- HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texas
jury took less than four hours to reject Andrea Yates' insanity plea on
Tuesday and find her guilty of murder for drowning her five children in
a decision that left the courtroom in stunned silence.
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- "Oh God," gasped husband Rusty Yates, in the
only words spoken as District Judge Belinda Hill read the verdict that
could bring the Texas mother the death penalty in a case that stirred bitter
debate on the legal rights of the mentally ill.
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- Andrea Yates, on anti-psychotic medicine since she was
jailed for the shocking June 20, 2001, crime, was impassive at first, then
choked back a sob as she looked at mother Jutta Karin Kennedy and her brothers.
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- Lawyer George Parnham put his arm around his shaken client,
who confessed to killing her children, but pleaded not guilty by reason
of insanity because of an extensive history of mental illness.
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- Rusty Yates, a NASA engineer who opposed criminal prosecution
of his wife, dropped his head into his hands, while his mother hugged him.
Wordlessly, he got up and nearly ran from the courtroom and out of the
courthouse in downtown Houston.
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- In contrast to the usual hubbub that follows a court
verdict, spectators filed out of the wood-paneled courtroom in silence,
appearing stunned by the jury's decision and the speed at which they reached
it after more than three weeks of testimony.
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- The eight women and four men of the jury, which has been
sequestered throughout the trial, took just 3 hours and 40 minutes to decide
Yates' guilt.
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- SAVING THEM FROM DEVIL
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- The former nurse and high school valedictorian drowned
Noah, 7, John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2, and Mary, six months, one by one in
the bathtub of their Houston home in the belief that she was saving them
from the devil.
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- Parnham and fellow defense lawyer Wendell Odom argued
Yates was a loving mother who spiraled into a severe, psychotic form of
postpartum depression that started after her fourth pregnancy and worsened
after her last.
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- She was mentally ill for at least two years before the
murders, twice attempting suicide and four times being treated in a mental
hospital, experts testified.
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- Prosecutors Joe Owmby and Kaylynn Williford sought a
guilty verdict, arguing Yates was sick, but sane enough to know the crime
was wrong, the only standard for legal sanity in Texas.
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- On Thursday, the jury will hear testimony in the sentencing
phase of the trial. Under Texas law, their only options are life in prison
with no chance for parole for 40 years, or death by lethal injection.
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- Harris County, where Houston is the county seat, sends
more people to death row than any other county in the nation. Texas leads
the United States in executions.
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- With its verdict, the jury rejected the defense's plea
that their verdict serve as a "springboard" for improved women's
mental health care. The defense has framed the case as a women's mental
health issue, and garnered support from the National Organization of Women,
a women's rights group.
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- NO JUSTICE
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- "This woman was schizophrenic. This woman was insane.
Maybe some good will come out of this case. It's too late to help Andrea,
but maybe other women will be helped," said Deborah Bell, president
of the Houston chapter of NOW.
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- "What happened today was not justice," she
said.
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- The American Civil Liberties Union agreed, calling the
verdict "an unbelievable and unspeakable tragedy."
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- "If the prosecutor decides to go forward and seek
the death penalty for Yates, this would be yet another example of the kind
of over-reaching that we have seen all too often in Harris County and in
Texas," the ACLU said in a statement.
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- Owmby and Williford were not available for comment after
the verdict, but in closing arguments on Monday, they blasted away at the
notion that Yates was a loving mother gone insane.
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- Instead, they said the murders were well-planned acts
of revenge against what some witnesses said was her domineering husband.
"Andrea Yates knew right from wrong and she made the choice on June
20 to kill her children, deliberately and with deception," Williford
said.
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- "Andrea Yates took back control of her life that
day."
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- She described the death of Noah, the last to die, recounting
how he tried to escape death by telling Yates he was sorry. "She got
him, and the loving act of that mother was to leave his body floating in
the tub," Williford said.
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- Odom argued Yates "killed those children out of
love, because a loving mother would do anything to save (them from) what
she perceives is a danger to her children."
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- TEXAS LAW UNDER FIRE
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- "If Andrea Yates is not insane, then we really just
don't have an insanity defense (in the law), do we?" Odom said.
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- Parnham called the jury's verdict "devastating"
and "extremely disappointing."
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- He slammed the Texas insanity law as a relic that shows
mental illness is still poorly understood.
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- "The state of Texas has to do something to address
mental illness and the law. We're still back in the days of the Salem witch
trials. ... We're in the dark ages," Parnham said.
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- Texas law once included a provision that a person could
be found insane if they could not stop themselves from committing a crime
because of mental illness, but that was removed after John Hinckley won
acquittal for insanity after trying to kill President Ronald Reagan in
1981.
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- Had Yates been acquitted, she would have been sent to
a state mental institution until Judge Hill deemed her cured, but the jury
could not be told that under Texas law.
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