WASHINGTON, 13 MAR - Andrea Yates la donna di 37 anni accusata di aver ucciso i suoi cinque figli annegandoli nella vasca da bagno nella sua abitazione in Texas il 20 giugno del 2001 e' stata dichiarata colpevole di omicidio dalla giuria del tribunale di Houston dopo tre ore e 40 minuti di camera di consiglio. La donna disse di aver ucciso i suoi figli per ''salvarli da Satana''.

   Il verdetto significa che il giudice potra' condannare la donna all'ergastolo o alla pena capitale tramite un'iniezione letale. 

Texas Mother Found Guilty of Capital Murder

Mar 12 

HOUSTON  - A Texas jury on Tuesday found Andrea Yates guilty of capital murder in the drowning deaths of her five young children last summer.

The verdict means that Yates, 37, now faces a new phase of the trial in which jurors will decide whether she will be sentenced to die by lethal injection or sent to prison for life. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

 The former nurse confessed to drowning the children, who ranged in age from 6 months to 7 years, in the bathtub of their Houston home on June 20, 2001, but said she did it to protect them from Satan. She had been mentally ill for at least two years before the murders, twice attempting suicide and four times being treated in a mental hospital, experts testified.

 Prosecutors sought a guilty verdict on the grounds she was sick, but sane enough to know the crime was wrong, the standard for legal sanity in Texas. She was indicted in only three of the children's deaths, which means the state could try her on additional charges.

Texas leads the nation in executions and Houston in turn leads the state.

USA TODAY

Houston mother guilty Insanity plea rejected, Yates faces death penalty or life in killings

By Laura Parker

Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who methodically drowned her five young children in the bathtub last June, was convicted of capital murder Tuesday.

 A jury of eight women and four men rejected her insanity plea after deliberating three hours and 40 minutes. The sentencing phase of the trial will begin Thursday. The jury must decide whether Yates, 37, is to be sentenced to death or life in prison.

 Yates' eyes welled with tears as the verdict was read, and her husband, Russell Yates, put his head in his hands. Defense lawyers had predicted a longer deliberation because of the complicated issues involved in the three-week trial. An insanity defense is difficult to prove and rarely succeeds, statistics show.

 ''I'm not critiquing or criticizing the verdict,'' defense lawyer George Parnham said. ''But it seems to me we are still back in the days of the Salem witch trials.''

 The case centered on the Texas insanity law that says a person can be judged insane only if he or she did not know right from wrong.

 Prosecutors agreed that Yates is mentally ill. But they said that despite her illness, she knew it was wrong to kill her children and therefore cannot be judged insane. Prosecutors noted that Yates called police to report the drownings, asked a detective when her trial would be held and told doctors that she should be punished.

 ''Andrea Yates knew right from wrong, and she made a choice on June 20 to kill her children deliberately and with deception,'' prosecutor Kaylynn Williford said.

 In closing arguments, defense lawyer Wendell Odom told the jury if ''Andrea Yates isn't insane, then we really don't have an insanity defense, do we?''

 About two hours into their deliberation, jurors passed a note to state District Judge Belinda Hill asking the judge to clarify the definition of insanity.

 Jurors then asked for a cassette player. Evidence in the case included audiotapes of Yates' confession and her 911 call to police the day of the drownings.

 Yates, a former nurse, was charged with capital murder involving the deaths of three of her children: Noah, 7, John, 5, and Mary, 6 months. Paul, 3, and Luke, 2, also were drowned.

 The systematic killings attracted widespread attention and raised questions about the effects of postpartum depression, which experts hired by the defense said Yates had struggled with for years.

 Several psychiatrists testified that Yates had major depression with psychotic features, meaning she heard voices and experienced hallucinations.

Texas Mother Convicted Of Murder - Verdict Is Swift in Bathtub Drownings

  Andrea Yates, in this image from television, reacts during closing arguments of her capital murder trial on Tuesday.

  Yates Says He and Wife Made Joint Decisions (The Washington Post, Mar 1, 2002)

� Calm Yates Tells of Wife's Mental Turmoil (The Washington Post, Feb 28, 2002)

� 'She Wasn't in the Right Frame of Mind' (The Washington Post, Jun 22, 2001)

� Mother Charged in Slayings of 5 Children in Houston (The Washington Post, Jun 21, 2001)

 By Paul Duggan

Wednesday, March 13, 2002;

HOUSTON, March 12 -- With stunning swiftness, a jury today convicted Andrea Pia Yates of capital murder, rejecting the defense argument that she was in the throes of a psychotic breakdown and could not distinguish right from wrong when she drowned her five children in the family bathtub last June. She could be sentenced to death in the trial's penalty phase, scheduled to begin Thursday.

 Yates, 37, who has sat impassively through most of the trial, stood expressionless early this evening, flanked by her attorneys, watching the jury file into the crowded, hushed courtroom with the verdict sheet. Defense lawyer George Parnham held her close, his left arm around her waist. As Judge Belinda Hill announced "guilty" to each count, Yates's head quivered and her eyes blinked rapidly. But she remained silent, betraying no emotion, as sheriff's deputies ushered her away.

 In the spectator gallery, her husband, Russell Yates, sat with his hands clenched and pressed against his forehead, his eyes cast downward. "Oh, my God," he muttered, rocking slightly in his seat.

"It seems to me that we're still back in the days of the Salem witchcraft, when you take a demonized woman, and take her life," Parnham said later in brief remarks to reporters outside the courthouse. The judge has ordered lawyers in the case not to comment publicly on the trial until the penalty phase is over and Yates has been sentenced.

 Defense attorney Wendell Odom Jr., cornered by news cameras on the sidewalk, also made his disappointment clear. "But that's the verdict," he said, "and now we go to the next phase."

 After 17 days of testimony from 38 witnesses and impassioned closing statements by prosecutors and defense attorneys this morning, the jury of eight women and four men deliberated for just 3 1/2 hours before returning the verdicts at 5 p.m. Central time. Some legal experts had anticipated days of deliberations, and perhaps a deadlocked jury, in a case rife with emotion and complex questions about the criminal culpability of a woman whose history of postpartum mental illness was undisputed by the prosecution.

 Although she admitted drowning all five of her children, ages 6 months to 7 years, Yates was charged with only two counts of capital murder in three of the deaths. After hearing additional testimony in the trial's penalty phase, the same jurors will decide whether Yates should be executed. Under Texas law, if they vote to spare her life, she will be sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after 40 years.

 The jury confronted what many observers thought would be a vexing question: Was Yates's mental illness so severe last June 20 that she could not distinguish right from wrong when she intentionally drowned her daughter and four sons, one by one, in nine inches of cold water?

 Jurors had heard dozens of hours of testimony on the question from mental health experts -- some of it conflicting -- since the trial began Feb. 18. And they undertook their deliberations confronted by two stark images: the terrible vision of five drowned children, whose deaths were recounted in graphic detail by prosecutors today, and the drawn, dispirited face of the seemingly helpless defendant who has sat before them for nearly a month.

 In their closing argument, Odom and Parnham implored the jurors to focus on their client's mental illness and not to be swayed in their deliberations by the horrific nature of the killings.

 "If you don't look at this evidence and see that . . . this woman is insane," Odom said, "then that will be just one more time when our thin veneer of civilization and Christianity has been swept aside so that some poor, hated, wretched woman can be dealt with."

 Psychiatrists testifying for the defense said Yates told them she drowned the children because she believed that they were not "righteous" and that if they had been allowed to grow up, they eventually would have been "doomed" to hell. Noting that mental illness is a disease, Odom told the jury, "I suspect if you had a situation where a truck driver had a stroke and runs over five children, you wouldn't find him guilty of murder, would you? It wasn't his fault that he had a stroke."

 Prosecutors, however, presented an array of evidence suggesting that Yates, despite her delusions, knew that killing the youngsters was wrong.

 "The state's position is, well, she had some general concept of wrong and sin, and therefore you have to find her guilty," Odom said. "But what the defense tells you is that, although she may be able to perceive that others might think that her conduct is wrong . . . she thought [killing them] was the only thing in the world that could save her children from hellfire and damnation."

 In contrast to Odom and Parnham -- whose voices at times fell to near whispers as they spoke sympathetically of Yates -- prosecutors Joseph Owmby and Kaylynn Williford took a tough, even angry approach. They sought to focus jurors' attention on the five victims and the gruesome details of their deaths.

 "It's not that I am without sympathy," Owmby said. "It's not that you are without sympathy. But what you're asked to do at this point is decide this case on the facts and the law, not sympathy for Andrea Yates."

 Yates drowned the children on the morning of June 20 after her husband, a NASA computer engineer, had left for work. During the trial, prosecutors sought to portray Russell Yates as a domineering husband who controlled every aspect of his wife's life. Today, they suggested to the jury that Andrea Yates killed the children in an irrational effort to punish her husband.

 Arguing that Andrea Yates knew the killings were wrong, Williford reminded jurors of what happened after the drownings -- that Yates summoned police to her home in a middle-class Houston suburb and that she was coherent and responsive to questions when officers arrived.

 Ridiculing the defense's assertion that Yates was "a loving mother," Williford recounted the details of the drownings of Paul, 3; Luke, 2; John, 5; Mary, 6 months; and Noah, 7. Yates placed four of the bodies on a bed, but police found Noah still in the water. "The loving act was to leave his body floating in the tub," Williford said. "Left him floating in the vomit and the feces and urine that had been expelled in the fright of the four that had gone in that tub before him."

 Then Owmby concluded the prosecution's closing argument with a lament.

 The children, he said, "were not her possession. They belonged to us. And this will stab your heart. Every time you see a child laugh, it will stab your heart, because you'll remember this trial."

 ï¿½ 2002 The Washington Post Company

March 13, 2002

Mother Who Drowned Children Is Found Guilty of Capital Murder

By JIM YARDLEY

Andrea Pia Yates was flanked yesterday in Houston by her lawyers Wendell Odom, left, and George Parnham while the verdict was read in her capital murder trial. She faces life in prison or the death penalty.

HOUSTON, March 12 � Taking less than four hours to reach a verdict, a Texas jury today found Andrea Pia Yates guilty of capital murder in the bathtub drowning deaths of three of her five young children. Jurors must now decide whether the mother, in whom severe mental illness had been diagnosed, should be sentenced to death.

 The swift verdict came after more than three weeks of testimony in a case that has revived national debate about how mental illness is perceived and treated. When Judge Belinda Hill of State District Court read the verdict, repeating the word "guilty" after each charge, Mrs. Yates stood motionless as her lawyer George Parnham hugged her around the waist.

 Mrs. Yates, 37, has confessed to drowning all five of her children, though prosecutors had charged her with only three deaths in this case. She had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and had shown emotion only rarely during the proceedings. But moments later, she looked at her mother and seemed to stifle a sob.

 Her husband, Russell Yates, gasped, "Oh my God!" under his breath and buried his head into his hands after the verdict was read. When Judge Hill told spectators to rise as the jury left the room, Mr. Yates remained seated. He later muttered, "Unbelievable," and then departed without comment as his mother followed him, sobbing.

 The jury of eight women and four men heard nearly three hours of closing arguments this morning and then began deliberating after lunch. At one point, they requested an audiotape player. During the trial, jurors heard both the 911 recording of Mrs. Yates's call to the police and her taped confession. The jurors sent word that a unanimous verdict had been reached at about 4:45 p.m.

 Rusty Hardin, a former local prosecutor who is now a prominent civil and criminal defense lawyer, said the audiotape request suggested that jurors were concentrating on Mrs. Yates's actions on the morning of the June 20 killings, perhaps more than the voluminous psychiatric testimony presented to buttress her insanity plea. Mr. Hardin, who watched closing arguments, said prosecutors convinced the jury of the crucial point that though Mrs. Yates was mentally ill, she understood at the time that killing her children was wrong.

 "The way she did it and the way she acted afterwards was inconsistent with somebody who didn't know what she was doing," Mr. Hardin said. "That was the defense's problem."

 Under Texas law, which has a strict standard for the insanity defense, Mrs. Yates could have been found not guilty only if jurors believed she suffered from a mental defect that prevented her from distinguishing right from wrong. Jurors will now hear a new round of testimony in a punishment phase to determine whether Mrs. Yates should be sentenced to life in prison or death. That hearing is scheduled to begin on Thursday.

 Cyndie Aquilina, a social worker who volunteered as a jury consultant for the defense team, stood outside the courthouse after the verdict and expressed shock.

 "It's ludicrous," Ms. Aquilina said of the verdict. "This woman shouldn't have even been on trial." She blamed the verdict on "ignorance," adding, "I think people do not understand mental illness."

 The office of Chuck Rosenthal, the Harris County district attorney, which infuriated many national women's groups by seeking the death penalty, had chosen to charge Mrs. Yates on two counts of murder in the deaths of three of the five children. Had the jury acquitted her, this would have allowed prosecutors to bring other charges on the two remaining deaths.

 Mrs. Yates called the police on the morning of June 20 and told responding officers that she had killed her children � Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, 6 months. Officers saw four of the bodies lined up on a bed beneath a cover, as if tucked in for sleep. The fifth, Noah, was seen floating in the bathtub.

 In closing statements earlier today, the prosecutors, Joe Owmby and Kaylynn Williford, reminded jurors of the grim details of that morning and argued that Mrs. Yates had acted deliberately and with deception.

 Ms. Williford told how police officers who arrived at the home described Mrs. Yates as composed and seemingly rational. Ms. Williford said investigators found Mrs. Yates's hair in John's fist, suggesting that he had fought back. She also reminded jurors that Mrs. Yates dragged Noah, her oldest son, from the hallway into the tub.

 "The loving act of a mother was to leave his body floating in the bathtub," Ms. Williford said with scorn in her voice. She later added: "She made the choice to fill the tub. She made the choice to kill these children. She knew it was wrong."

 At one point during Ms. Williford's arguments, Mrs. Yates cried silently at the defense table.

 Mr. Parnham and his fellow defense lawyer, Wendell Odom, spent much of their defense presenting more than 11 physicians, psychiatrists and expert medical witnesses to support their argument that Mrs. Yates was insane on the morning of the killings. In 1999, postpartum depression and psychosis were diagnosed in her after the birth of her fourth child. Twice, she tried to commit suicide.

 But she seemed to recover when a doctor prescribed her the anti-psychotic drug Haldol. Despite a doctor's warning that she should not have more children, she and her husband chose to have a fifth child, Mary. Mrs. Yates again became depressed and psychotic, her psychiatrists testified, a malaise compounded by the death of her father last March.

 Defense lawyers argued that Mrs. Yates was so gripped by psychosis on June 20 that she thought killing her children would save them from eternal damnation. Dr. Melissa Ferguson, a psychiatrist who examined Mrs. Yates at the Harris County jail the day after the killings, described her as one of the most severely mentally ill people she had treated among more than 6,000 cases. Other medical witnesses also testified to the severity of her illness.

 "If this woman doesn't meet the test of insanity in this state, then nobody does," said Mr. Parnham, the defense lawyer. "Zero. You might as well wipe it from the books. She was so psychotic on June 20 that she absolutely thought she was doing the right thing."

 He later added: "This is about prevention. This is an opportunity for this jury to make a determination about the status of women's mental health. Make no mistake, the world is watching."

 Prosecutors had countered with their own star medical witness, Dr. Park Dietz, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine. Dr. Dietz, who interviewed Mrs. Yates in jail, testified that Mrs. Yates understood that her actions were wrong when she killed her children. He said she was "grossly psychotic" the day after the killings but that the evidence of psychosis was far less certain on the day of the attack.

 Defense lawyers attacked Dr. Dietz as a professional witness, noting that he has been a prosecution witness in several high-profile cases, including those of the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Theodore Kaczynski, the convicted Unabomber.

 But prosecutors also depended on the testimony of the police officers who arrived at the Yates house on June 20. They described Mrs. Yates as composed, directing them to clean glasses for a drink of water or directing them to keys to unlock the back door.

Mr. Owmby, the prosecutor, once apologized to jurors for yelling in his closing statements. He argued that Mrs. Yates "may have believed it was in the best interest of the children to drown them one after the other, but that's not the law in Texas."

 "It's not that I am without sympathy or that you are without sympathy," he added. "But what you are asked to at this point is to decide this case on the facts and the law, not sympathy for Andrea Yates."

Unjust Rules for Insanity

March 13, 2002

By JENNIFER S. BARD

GALVESTON, Tex.

Andrea Yates attempted suicide twice in 1999 and reported suicidal impulses again not long before the day last June when she drowned her children in a bathtub. She was hospitalized several times for mental illness; the last time her psychiatrist had threatened to force her commitment in court. Both the prosecution and the defense in her murder trial in Texas agree that she is severely mentally ill. Yet under Texas law all this was insufficient to produce a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, and yesterday Andrea Yates was found guilty of capital murder.

 The Yates case exposes serious flaws in how Texas - like most other states - determines criminal responsibility.

Under an insanity defense, Mrs. Yates was required to prove in her trial not that she was sane at the time of the killings, but that she did not know she was committing a crime or doing wrong.

 The insanity defense has long been controversial. In 1843, when Daniel M'naghten was acquitted by reason of insanity in the murder of the English prime minister's secretary during an attempted assassination, Queen Victoria called for a reappraisal of the law. The result was a standard, adopted not only in England but in American courts, which can be summarized in a single question: Did the defendant know his conduct was wrong at the time he committed the crime? Unless a person was so out of touch with reality that he didn't know he was committing a crime, he could be found criminally responsible despite suffering from severe mental illness.

 In the 1970's, a more realistic standard was adopted by many states, including Texas. Even if the defendant knew the conduct was wrong, he would not be found guilty if he had been "incapable of conforming his conduct" to the requirements of the law. This standard recognized that as a result of mental illness an individual might know he or she is doing wrong but lack the ability to keep from doing it.

  Then John Hinckley, trying to murder President Ronald Reagan, shot and wounded the president and three other men in 1981. Mr. Hinckley's acquittal by reason of insanity in 1982 shocked the nation. The next year Texas dropped the element of "conforming conduct" and reverted to a strict "knowledge-based" standard almost like the old M'Naghten rule.

  In the case of Andrea Yates, the prosecution focused narrowly on the question of what she knew at the time of the killings. Her call to 911 and her admission to police officers that she expected to be punished by the criminal justice system were pivotal evidence for the prosecutors.

The details of her knowledge were important; her mental illness at the time was not.

 Mrs. Yates has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, not just postpartum depression. Her family apparently never realized the depth of her delusions; her doctors failed to see that she was a danger to others, and one took her off her antipsychotic medication. She told police that she had been a bad mother and told later interviewers that the only way to save her children from the devil was to kill them. Her plea of not guilty by reason of insanity would have been highly persuasive if the standard were her ability to conform her conduct to the law. By the prevailing legal standards, however, how she felt and her ability to control her behavior could not be taken into account.

 One way a prosecutor might describe this standard to a jury is to ask whether the defendant would have committed the crime if a police officer had been present in the room.

Putting the issue that way makes the burden on the defense a heavy one. Mrs. Yates waited until she was alone to drown her children, one by one. When she finished, she called the police. As a matter of law, it appears that she knew she was drowning her children. And that's the standard in Texas: knowledge.

That a person as mentally ill as Andrea Yates could face the death penalty - as she does now - shows how desperately flawed the knowledge-based insanity defense is. If, as is the case here, it is widely agreed that a defendant suffers from a severe mental illness, shouldn't such a disability diminish that person's legal responsibility?  

  Jennifer S. Bard, a lawyer trained in public health, teaches at the Institute for the Medical Humanities of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.