The second criminal trial of Andrea Yates is over and the jury has spoken – this time with compassion and rationality. I had written about Yates earlier this year when her re-trial began. You can find the gist of this tragic and grisly event here. (Sorry, the Houston Chronicle links to that post have all disappeared.)
Andrea Yates should never have gone to jail in the first place. She is a very sick woman who is in need of medical care not incarceration. The case against her was not about whether she methodically killed her five small children but why. Yates never denied the killings but she also gave bizarre reasons for doing so. In fact if her illness had been taken seriously by those around her, especially her husband (now ex-husband) Rusty Yates and she had been afforded proper and timely psychiatric care, this heartbreaking event may have never come to pass. During the second trial, the jury saw and believed that Yates was in a highly disturbed state of mind when she killed her children and found her not guilty due to reasons of insanity. After five years, justice has indeed been served. Hopefully, this tragedy and the verdict will shed much needed light on the urgency of medical care for the mentally ill.
"A Harris County jury has found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity during her second capital murder trial for the drowning deaths of her children in the family’s bathtub in 2001.
The verdict upholding Yates’ insanity defense comes after the jury deliberated more than 12 hours over three days. The decision also underscores the emotional debate on mental illness within the criminal justice system since Yates’ first trial in 2002.
"It’s a shame it took us this long to get the right verdict,” said Wendell Odom, one of Yates’ attorneys.
Yates appeared shocked and sat staring wide-eyed with her lips slightly parted as State District Judge Belinda Hill asked each juror individually shortly after noon today whether they agreed with the verdict.
The acquittal in Yates’ second capital murder trial followed nearly a month’s worth of exhaustive testimony, capped by four hours of emotional closing arguments Monday, during which Yates broke down in tears and her former husband, Russell Yates, abruptly left the courtroom.
The jury’s verdict means Yates, 42, will be sent to a state mental hospital for treatment, rather than be sentenced to life in prison. Yates and attorneys will return to Judge Belinda Hill’s courtroom at 10 a.m. Thursday for a hearing, formalizing the details of Yates’ hospitalization. She will go to a maximum security hospital initially.
"I just want to get her back home to Rusk,” said George Parnham, Yates’ lead attorney, in reference to the hospital where Yates had been receiving care before the start of her second trial.
The children’s father said outside the courtroom the jury had reached the right conclusion.
"The jury looked past what happened and looked at why it happened,” Rusty Yates told reporters outside the courthouse. "Prosecutors had the truth of the first day and stopped there. Yes, she was psychotic. That’s the whole truth.”
Yates, a former nurse and housewife with a history of psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide attempts, called police and led them to the bodies of her five children Noah, 7, John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2, and 6-month-old Mary after drowning them in a bathtub at her Clear Lake home on June 20, 2001.
Defense attorneys had urged jurors to find that Yates’ mental illness led to the children’s deaths. Experts testifying for the defense said Yates drowned her children in an act of love to save their souls from eternal damnation.
Prosecutors did not dispute that Yates was mentally ill, but argued that her condition did not keep her from knowing right from wrong."
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