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Andrea yate12/25/2023 Prosecutors suggested to the first jury that the episode gave Yates the idea of how to get away with murder. ( Full coverage ) Conviction overturnedīut Yates' conviction was overturned by an appeals court because a prosecution witness, forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, testified about an episode of "Law and Order" in which a woman is acquitted of drowning her children by reason of insanity. Prosecutors did not bring charges for the deaths of Paul and Luke. Rusty Yates, a NASA engineer, told that he remarried earlier this year but says he still speaks with his wife and is very supportive of her defense.Īndrea Yates was found guilty on March 12, 2002, of the capital murder of three of her five children by a jury that deliberated just under four hours. As witnesses for the defense, they were ordered by the judge to leave the courtroom and will not be allowed back until they testify. Yates' ex-husband Russell "Rusty" Yates appeared in court Monday with his mother.Īndrea Yates' own mother was also in court, but sat at the other end of the row and did not speak to her former son-in law. Williford told jurors that all the children showed bruises and signs that they had struggled, even the infant girl. She later told investigators the boy asked, "What's wrong with Mary?" when he saw his baby sister floating face-down in water tainted by urine and feces. She started with Paul, 3, then Luke, 2, John, 5, Mary, 6 months, and ended with Noah, 7. Yates, 41, sat quietly at the defense table staring at her hands as Williford described how she called her children one by one into the bathroom to kill them. Yates knew right from wrong that morning, prosecutors say, and therefore, by Texas law, should not be found legally insane. "It was wrong," Assistant District Attorney Kaylynn Williford said during opening statements. She knew what she was doing when she laid their lifeless bodies side by side in the bed she shared with her husband and called 911. What they found, Parnham said, was not the sign of the beast, but scabbing from where Yates had tried to pick away the numbers she thought were there.ĭefense experts are expected to testify that "knowing that something is illegal does not mean that you know something is wrong," Parham said.īut prosecutors say Yates understood what she was doing when she pinned each child to the bottom of the tub until they were dead. Parnham said that Yates believed she had the sign of the devil, 666, burned on her scalp, and she begged therapists to look at her head. "These children of hers needed to die in order to be saved," he added, "because Andrea Yates was such a bad mother that she was causing these children to deteriorate and be doomed to the fires of eternal damnation." "She talks about a prophecy," Parnham said. When first asked by detectives why she killed her children, Parnham told jurors Yates was unable to "connect the dots" and she had no answer.īut she was put on medication for 24 hours, Parnham said, and she began to tell a doctor - who is expected to testify for the defense - the reasons for her unspeakable actions. Records show Yates had twice attempted suicide, was diagnosed with recurrent postpartum depression, and had been hospitalized several times for psychiatric care. Yates had a history of mental illness, Parnham said. "There was no question she was psychotic, not depressed, but absolutely psychotic," defense attorney George Parnham told jurors Monday during his opening statement. ( Watch opening statements - 1:50)įor a second time to a new jury, they are putting forth a case that Yates is not guilty of murdering her children because she was insane on June 20, 2001, the day she drowned them. Yates' attorneys are now trying to save the former nurse and Texas housewife from a life in prison. The only way to save them, she said, was to kill them. HOUSTON, Texas (CourtTV) - Shortly after Andrea Yates methodically drowned her five children in the bathtub, she told an investigator that she did it because she was such a bad mother she had doomed her young to eternal damnation.
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