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HOUSTON –– The National Organization for Women and other groups said Monday they are helping to raise money to defend Andrea Yates – the mother accused of drowning her five children in the bathtub

"It's a shame that there's no law that can give Russell Yates his due," writes syndicated columnist Debra Saunders. "Russell Yates ought to be locked up instead of his wife," says writer Cindy Hasz. Creators Syndicate's Froma Harrop sneers that he probably "misses the obedient drudge who bore and raised his five children more than the five children." Harsh words for Russell Yates have come from many others, particularly former O. J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark. What these and others forget is that it's hard to make the right decision when you don't have a lot of options. According to...

by Mark Finkelstein July 27, 2006 - 07:36 The Andrea Yates jury spent 36 days listening to testimony and argument, trying to get inside the mind of a woman who had drowned her five children. But with just one sentence, ABC's Chris Cuomo gave us a stunning look inside the mind of a certified MSMer: sympathy first, last and always for the accused. Commenting on the not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity verdict, Cuomo had this to say: "Ironically, treatment might be the harshest punishment for Yates, because she has said the healthier she becomes, the more pain and regret she's able to feel." So...

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...

HOUSTON - Andrea Yates believed that cartoon characters told her she was a bad mother who fed her children too much candy, a jail psychiatrist testified Thursday. Dr. Melissa R. Ferguson, who talked to Yates the day after her arrest in the bathtub drownings of her five children, said the defendant suffered from a major depressive disorder and was psychotic, picking at her lip until it bled. Ferguson was the first defense witness in the second murder trial for Yates, who has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. She is being retried because her 2002 conviction was overturned last year...

Seven-year-old Noah Yates struggled so hard while his mother was drowning him in the bathtub that his small fists remained stiff and over his head even several hours later, the medical examiner testified Wednesday. Testifying on the third day of Andrea Yates' murder trial, Dr. Luis A. Sanchez said Noah, the oldest of Yates' five children drowned that day in 2001, had extensive rigor mortis because of intense movements indicating a struggle just before death. Noah also had deep bruises consistent with someone holding him down, as did 6-month-old Mary and 5-year-old John, Sanchez testified. Sanchez also said that based...

"HOUSTON Feb 27, 2006 (AP)— Andrea Yates on Monday rejected prosecutors' plea offer of a 35-year prison sentence and is expected to face retrial in March in the drowning of her children. Prosecutor Joe Owmby told state District Judge Belinda Hill that the state would leave the offer on the table until March 10, 10 days before Yates' trial is set to begin for the deaths of three of the five children. Yates has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, as she did at her first trial."

HOUSTON, Texas (AP) -- A woman accused of drowning her children has rejected a plea offer that would have sent her to prison for 35 years and is expected to face a retrial in March, her attorney said Monday.

Andrea Yates left jail early Thursday for a state mental hospital where she will await her second capital murder trial for the drowning deaths of her young children. Yates' attorney posted her $200,000 bond, releasing her from incarceration for the first time since the five children were drowned in the family bathtub in June 2001. State District Judge Belinda Hill set the bond Wednesday. Yates, 41, didn't speak as she left the jail. She carried a brown paper sack and wore jeans and a blue-and-white striped shirt as she entered a car with her attorney and a private investigator for...

Did anyone else see the last 10 minutes or so of "Criminal Minds", the CBS drama with FBI profilers? I can't beleieve what I just saw. They portrayed a female student reciting the Lord's Prayer while dousing other students with kerosene in a tank and then lighting a flare, about to set them on fire. When confronted by an FBI agent, she sai "God chose me to do this. If I don't something terrible will happen". He shouts at her "God chose you? BE RATIONAL. Don't do this". She does not relent and he shoots her, apparently fatally. I am...

The psychiatrist whose testimony helped convict Andrea Yates in the slayings of three of her children -- and was the basis for an appeals court's decision to overturn the convictions -- says he made a mistake, but still believes the Texas mother was sane when she killed her children. "I don't think there's any question about that [Yates' sanity]," Dietz said in an interview on "Good Morning America" today. "The evidence that she knew right from wrong is what she said. She says in recorded statements, including my interviews, that as she killed her children, she knew that it was...

A Texas mom who drowned her five children in a bathtub will get a new trial after a state appeals court yesterday overturned her conviction because of false testimony from a key prosecution witness — about the TV show "Law & Order." Andrea Yates, whose unspeakable crime sparked a national debate on mental illness and the death penalty, is likely to stay in a state prison's mental-health unit until the new trial, said lawyers close to the case. The stunning reversal hinged on testimony from a noted psychiatrist who told a jury in 2002 that Yates might have gotten...

HOUSTON (AP) - Andrea Yates' murder convictions for drowning her children should be overturned because the state's expert witness gave false testimony about working on an episode of "Law and Order," her attorneys told a state appeals court Tuesday. Yates was sentenced to life in prison in the 2001 deaths of three of her children after jurors rejected her insanity defense. She was not tried in the deaths of the other two. Psychiatrists testified that Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression. Her attorneys told a three-judge panel of the state's First Court of Appeals that she deserves a new...

Mommy, have I done something wrong?            Andrea Yates was the mother of five beautiful, innocent children. She drowned them all in a bathtub and we are supposed to feel sorry for her. When her seven year old son saw his baby sister lying lifeless on the floor of the bathroom, he asked if she was all right, to which Andrea answered, “get in the tub”, Noah ran, but not far enough or fast enough. The last words he spoke just before his mother drowned him in the bathtub was: “Mother, have I done something wrong?”          I say we are...

The husband of Andrea Yates, the Clear Lake area woman who admitted to drowning her five children in the family's bathtub three years ago, has filed for divorce. In his divorce petition, Rusty Yates, 39, says he and his wife of 11 years ceased to live together as husband and wife on or about June 20, 2001 - the day Andrea Yates called police and told arriving officers she had drowned her children. ``The marriage has become insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities between petitioner (Rusty Yates) and respondent (Andrea Yates) that destroys the legitimate ends of the...

HOUSTON, Texas (AP) -- Andrea Yates, who is serving a life sentence for drowning her children in a bathtub three years ago, has been hospitalized because she is refusing to eat, her attorney said Tuesday night. Her condition was unclear, attorney George Parnham told The Associated Press late Tuesday. He said he tried but was unable to visit with his client Tuesday because she wasn't coherent. "There is apparently a determination within her that wants to put an end to this," Parnham said. "I'm not sure what type of psychiatric medications can offset the reality of what occurred and make...

Yates home finds buyer08:38 PM CDT on Thursday, May 27, 2004Associated Press HOUSTON – The home where Andrea Yates drowned her five children three years ago has been sold after being on the market for nearly six months. The three-bedroom, two-bath house was listed for $109,900 and sold last week, real estate agent Mike Canary told the Houston Chronicle on Thursday. Sale price and buyer identity were not disclosed. Ms. Yates was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life for the June 2001 drownings of three of her children: Noah, 7; John, 5; and Mary, 6 months. She confessed...

HOUSTON — More than two years after Andrea Yates (search) was found guilty of drowning her children in a bathtub, her attorney appealed Friday in a challenge to Texas insanity law. The appeal also detailed what defense attorneys said were 19 errors made during the trial, including the court's decision to admit the clothing the children wore at the time of their death and alleged false testimony by a prosecution expert witness.

Andrea Yates' husband: Trial was wrongInsanity laws should have protected her after drownings, he says11:03 PM CST on Sunday, January 25, 2004Associated Press HOUSTON – Nearly two years after Andrea Yates' conviction for drowning her five children in the family's bathtub, her husband continues to assert that his mentally ill wife never should have been prosecuted. "Why do we even have insanity laws if they are not based on medical insanity?" Russell Yates asked. To be deemed innocent by reason of insanity, the law requires defendants to prove they suffer from a severe mental disease or defect and did not...