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Title: Jury Finds Andrea Yates Not Guilty Of Murdering Her Children
Source:
www.foxnews.com
URL Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,205696,00.html
Published: Jul 26, 2006
Author: Fox News
Post Date: 2006-07-26 13:51:00 by Mind_Virus
Keywords: None
Views: 1112
Comments: 16
Jury Finds Andrea Yates Not Guilty Of Murdering Her Children Wednesday, July 26, 2006 HOUSTON — A jury on Wednesday found Houston mom Andrea Yates not guilty of murdering her five kids by reason of insanity. The decision comes after the jury deliberated for three days in Yates' retrial to determine whether she was legally insane when she drowned her five kids in the family home's bathtub. Her 2002 murder conviction was overturned because of incorrect testimony by a witness. It's expected Yates will be committed to a state mental hospital, with periodic hearings before a judge to determine whether she should be released. She would have been 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 during this retrial because the first trial's jurors sentenced her to life in prison, and authorities found no new evidence. Yates is charged in only three of the deaths, which is common in cases involving multiple killings. Earlier in the day, jurors deliberating for a third day in the retrial asked to see a family photo and candid pictures of her five smiling youngsters. After about an hour of deliberations, they said they had reached a verdict. Attorneys were then called back to the courtroom. The jury has been trying to determine if Yates was legally insane when she drowned her kids. Soon after arriving at the courthouse on Wednesday, it reviewed the state's definition of "insanity." Texas law says someone can be found insane if, because of a severe mental illness, that person does not know the crime is wrong. In Yates' first murder trial, in 2002, the jury deliberated about four hours before finding her guilty. That conviction was overturned on appeal. Yates, 42, has again pleaded innocent by reason of insanity in her second murder trial. 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 in a delusional state 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. State District Judge Belinda Hill 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. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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#1. To: Mind_Virus (#0)
This woman is obviously insane, but I have to disagree with the nature of the verdict. I think we should have a verdict, Guilty But Insane, and the person should go to a home for the criminally insane for the same period of time they would go to a regular prison. No way that someone who would kill all of her kids should ever be allowed to go free in public - she can never be cured of something like that.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
I agree, me. Prison isn't the place for her.
no, prison isn't the place for her, but unfortunately neither are the public streets, and I think she's going to end up being freed by some psychiatrist who thinks she's been "cured". then she'll go and do some other crazy thing. someone this crazy needs to be secured in a mental hospital for the rest of their lives. actually prison wouldn't be a bad place for her husband, who's been telling us all what a "victim" his wife is.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
Andrea Yates — Causes of Psychosis Need to be Found and Treated Dan Stradford, President & Founder: http://AlternativeMentalHealth.com Published March 20, 2002, Chicago Tribune Los Angeles — Few can find true sympathy for Andrea Yates. A Texas jury, perhaps understandably, could not forgive her. The only thing more maddening than her act is the question of why she did it. And could it have been prevented? The medical community clearly states it does not know what causes postpartum depression or psychosis. The treatment of choice is psychotropic drugs. Because such medication only masks symptoms, this means that the actual physical cause of this disturbed mental state nearly always remains untreated. Whatever malfunction inside the body of Yates caused her insanity, a physical change she experienced long before the murders, it remained wrong with her right up to the final breath of the last drowned child and likely continued to wreak havoc with her as her guilty verdict was read. Added to the unknown cause was the use of psychotropic drugs, which can have a side effect of violent impulses. While a judicious use of psychotropics may certainly be necessary in some cases, to pretend that the patient has then been treated is simply false. The undiscovered cause remains and continues to impact the drugged woman. Any honest doctor knows this. Postpartum women have been through a horrific time, exhausted from the birth, hormones out of whack, nutrients drained from the body, sleep deprivation, sometimes low thyroid conditions flare. Likely physical culprits abound. Yet the physical cause of the problem is rarely found and commonly not even looked for with any real zeal. Nutritional abnormalities are hardly considered. Additionally, a number of tests and treatments exist that, often, only alternative doctors (and almost no psychiatrists) use. Yates received standard treatment for postpartum depression. The results should raise public concern. Is she responsible for killing her babies? The jury said yes; some experts think not. But for sure, if she would have been medically tested and prodded until the physical cause of her symptoms was found and really treated, besides drugging her, those babies could very well still be with us.
Excellent points, loddie. No doubt she was on some kind of drug and those things can make you crazy. Very sad situation all around and no way to feel pleased at any outcome.
"I woke up in the CRAZY HOUSE."
From Columbine to Houston, to who knows where else, BigPharma is guilty of murder, imo.
However horrible the history, I think the jury came to the best verdict. We can't bring the kids back. Now, maybe folks will pay attention to both mental illness; and the treatment of it. This was preventable. There's the ultimate horror.
Like Bill Cosby used to say: "Keep on running that play 'til you get it right".
I don't know how she could be considered anything BUT insane.
As I understand it, the woman was stuffed to the gills on psychiatric drugs, and they're known to be associated with psychosis and murder/suicide. Don't know what causes post-partum depression? Funny. Even primitive tribes have enough sense that when a woman is going to get pregnant, they make sure she is exceptionally well-fed. We could at least do the same. I'd bet money mal- nutrition is almost all of the problem.
"Benjamin Franklin was shown the new American constitution, and he said, 'I don't like it, but I will vote for it because we need something right now. But this constitution in time will fail, as all such efforts do. And it will fail because of the corruption of the people, in a general sense.' And that is what it has come to now, exactly as Franklin predicted." -- Gore Vidal
She is one of very few that I have seen that was obviously not in her right mind, unlike the Susan Smith's of the world that we usually see pleading insanity. I was glad to hear this verdict. The husband bears some responsibility for this though.
My hands are tied. The billions shift from side to side. And the wars go on with brainwashed pride, for the love of God and our human rights. And all these things are swept aside by bloody hands. Time can't deny and are washed away by your genocide. And history hides the lies of our civil wars. I Don't Need Your Civil War--Gun N Roses From what I've read about him, anyone could have lost it - pity she didn't take it out on him.
There can be little doubt that these drugs cause people to lose touch with reality as the rest of us see it. They do things that are unconsciable, like drowning 5 of your own children, or shooting all the kids at your school ... over and over ... the people doing these things are taking or have recently quit taking psychotropic drugs.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds (smites) you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. Samuel Adams ... and I concur !
Never forget that the woman was a fundie religious kook like AKA Stone. No telling what these hate filled nut jobs are likely to do. Add drugs to the mix and ... poof.
You are comparing a psychotic woman who treats herself with religion to a repressed and self loathing homosexual - a person who is driven into fits of overt hatred by sexual frustration and who is then driven into religion by guilt. The drivers are different in the two cases.
I am not gay.
I'm usually pretty sympathetic on mentally disabled criminals(I have seen a few). But here, for whatever reason, with her own mind and her own two hands this woman held her little boys underwater and drowned the life out of them. I remember hearing that her oldest boy tried to fight her to save himself. When I try to imagine the terror that was in his heart as he was dying, looking up at his mother though that churning water, I can't imagine that this woman should be allowed to spend another day on Earth. Her babies certainly didn't get to. It's fine to say "they were out of their mind", but for a crime this horrible, which took so many lives, that's just not enough. She deserves to die, even if for no other reason than the fact that she did not alert the authorities/CPS when she first understood that she was becoming a danger to her own children. That mistake, that failure to do so, condemned 5 precious young lives to a very horrible murder. I'm sure she didn't have the emotional clarity of a "normal" person at the time she committed this act. But if she was competent enough to navigate the complexities of day-to-day life, and raise these boys to be the happy youngsters they were, she was certainly competent enough to work with her husband/the authorities to save her own children from her personal problems.
#2. To: mehitable (#1)
#3. To: Jethro Tull (#2)
#4. To: mehitable. all (#1)
Could her psychotropic drugs have been the culprit here?
War - it's for the children
#5. To: lodwick (#4)
#6. To: mehitable (#5)
Very sad situation all around and no way to feel pleased at any outcome.
War - it's for the children
#7. To: Mind_Virus, christine, Zipporah, robin, Zoroaster, BTP Holdings, Arator, Brian S, A K A Stone, Bub, mugwort, bluegrass, Bill D Berger, FormerLurker, Uncle Bill, Dakmar, Flintlock, Neil McIver, tom007, aristeides, Burkeman1, Diana (#0)
#8. To: Mind_Virus (#0)
#9. To: Mind_Virus (#0)
#10. To: Mind_Virus (#0)
#11. To: Neil McIver (#9)
#12. To: justlurking (#11)
The husband bears some responsibility for this though.
War - it's for the children
#13. To: lodwick (#4)
Added to the unknown cause was the use of psychotropic drugs, which can have a side effect of violent impulses.
#14. To: Mind_Virus (#0)
#15. To: Apokalicksus (#14)
#16. To: Mind_Virus (#0)
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