over the past three weeks, jurors are expected to begin deliberating this afternoon as to whether Andrea Pia Yates is guilty of capital murder.

SEE IT NOW

Video: Watch excerpts of opening arguments in Andrea Yates trial and hear portions of her 9-1-1 call.
Russell Yates' June news conference
(Video courtesy of KHOU, Ch. 11)
(Requires Real Player)

function MM_openBrWindow(theURL,winName,features) { //v1.2 window.open(theURL,winName,features); } • Photo gallery:

• Transcript of Andrea Yates' confession
• A look at the Yates jury
• Q&A on insanity defense
• Yates family home page
• Yates family timeline
• Excerpts from Russell Yates' interview with 60 Minutes
• Other recent infanticides in Houston area
• Archives of Houston Chronicle Yates coverage

Closing arguments began this morning after state District Judge Belinda Hill read her instructions to the jury. Prosecutor Joe Owmby began his summation shortly after 9:30 a.m. and finished at 9:45 a.m.

Owmby urged jurors to pay careful attention to how Texas' law defines insanity, and urged the panel not to base their judgement on sympathy for Yates. Although Yates is mentally ill, the 37-year-old homemaker knew what she was doing at the time was wrong, he said.

"She may have believed it was in the best interest of the children to drown them one after the other, but that's not the law in Texas," Owmby said.

"It's not that I am without sympathy or that you are without sympathy," Owmby said. "You have to decide this case based on the facts of the law."

He also told jurors he was "honored" to be prosecuting the deaths of Yates' five children.

Defense attorney Wendell Odom began his closing argument immediately following Owmby, and completed it at 10:30 a.m.

Odom emphasized the contrast between Yates behavior and treatment of her children in the weeks and months prior to the killings, when she was a "loving mother" in a typical suburban household.

Odom termed mental illness a medical condition and compared the situation to a truck driver running over and killing five children after suffering a stroke.

"You wouldn't find him guilty of murder," he said. "Mental illness is a disease. It's a defect. We continue to treat it like it isn't."

Odom said the state was looking for a technicality by alleging Yates had a general concept that the world perceives drowning children as wrong.

His partner, George Parnham, launched then launched into his summation, dealing in more detail with the details of the law and how it relates to Yates' case.

"She was so psychotic on June 20 that she believed what she was doing was the right thing," Parnham said.

Parnham completed his comments about 13 minutes later, and prosecutor Kaylynn Williford began her rebuttal summation at about 10:45 a.m. and completed it about 11:08 a.m.

Williford emphasized that Yates called the police immediately after killing her kids, indicating that she knew she had done something wrong. Williford repeatedly used the word "choice," emphasizing Yates made specific choices and knew what she was doing.

Owmby, in his followup, attacked the defense's medical experts, calling at least one conclusion "ridiculous."

Arguments completed at 11:41 p.m., and Hill called a recess.

Defense lawyers' summations are focusing on the strategy that Yates' psychosis was so severe when she drowned her five children June 20 it prevented her from knowing her conduct was wrong -- meaning she was legally insane under Texas law.

When the defense completes its testimony, and with more than three weeks of testimony and legal arguments complete, jurors will then be asked to decide whether to convict Yates or find her not guilty by reason of insanity.

Yates faces two charges of capital murder in the drownings of Noah, 7; John, 5; and Mary, 6 months. Although she also confessed to drowning their brothers, 3-year-old Paul and Luke, 2, she has not been charged in those deaths.

Jurors spent part of their last day of testimony Monday watching more video of Yates being interviewed in November by Dr. Park Dietz, the prosecution's expert witness on insanity. The video accompanied testimony from Dr. Lucy Puryear, a psychiatrist in private practice and the former director of the Baylor Psychiatry Clinic at Baylor College of Medicine. Puryear was called as a rebuttal witness for the defense.

Puryear testified earlier that Yates has a "baseline psychiatric disorder, probably schizophrenia" and a major depressive disorder, both exacerbated by childbirth.

In her interview with Dietz, Yates says she wasn't thinking much of anything when she drowned her children -- something Puryear testified Yates had told her "over and over."

The video shown Monday began where one shown with Dietz's testimony last week left off. At the end of the tape accompanying Dietz's testimony, Yates said Noah had said something like "I'm sorry" as he struggled with her during his drowning.

In answer to Dietz's questions, Yates said she was not crying or thinking about Satan as she drowned the children, but was thinking only about what she was doing.

But when Dietz asked her whether she was thinking about heaven, Yates said she was and that she was praying her four boys would go there.

When Dietz asked about Mary, Yates responded, "She was the most innocent of all of them."

In analyzing the Dietz video, Puryear said Yates was incapable of sorting rational from irrational thought or right from wrong at the time of the drownings.

Puryear, who specializes in the treatment of women's childbirth-related psychiatric problems, also testified there was ample evidence of psychosis in Yates' medical record before and after June 20. The evidence would indicate she was not connected to reality when she drowned her children, Puryear said.

Prosecutor Owmby sought to show inconsistencies in Puryear's testimony during his cross-examination, but Puryear stuck to her testimony that Yates was incapable of knowing her conduct was wrong that day.

Owmby began a series of questions that Puryear said were confusing and indicated Owmby didn't understand the issue.

He cited three hypothetical examples of delusional men, including one who believed the United States is the great Satan, before adding a fourth hypothetical case of a woman who thinks she's a bad mother and doesn't spend enough time with her children.

"You don't understand mental illness," Puryear finally said in frustration. "To a psychotic person, psychosis is as real as the jury is in the courtroom, I'm in the chair and you are asking me questions," she said. "It's crazy to everyone else."

"It's not crazy that the United States is the great Satan?" Owmby asked.

"You're asking me questions that don't make sense," Puryear said.

Another psychiatrist testified Monday that she never asked Yates whether she thought killing her children was wrong, contradicting earlier testimony from a sheriff's deputy.

Dr. Melissa Ferguson, the medical director of psychiatric services at the Harris County Jail, interviewed Yates the day after she drowned her children.

Deputy Michael Stephens, of the Harris County Sheriff's Department, testified Saturday he was standing guard outside the tiny interview room and heard Ferguson ask Yates about drowning the children. He said Yates told Ferguson that she knew her actions were wrong. But Ferguson said Monday she had asked Yates no such question because it would have gone to the issue of legal sanity and she had not been appointed to evaluate that.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Page 1
This article is: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/topstory/1291320

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