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Justice for Andrea Yates

By Jeralyn, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 08:23:42 AM EST
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A Texas appeals court has reversed the conviction of Andrea Yates, convicted of drowning her five children in the bathtub and sentenced to life in prison. The opinion is here.

The reason for the reversal was the false testimony of psychiatrist Parker Dietz:

During her March 2002 sentencing, a jury rejected Yates' insanity defense and she was convicted in the deaths of three of her five children. She was sentenced to life in prison. Her attorneys argued that she suffered from postpartum psychosis, and she had a well-documented history of postpartum depression.

The Texas First Court of Appeals ruled that the conviction should be reversed because an expert witness for the state, Dr. Park Dietz, presented false testimony when he said Yates may have been influenced by an episode of the "Law & Order" television program. No such episode had ever aired.

Yates will face a new trial. I would rather the Court had found her insane despite the jury's verdict.

The difference between a verdict of guilty and one of not guilty by reason of insanity in the Yates trial hinged on one key issue: whether Yates knew what she was doing when she drowned the children was wrong.

Both the defense and prosecution agreed Yates is mentally ill, but prosecutors convinced the jury that she was aware that what she was doing was wrong. Under Texas law, defendants can be declared not guilty by reason of insanity only if it is determined they did not know right from wrong at the time of the crime.

Yates' outcome should have been the same as that of Colorado's This should have been Rebekah Amaya. One expert put it this way:

If Andrea Yates had been in any state other than Texas, she would have been found insane," said Dr. Robert Miller, [a forensic psychiatrist and the former chief of psychiatry for the state Department of Corrections] who is now a professor at the University of Colorado medical school and treats patients at Pueblo.

Here's Reuters' version. Great links to the entire case are available here from the Houston Chronicle.

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    Justice for Andrea Yates | 15 comments (15 topical)
    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#1)
    by Che's Lounge on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 08:52:32 AM EST
    Complete with tirelss BS from Nancy disGrace and Fox News.

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#2)
    by Adept Havelock on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 09:06:22 AM EST
    Tossed out on the "Law and Order" defense? Well, I guess this balances out the right-wing wackjob who shot the mayor of San Francisco a few years back and got off on the "twinkie" defense. Positively surreal. At least Andrea has a marginal chance of being found insane now, and getting help rather than being dumped onto the Texas McExecution franchise.

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 09:41:28 AM EST
    Adept: Wasn't she orignially setenced to life without parole? I don't think execution was in the cards. Let's hope she has a speedy retrial. And a trial for psychiatrist Parker Dietz's false testimony.

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#4)
    by clio on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 09:43:17 AM EST
    I always feel oddly about these cases, and those like them, where it's clear that the defendant acted under unimaginable compulsions. I can easily imagine the horror the victims experienced as the one person they trusted most did them harm. Still it seems clear that Andrea Yates was insane then. I read that she is now taking her anti-psychotic medicine. So she must be aware not only that her children are dead and that she killed them, but that the deaths were unnecessary. It is impossible for me to even begin to imagine how she must feel about that. I don't believe there is any purpose served by imprisoning people like this. It seems that there could be no worse punishment than missing all her children all the rest of her life. Still the children's agony haunts me, too. Surely we must make sure that anyone capable of such acts, insane or not, causes no more suffering. Mandatory lifelong treatment? Mandatory no more children? I wish I believed that there are good answers. For now I must settle for some measure of justice for Andrea Yates, knowing it is not really an answer to all the questions.

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#5)
    by Jlvngstn on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 11:03:14 AM EST
    Kudos to the judge. May she get the help she so desperately needs.....

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#6)
    by wishful on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 11:57:17 AM EST
    To all the criminal lawyers here, a question. How reasonable would it be for a plea bargain to be reached where she pleads guilty but insane (or whatever Texas calls it)? Is it usually against the ego interests of the prosecutor to do such a humane thing and miss all of the limelight? And would it be in or against the interests of Andrea?

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 12:22:10 PM EST
    wishful: there is no "guilty but insane" -- however you can be "not guilty" by reason of insanity. I know that sounds strange, but one prominent example of this was the man who shot Reagan -- Hinkley -- who has been in a mental institution ever since. Because insanity = innocence in the US system, it's a common defense for situations in which there is no question of who committed the crime. Someone who is declared innocent by reason of insanity will normally be committed to a mental institution, but stands a chance of release at a later date if the mental illness is deemed to be cured. This is probably one of the many, many weaknesses of our criminal system. It is clear the woman was guilty and should be locked away for life. It is equally clear that she was nuts at the time, and probably still is now. Why can't both sides agree that she belongs in a mental institution for convicted criminals and save the state the cost of another trial? Alas, the answer is that the defense team "owes" it to the defendant to fight for the best possible outcome, which in this case is an innocent verdict.

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 12:28:11 PM EST
    Andrea has a marginal chance of being found insane now, and getting help rather than being dumped onto the Texas McExecution franchise. Posted by Wile E. Coyote at January 6, 2005 10:41 AM Adept: Wasn't she orignially setenced to life without parole? She got life. Texas doesn't have "life without parole;" you either get life or death. Surely we must make sure that anyone capable of such acts, insane or not, causes no more suffering. Agreed. If she's found not guilty by reason of insanity, it's virtually certain she would be involuntarily committed until she's "cured." Barring a breakthrough cure for psychosis, or at least a way to definitively tell whether someone is "cured" or not, that would almost certainly mean lifetime committment. (In exceptional cases, e.g., brain tumors, a cure can be accomplished, and people have been released from commitment as a result. But this isn't one of those cases.)

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#9)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Thu Jan 06, 2005 at 07:44:36 PM EST
    Ha! Ha! The shrink was Park Dietz! Ain't that just the bees knees? Old Park was, for many years, the forensic psychiatry consultant for...Law and Order! He's a professional vigilante who works hard to convince juries that the defendant is evil incarnate. Was the guy delusional, or did he actually believe that nobody would verify that such an episode had ever aired?

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#10)
    by dennis on Fri Jan 07, 2005 at 03:07:41 AM EST
    What's missing from the debate about Andrea Yates is acknowledgment that she was so badly abused by everyone who should have helped her. The psychiatric clinic (right down the road from my house) discharged her prematurely, failed to keep proper records of her treatment and, rumor is, lost her commitment order. As I recall, her psychiatrist took her off of the medications that were showing positive results. Her husband, a NASA scientist, didn't believe in mental illness and largely thought her problems could be solved by praying with some fundamentalist nutcase preacher. It was that preacher who provided the idea that her children were evil and, well, we all know what happened after that. Our District Attorney, who thought Yates should be executed, said she "turned her back on the mental health system". How exactly does a psychotic person make a rational decision, I wonder? This case represents nearly the absolute worst example of Texas "justice", an example that is far too common here.

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#11)
    by wishful on Fri Jan 07, 2005 at 06:53:33 AM EST
    Dennis, here's a challenge. Can a few of the best examples of Texas justice be provided?

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#12)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Fri Jan 07, 2005 at 09:57:31 AM EST
    Two things: I don't like blaming her husband in any way at all. There is no way that he could have known that Andrea could do such terrible things. Will Park Dietz be prosecuted? And since he lied in an effort to have Andrea Yates executed, isn't he elegible for death penalty prosecution, too? I hope so. The Texas state appeals prosecutor confirmed that Dietz was paid a "six figure" fee, at least $100,000, and what did they think they were getting for that kind of money? They KNEW they were getting an actor, someone who would put on a compelling performance. They weren't hiring him for his psychiatric credentials. IMO, the DA should be elegible for prosecution as well as Dietz.

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#13)
    by Dark Avenger on Fri Jan 07, 2005 at 10:56:06 AM EST
    There is no way that he could have known that Andrea could do such terrible things. I don't think that anyone has said that he conciously did anything that he knew would drive her crazy so that she'd kill her children, but the fact remains that his actions only contributed to her stress. He's certainly not culpable in a legal or perhaps a moral sense, but from his statements I've read after the event suggest a self-centered person who might never 'get it', which in a way might be the most merciful outcome for him.

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#14)
    by Richard Aubrey on Fri Jan 07, 2005 at 12:43:46 PM EST
    A. J. Both the shrink and the prosecutor ought to be hammered. But asking for the latter to be sanctioned is a loser on this board. No matter how awful a prosecutor is, no matter how egregious is a malicious prosecution, getting the attention of the folks on this board is an uphill fight. Membership in the ABA trumps issues of law or morality.

    Re: Justice for Andrea Yates (none / 0) (#15)
    by Maria on Tue Jan 11, 2005 at 10:20:14 PM EST
    I almost wish they would go after that Right Wing Whack Job Preacher she and her husband were listening too. He sounds like a "Charles Manson" type to me. Hopefully she will get the help she needs, finally. I only wish she could be moved out of Texas.

    Justice for Andrea Yates | 15 comments (15 topical)