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Right. She will be under the court's ironclad jurisdiction. This is Texas. She isn't walking free anywhere, folks. But this verdict was the correct one even to a lot of us hard-core law & order types here in Texas. I think a lot of the "blood lust" on FR in this case stems from a lack of a more familiarity with the facts. They see "Woman Drowns Kids" and the ol' knee jerks in the prdeictable way.(Truth be told, if this had happened in Kansas, & I didn't know everything about that case that I know about the Yates case, I'd probably be one of 'em screaming bloody murder at this verdict & wondering what the hell the jury was thinking too.)But if we are to maintain even a pretense of being a fair & just society, we've got to be able to make distinctions about moral culpability. This woman was (& still is) so severely disabled by psychosis, there is no way on God's earth she had any way of understanding what she was doing.

Yes, you are right. The issue here is the "insanity defense." Most dislike it and do not understand its true purpose.

The very basis of criminal law grew out of secular and church attitudes towards crime. To be punished you must be able to understand what you have done and that what you have done was perceived as wrong at the time of the event.

In this way the integrity of the law is preserved. Only those who are capable of forming both intent and the action are considered criminals.

I agree this is a tough area for the law and the courts. This is why a successful jury trial deciding "not guilty by reason of insanity" is very rare. Usually, prosecutors and defense counsel both see the "craziness" of the perpetrator and a plea bargain is agreed upon for the "insanity defense." Such decisions are much more common than a contested jury trial for the same issue.

Texas is not noted for being soft on crime. No one in Minnesota has accused Texans as being too soft, compassionate and lenient towards criminals.

The errors in this case were inadequate defense and attempts to understand the issue before the first trial. Most likely, the jury thought a lot about this in reaching the verdict they did.

"This woman was (& still is) so severely disabled by psychosis, there is no way on God's earth she had any way of understanding what she was doing."

Question - if she had no understanding of what she was doing, why did she call the police?