Andrea Yates, born Andrea Pia Kennedy, was the wife of Russell Yates and mother to 5 children, Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary. Andrea was a stay-at-home mother to their five children, while Russell held a full-time job as a NASA engineer. Andrea and Russell were devoutly religious, with Andrea being raised Roman Catholic and Russell, the son of a preacher, raised as a Methodist. This is pertinent information, as it is the basis of the hallucinations and subsequent suicidal and homicidal urges Andrea faced leading to the murder of her 5 children. According to an article by The Lancet, “Andrea Yates began to show signs of mental illness shortly after the birth of the couple’s first child, when she had an hallucination that involved a stabbing.” (McLellan, 2006). However, as she had more …show more content…
Andrea was arrested and charged with 5 counts of capital murder, to which she pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. However, after her first trial, she was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison based on a testimony that would eventually be found to be false, leading to another trial, which would then result in her acquittal, by reason of insanity. Based on the fact that Andrea was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison during her first trial, it is obvious how difficult it was for a jury to decide whether Andrea should have been found not guilty by reason of insanity. In fact, during her second trial, “jurors deliberated for 13 hours before finding that Yates did not know her crime was wrong because of her long history of mental illness” (Death Penalty Information Center, 2006). This is due to Texas state’s – where Andrea was tried – laws requiring that a severe mental illness be what prevents someone who is committing a crime from knowing that it is