Posted on 03/13/2002 5:14:37 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
March 13, 2002, 1:43AM
What's in store for Yates in prison?
By MIKE TOLSON
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
Having been convicted of capital murder, Andrea Yates faces a certainty of prison. The only question is how long she'll be there.
The two sentencing possibilities for the jury are life with a 40-year minimum stay, or execution by lethal injection. In either case, she will be a more demanding inmate than most.
Even though it did not amount to a successful insanity defense, Yates' mental illness is irrefutable and will have to be treated.
"I think it's highly likely that she would end up in that category of inmate that costs the state $30,000 to $50,000 a year to house," said Joe Lovelace, a public policy adviser to the Texas chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. "They have to have special attention paid to them."
After her transfer to prison, Yates will undergo diagnostic evaluation for six to eight weeks. If she is given a life sentence, that evaluation will be done at one of the two psychiatric units that serve women, in Rusk or Lubbock. If she is sentenced to death, the evaluation will take place on the women's death row in Gatesville.
Prison officials say Yates will receive the same treatment and medication she would in the free world. Even if she is on death row, she would be transferred to a psychiatric unit whenever her condition warranted it.
"It's like with Angel Maturino Resendiz," prison system spokesman Larry Fitzgerald said of the infamous rail-car killer, who is mentally ill. "He's a cutter. He cuts himself. And every time he does, we're required to send him down to (a psych unit) because he's a danger to himself."
If sentenced to life, Yates likely would remain at a psychiatric unit until doctors decide her condition has improved to the point she should be placed in the general prison population. But that may never happen.
"I would expect that she would be segregated," Lovelace said.
And that could be the best thing for her.
"The more stress that she is exposed to, the higher likelihood that she will deteriorate and suffer a higher number of psychotic events," he said. "In that condition, inmates often can't function well and follow the rules and obey the regimen. They end up in administrative segregation for punishment, in numbers disproportionate to other inmates."
If Yates is sentenced to death, the state would likely monitor her mental health closely. Although executing the mentally ill is permissible under law, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the condemned inmate must be competent at the time of execution.
That means Yates must be aware of and understand the reason she is being punished. That would not normally be a problem, but if she stops taking her medication and lapses into psychosis, she may have little grasp of reality. And perversely, that may be the hope of those who want to save her life.
"If you're trying to save a person from being executed, the lawyers would have to advise her to cease medication and deteriorate to the point where the state couldn't take her life," Lovelace said.
Attorneys for Russell Weston, the gunman accused of killing two policemen in a rampage at the U.S. Capitol in 1998, have gone one better. They have opposed forced medication for Weston to keep him from being tried and exposed to a potential death penalty. Yates' attorneys chose to allow her medication.
The state cannot forcibly medicate a prisoner unless he is a threat to himself or others. On death row, where inmates are closely supervised and segregated most of the time, the odds against that are high. It is not easy to get a court order for forced medication.
The burden of proof of incompetence, however, is on the inmate's attorney. Although a handful of death row inmates are unlikely to be executed because they are obviously incompetent, proving incompetence in court to block an execution is harder than it might seem.
Recently executed Monty Delk went to his death last month spouting gibberish from the gurney. He claimed he was not in America but Barbados and that he was the prison warden.
Prosecutors contended Delk was faking his mental condition, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals signed off on the execution.
"You don't have to be very competent to be executed," said Delk's attorney, John Wright.
Odds are, it will not come down to such matters with Yates. A death sentence would be all but unprecedented for a mentally ill woman who killed her children.
Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist at Case Western Reserve University who has worked with many mothers who killed their children, said long before the Yates trial that he would be surprised if the jury sentenced her to death -- especially with Yates' husband asking for leniency.
"Even if the jury rejects insanity, the psychological factors are usually mitigating enough that it is very rare for them to get the death penalty," said Resnick, who testified for the defense in Yates' case.
How much mercy a life sentence represents is open to question. Resnick said Yates is in for a rough time even if she is spared the needle.
"Even if they are found insane, they have a hard time forgiving themselves," he said. "They may recognize they were out of their mind at the time, but they will blame themselves for not getting help earlier, for not staying on their medication or whatever. The incidence of suicide attempts is not small."
Mothers who kill their children during a psychotic episode have a hard time coping with their despair.
"When you kill your children out of love, there's not only the self-torture for having done it, but also the grief at losing your children," he said. "So there's a tremendous double whammy. There's an intense missing of them."
Attorney Jim Leitner said imprisonment is the only reason his former client, Linda Carr, is still alive. Carr, a substitute teacher, snapped one day in February 2000 and shot her daughter and son for no reason. She offered a guilty plea in exchange for a 35-year sentence.
"I have no doubt that if she had been found not guilty by reason of insanity, she'd have killed herself within six months," Leitner said.
Easy Link
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/topstory/1293192
Good ol' Houston Chronicle, blithely ignoring the fact that the prosecution pretty thoroughly DID refute the suggestion that Yates was mentally ill.
One 'sick' b*tch, yes; mentally ill, no.
It's 'Needle Time' for her!
If I were on the jury, I might argue for the death penalty simply because I can't think of a single reason why we need to keep her around. She's NEVER going to get out of prison.
At a minimum, she's there for 40 years, but she was convicted on two counts of murder. The judge could order them to be served consecutively, putting it at 80 years before parole.
In addition, the District Attorney can still bring three more charges of murder against her. Those were held in reserve in the event this trial didn't turn out with a good result. In theory, they can have another trial with a different jury which could then impose the death penalty if this one does not.
Andrea Yates should consider herself lucky if this jury sentences her to death.
She should be put to death immediately. It's a waste of the tax payers money to spend good money on a woman who will never be any benefit to society. I'd say let her sit and rot in her own demons until the needle is put in her arm!
Yahoo concept of dealing with the insane people. National Socialists were more humane, they at least were putting them out of their misery.
One would hope a large syringe.
Not everyone.
It does not matter if the prosecution DID refute that the Earth is round or that 2 and 2 equals 4. Yates was mentally ill and this yahoo treatment will make her more ill.
Now there's something you don't read every day.
Clearly, you are a sadist. This is not a sign of mental health either.
I think that she should have to see the pictures of them alive and evidence photos of them dead every single day for the rest of her miserable oxygen wasting life.
Your apologetic attitude that runs rampant through your posts makes me ill. She killed 5 (that's one for every finger on one of your hands) children. What part of that don't you get?
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