was it postpartum depression or murder?
HOUSTON -- A state appeals court has overturned the capital murder convictions against Andrea Yates and ordered a new trial in the drownings of her children, who ranged in age from 6 months to 7 years.
The Houston mother was serving a life sentence for the 2001 drownings of three of her five children. All five children were drowned in a bathtub at the family's home.
The Texas First Court of Appeals issued its ruling in Houston today in a 12-page opinion signed by court Justice Sam Nuchia.
A three-judge panel found that the Harris County trial jury might have been prejudiced against Yates by the false testimony of a prosecution expert.
Park Dietz testified he consulted on an episode of the NBC-TV show "Law and Order" about a woman with postpartum depression acquitted by reason of insanity in the drowning of her children. It was later revealed that no such program existed.
"That is the one thing in this case that allowed the state to say this wasn't psychosis, it wasn't mental illness -- it was a conscious plan. Without the testimony of Dr. Dietz, the state would not have been able to make their case," Yates' appeal attorney Troy McKinney said. "This case boiled down to a battle of the experts and the powerful testimony of Dr. Dietz ultimately prevailed."
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Alan Curry said Dietz's testimony about the television show came during cross-examination by Yates' defense attorney. There were three weeks of testimony that dealt with Yates' plans to kill her children, ranging in age from six months to 7 years, and her knowledge that doing so was wrong, he said.
"Dr. Dietz did not suggest by that testimony or elsewhere that (Yates) used that episode in order to assist her in planning, premeditating or calculating the killing of her children," Curry wrote. "There was a great deal of other evidence which revealed that (Yates) planned and/or premeditated her killing of her children."
Curry cited a tape-recorded police interview with Yates in which she said she had thought about killing her children for two years and in the weeks leading up to the drownings had filled the bathtub with water but "didn't do it that time."
Her appeal cited 19 errors from her 2002 trial.
Jurors in 2002 sentenced Yates to life in prison in the 2001 deaths of three of her children. She was not tried in the deaths of the other two.
Among the other errors cited by Yates' attorneys are the court's decision to show jurors the clothing the children were wearing when they died; the requirement that jurors be "death qualified" because the case involved capital murder charges, which can carry the death penalty; and the judge not informing jurors of the consequences of an innocent by reason of insanity verdict.
The appeal court's decision is expected in three to six months.
During her trial, psychiatrists testified Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression, but defense and prosecution witnesses disagreed over the severity of her illness and whether it prevented her from knowing that drowning her children was wrong -- the two requirements to be declared legally insane in Texas. Jurors determined Yates knew it was wrong to kill her children and convicted her.
Yates, who will be eligible for parole in 2041, remains jailed at the Skyview Unit in Rusk, where she works in an outdoor flower garden and has janitorial duties.
Earlier this year, her husband, Russell, filed for divorce. He attended Tuesday's appeal and wasn't wearing a wedding ring
I think insane people can consciously plan things as well, even if she did consciously plan it, she's still got mental problems.
I think it's sad, and I do think she deserves the consequences of murder, but I think it should be served in a place that will treat her for her mental problems.
Murder.
Yes, it was murder. The re-trial isn't to see if she's innocent, she's already confessed, it's already clear she IS guilty, she DID do it. The re-trial is to see if she planned and calculated it out, in which she'd return to regular jail, or if her psychosis got in the way, in which she'd spend the rest of her years in a secured mental institution.
I agree. murder.
no doubt shes got some mental problems, but she has admitted that she did it "to get away". she knew what she was doing.
- She suffered from BAD post partum psychosis, as well as a few other mental problems. It's been stated even by her former psychiatrist that she repeatedly asked for help for it, but it was written off as just 'baby blues'. She asked for help, and asked for help, because she KNEW she was going to snap, and he didn't even prescribe her meds let alone try to help her, nor did her husband.
- For those of you who've experienced Post partum depression, stress and ultimate frustration with just ONE child, try, try to imagine having PPD so bad it's diagnosed as psychosis, not depression, and try to imagine the stress and ultimate frustration of 5 CHILDREN and no help, knowing that you're going insane and you need the help and no one is giving it to you.
I'm not trying to excuse her actions, those children are dead and she's the one who did it. HOWEVER, mental issues, especially ones to the extreme severity that she was experiencing, can really make a person snap. It's so easy just to write it off as she's an evil monster, but honestly, she's still a victim in the situation as well. They all are. It's a sad fucked up situation, but that doesn't mean that jail is a better place for her than a mental institution that will help her, not only overcome her psychosis, but overcome the grief and knowledge she now has of what she's done.
I've done a lot of looking into the Andrea Yates story for the past few years, because I found it intriguing how it was developing and how certain things contributed to her breakdown. If you guys are interested in educating yourselves a little about the story, I highly suggest this article:
A Biblical Feminist Looks at the Andrea Yates Tragedy
It doesn't contain all of the story, just the bits and pieces that talk about how religion and religious pressures contributed to the tragedy and the fall of Andrea Yates, but it opens the eyes a little to say the least.
i've been torn on this ever since i first read about it. yes i think it's murder but at the same time she was suffering from post partum pshychosis. i think that when your raising five children without much support and your mental health is very shaky to begin (you start "forgeting" right from wrong think illogical thoughts) with and the kids driving her nuts she got to the point where she'd do anything to make it stop. i don't know that this what happened to her, just my interpration. yes what she did was horrible but alot of why she did it was her mental health, i think life long prison will make this worse she should be treated for her mental illness as well.
(a little off topic here)
another example of how the court systems are sexist and blame mothers for everything. my dad has a client whose father killed his teenaged brother, the father got off with involuntary manslaughter and this was hardly mention in the news if at all. wft is that. these cases where mom's killed there children were on the news all over the country, heck i can still remember when susan smith (i think was her name, she pushed her car into a lake with her kids in it) was on the cover of time magazine. and this dad is free at the moment. so wrong.
The responces to this post really bother me.
I think that this post really bothers me in general, but maybe it's just because I'm tired and in a horribly bad mood.
But, really, who are any of us to judge someone we don't know, have never knowen, and the only thing that we know about is from what we have read in newspapers.
Not ok.
Yes, she did murder her children (in that she killed them), but who are any of you to say that it was or was not because of PPD? Were you there? Do you know what was going on in her head? Do you know for SURE if she had mental health disorders?
I dont think its just because your tired or in a bad mood. I agree with what your saying, and have been thinking the same things. We dont know her, we have no idea about her or her life or anything.
I think if she's in jail, her husband needs to be in jail. He basically held her hostage with a bible. After this incident first broke in the news, he went on ALL of the morning news shows, crying and sobbing. Yet, no one mention how abusive he was. Cry me a river..
She was sick and taken advantage of. I'm not excusing her actions, but I don't think she was in her right mind. He was sane. He controlled her with an iron fist and there is no way he couldn't know the toll it was taking on her. He is a bigger threat to society than she ever will be.
sorry i made all those assumptions about her and ppd. i obviously have NO IDEA. i just wanted to remind the other posters thats theres way more to it than simply murder.
Prior to the birth of her last child, she was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and other mental issues, and the doctor advised her not to have any more kids because of her precarious mental health. (as far as I remember)
And to the rest of the posts...
She did murder her children, and she admitted to it, so the question of postpartum depression vs. murder isn't really valid. The question is, how heavily did her postpartum depression/postpartum psychosis (a very severe mental condition in which the person actually hallucinates, hears voices, etc) weigh in the murders?
This article came out in 2001, right after all this happened. Read it. It makes a lot of sense.
http://fact.on.ca/news/news0107/nw010702.htm
She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and post partum psychosis, as well as a couple others that I'm forgetting right now, well before she killed her children. She asked for help with it after each child and it was written off as the 'baby blues'. She knew she wasn't okay, and she asked for help, and her psychiatrist didn't help her. I think it's fair to make the assumption that her mental disorders contributed to her actions, when it was made well aware before she even did it that she wasn't alright.
Her husband admitted that she'd asked to stop having children, that she couldn't have any more, but was pressured by her husband and her church to 'accept whatever children god sends her'.
Hate to say it but...if we excuse Andrea Yates and the murdering of her five children, we'd have to excuse most serial killers because of their traumatic pasts and mental illnesses. Mental illness and trauma don't make us look at serial killers any differently. Or pedophiles.
None of it is ok or excuseable. Unfortunate, but not ok.
I believe that excuseing her in anyway is wrong.
She had some serious mental problems, but as i said earlier, she admits to killing her children, admits to knowing what she was doing. Those are pretty good indicators that she wasnt too far gone. From what i understand, the only way a person can get off on insanity is if they were so severly mentally strewn that they did not know what they were doing.
I just really understand, how people can think that she should get a break when she admits that she KNEW what she was doing.
You also realize that she was STILL suffering from everything throughout the trial, questioning and confession, right? As well as she was given sedatives, which might make anyone act a little differently. After a while in jail, her mother visited her, and Andrea asked who was taking care of the kids and seemed catatonic. She wasn't in her right mind during any of it, so I'd hardly think anything she said could be used to sentence her to death.
But hey, as long as she said what she did was wrong, we shouldn't have any compassion for the other factors that may have come into play during the entire thing.
I'm not saying it's excusable, I'm just saying that looking at why it happened can be helpful for understanding her situation, instead of just saying "OMG she is evil and a horrible mom," as I have heard most people I know write off the whole thing.
I also think this case is a good example of how we need to be more aware of PPD and its effects. In general, PPD is written off as the "baby blues" way too often. And our culture does not support mothers seeking help.
I do think Andrea Yates was afforded more sympathy, as a middle-aged, religious, conservative, white, married mom, than she would have been if her background was different.
Thank you. I don't like when people just condemn her. Yes, her actions were wrong, terrible and extremely saddening, but there's ALWAYS something behind it. I'm not excusing her actions, I'm being empathetic in saying she had it rough, and there was a lot of things and people that contributed to her doing this. I've read up, a LOT on this woman. She asked for help with PPP after each child, she didn't WANT to have any more children, but was pressured by her church and her husband. She didn't WANT to stay at home, but was told she'd be a 'bad mother' if she didn't. Her husband was controlling, and only allowed one friend to ever visit her, she was cooped up in the house suffering from mental illnesses and being pounded by pressure and stress on every side of her with 5 children under 7 and NO help, either help with housework, help with the children, help with her own mental well being, even though she asked for it and knew what it was leading up to.
Her husband knew of her intentions. In the phone call where she told him she'd killed her kids, all she said was "I've done it." and he automatically knew, and said "which one?". He KNEW and didn't get her help. He knew after each child it was destroying her emotionally and mentally, and she was told she MUST accept whatever children god sends her, or else she was a bad mother, in her religion it's a sin to use any method of contraceptive. She had schizophrenia, and trust me, it's something I suffer from (not to that severity) and it can SEVERELY cloud your judgement and your actions, post partum PSYCHOSIS, not only depression, but psychosis. I'm not excusing it, what she did was STILL wrong, but I think the retrial is GREAT. It's not going to let her get away with murder, the question of her innocence isn't even up for debate, she's guilty - the retrial is MERELY to decide whether or not jail is the best place for her, or if she'd be better off serving the rest of her life sentence in a secured mental institute instead.
It's not 'letting her get away' with it, it's merely deciding what is best for her and her treatment, and in her case, I think spending her life sentence in a mental institute where they can TRULY help, is far better then a jail cell or death row.
So, do you think that putting someone in jail, who has committed a serious crime, who is metally ill is ok?
Just because the courts dont' say that you aren't mentally ill does not mean that you aren't mentally ill.
Let's take a much lesser example:
I hit my kid a while ago. I thought about it ahead of time, I had thought about doing it quite a few times, and then she was screaming one night, after having a really hard day, and I just lost it and smacked her.
I felt horrible. I hated myself for doing it.
But, my mental health wasn't in the best spot, I was in the middle of finals, I was stressed out and didn't know what else to do and it just happend. Yeah, I knew what I was doing.
Are those things an excuse for doing it? No, but they are a reason.
I don't think that punishing someone for mental disabilities is going to sove anythign for the person, or for our society. How about instead, the courts put her somewhere where she can get the help she desparately needs. How about if the goernment focuses on education about PPD, how about if (some) churches focus on the needs of pregnant/parenting women in healthy ways rather than forcing women to stay at home, how about if we all look around OUR communities and find mamas that we see are really struggling and help find them resources?
thats what i was trying to get at. you just worded it better.
lots of people think of doing things they know are wrong they are just usually able to restrain themselves. self control and lack there of have a great deal to do with mental illness, i think.
<i> don't think that punishing someone for mental disabilities is going to sove anythign for the person, or for our society. How about instead, the courts put her somewhere where she can get the help she desparately needs. How about if the goernment focuses on education about PPD, how about if (some) churches focus on the needs of pregnant/parenting women in healthy ways rather than forcing women to stay at home, how about if we all look around OUR communities and find mamas that we see are really struggling and help find them resources?</i>
I think is really important, I think it so wrong that the only cry for help that gets recognized is when it finally results in death/injury to either the person suffering or someone close to her/him. BUT I do think that something needs to be done in this case and in others, killing your children is wrong whatever the cause behind it may be, but that doesn't mean she should be put in some cell to rot. People need to be educated about PPD and other mental illnesses instead of seeing this as a "freak" occurance.
who is debating that andrea yates, serial killers, or pedophiles should get off scot free?
no one, as far as i'm seeing.
describing a sequence of events, looking for reasons that something happened, are in no way JUSTIFYING what happened. saying "she was suffering from mental illness" does not come with "and that makes what she did okay" attached at the end. most serial killers have incredibly traumatic childhoods. does that make them not serial killers? no. but does being a serial killer mean they didn't have traumatic childhoods? no again. did andrea yates suffer from mental illness? by all accounts, yes. no one wants that to be a reason to write her a free pass back into society, but her crimes don't erase her history of mental illness.
imagine the case study that would come out of intensive therapy with andrea yates. what could we learn about religion and women, about the tolls parenting can take on some women, about the effects and intricacies of post partum depression and psychosis?
the right to help dealing with your shit shouldn't be withheld or doled out to people based on how deserving we think they are. everyone who needs it or wants it should have access to good mental health services.
kat raised some excellent points. where is our society if we simply warehouse people in prisons until the end of their sentence? do we want a violent criminal to figure out why he's a violent criminal, and deal with it, or do we want him to get out of prison and go commit more violent acts? it's not even necessarily about compassion or being understanding of mental illness/traumatic pasts/what have you, it can also just be about who do you want inhabiting this planet, the violent criminal who stared at the wall for fifteen years, or the one who had intensive therapy?
no one is excusing her for anything.
She's going back to trial to see if she should be sentanced to Women's Prison or if she should go to a mental health facility prison. One of the witnesses LIED during his testimony, LIED.
So she gets a retrial because she was not given Justice (see: fair trial.)
oops, i didn't know there was a second page!!!
*falls over*
i couldn'tve said it any better myself.
i actually sympathetize with andrea yates, because i know horrible PPD can be. i constantly thought of hurting my kid and it wasn't voluntary. thinking like that made me feel so horrible, mainly because i felt like if i spoke out, i'd be branded as a horrible mama. my only comfort? remembering the part in one of ariel gore's books (i think?) where she talks about feeling like throwing her baby in the fire. only mamas can understand the feeling of total desperation. multiply that with five? yikes.
i think there needs to be more awareness about post partum depression. our society is so uneducated about things like that. there needs to be programs geared towards new mamas and their mental health. we need to be able to recongize the signs and be able to ask for help without the fear of being slapped.
what was she doing it to get away from? have you read anything about her husband, who knew she was suffering postpartum psychosis but still got her pregnant?
i'm not even trying to pick on you for this but it is a general belief that i see. yes, she did it to get away but she her mental state at the time does not suggest a woman who really knew the ramifications of her actions.
also, to jess i think, i don't think the overturning of this verdict means she is going to be walking around all free and clear. i'm pretty sure she'll be in a mental health institution if she gets out.
Imagine how oppressed she was on top of all the psychosis. When she got pregnant with her first, her church encouraged her to quit her job that she was quite successful at and stay at home, and keep having kids. She was still pretty young, it wouldn't have stopped at 5 kids anyways. She was slowly going crazy with no where to help and no out, and constant pressure and belittling from her church and her husband, the church kept telling her if she didn't do xyz she'd be a bad mother and a bad Christian, they kept drilling it into her head that she was a bad mom. What's the first thing she said when she was asked why she did it? "Because I'm a bad mother". If I were in that situation, I can imagine how desperate I'd be to 'get away'
Post partum psycosis should be more widely recognized as a serious illness and she should be sentenced, in my opinion, to a mental health facility for as long as possible to get her as well as possible.
But I find it deplorable to use it as an excuse for murder. A reason, yes, but not an excuse. Mental illness or not, 5 children are dead just the same.
I don't think anyone here was excusing the murders due to the psychosis, but rather being empathetic to the situation, a reason not an excuse, like you said. I don't think she should be released into society, I think she's done what she's done and she should do her time - but in a place that will help her overcome her own demons while she's doing the time.
Andrea Yates gets Retrial
An update on an old thread.
Andrea's conviction was overturned, she was released from the hospital on bail, into a psychiatric hospital, where she'll stay until the new trial commences. Hopefully she'll be able to get sentenced this time to a psychiatric hospital instead of prison, where she can get the help she needs.