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The Case Of Andrea Yates

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For some, the act of harming or killing a child is unimaginable, however, there are some parents who do. When a parent engages in the killing of their own child it is called filicide. Filicide can be defined as “the murder of one's own daughter or son” (Filicide definition & meaning, 2023). There have been many cases in recent times in which a parent has killed their own child, even as recently as a month ago where a mother killed her three children and unsuccessfully tried to end her own life afterward. However, one of the most well-known cases of filicide would be the case of Andrea Yates. Many that knew Andrea Yates were stunned to learn that she drowned all five of her children in a bathtub located inside her house. Before Andrea Yates …show more content…

Despite Andrea Yates’s defense attorneys pushing for the insanity defense, Andrea Yates was ultimately found guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in forty years. “Andrea's motives may have been delusional, but if she were able to distinguish right from wrong — good from evil — while committing the crime, jurors had little choice but to reject her plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and convict her.” (Roche, 2002). However, in 2006, the Court of Appeals for the 1st District of Texas overturned the ruling and was given a new trial. This occurred due to a fault that was found. “It was discovered that one psychiatrist, Park Dietz, had given testimony that turned out to be untrue. He had claimed that Yates got her idea to drown the children from an episode of Law and Order. It turned out that he had confused the plots of multiple episodes” (Andrea Yates, 2021). It was during this trial that Andrea Yates was found not guilty by the reason of insanity and was sent to a maximum-security state mental facility. The M'Naghten Rule, which states “all defendants are presumed to be sane unless they can prove that–at the time of committing the criminal act–the defendant’s state of mind caused them to (1) not know what they were doing when they committed said act, or (2) that they knew what they were doing, but did not know that it was wrong” (Busby, 2022). This compared with the Irresistible Impulse Test, which states “the defendant will be found not guilty by reason of insanity if they can show that as a result of mental disease or defect, they could not resist the impulse to commit the crime of which they are accused, due to an inability to control their actions”

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In the 2008 controversial court case of Casey Anthony, the innocent verdict incorrectly acquitted her because of false information, location of remains, and hurtful intentions. Casey’s first lie involved her saying she has talked to Caylee. She was already dead. “Casey Anthony told police that she spoke to her daughter Caylee on July 15, 2008, the day Caylee was reported missing. She told

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In June of 2001, a woman from Houston, Texas Andrea Yates drowned all five of her children in

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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

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Although the defences expert testimony agreed that Yates was psychotic, the law in Texas is that to be able to be considered insane you must have not known your actions were wrong which was hard to prove for Andrea since she was very capable of separating right from wrong and since she was very aware of what she had done. When asked about the murders Andrea asked very calm, she had no remorse and genuinely believed what she was going was the right thing to do. Andrea was very heavily influenced by her religion and truly thought that she was saving her children from growing up and becoming sinners to avoid hell. Since Andrea admitted to waiting for her husband to leave for work to kill her children to Dr. Michael Welner, the Prosecutors were easily able to prove this was a thought-out murder which very possibly qualifies this murder as a very possible first degree murder. Testimony from Dr. Dietz also very heavily impact the jury’s decision.

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On the morning of June 20th, 2001, in Houston Texas, the news came out regarding Yates’ actions. That morning, Yates waited for her husband, Russel, to leave for work. Shortly after, Yates filled her bathtub with water, and then drowned each of her young five children. She then put the bodies of

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On June 20th, 2001, Andrea Yates killed her five young children Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary in the bathtub of the family’s home in Houston, Texas. The family was Caucasian, and at the time of the crime, Noah was 7, John was 5, Paul was 3, Luke was 2, Mary was 6 months, and Yates was 36. Yates’s husband Russell “Rusty” Yates was at work at the time of the crime. Yates killed her children as a result of her post-partum psychosis and other mental illnesses that had been developing throughout her life. After she finished the murders, Yates called the police and then called Rusty to tell him to come home.

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Insanity is an illness an individual cannot overcome and will make decisions without thinking. Lacking the further knowledge of a criminal's mental state does not endorse the fate of acquiring the death

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Andrea Yates crime moved the United States in an astonishing way. This crime impacted both the officers and the families all around the United States due to the horrendous Crime Andrea committed. Andre killed her 5 children including her precious baby girl. What most the the American public ask themselves was, what lead her to kill her children and how can we stop it for ever happening to a family again. Even though Andrea Yates was affected by a combination of Social,Biological, and Psychological factors the factor that triggered her insanity was Biological and Psychological.

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but she knew that it was wrong and she was fighting her urge. According to the definition of insanity, Andrea Yates was able to determine

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The Andrea Yates Murder Case Andrea Yates had always lead a splendid life, a bright young woman moving on to do great things in the world. No one expected the class valedictorian, swim team captain, and National Honor Society officer to jump off the deep end shortly after her nursing career took off. Unfortunately, the unexpected did take place, and Andrea’s battle with extreme mental illness took off, snowballing for years to come. One day, she could no longer control it, causing her to commit one of the most shocking crimes in history, involving the deaths of her own children, invoking despair in of all of society. Due to the wide publicization of her story, the devastating Andrea Yates murder case brought a grasp of mental illness’s role

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On October 24th, 1993, Tracy Latimer, age 12, was killed by her father. Robert Latimer, a farmer from Wilkie Saskatchewan decided to take his daughter’s life into his own hands. Tracy was born with severe cerebral palsy, which led to serious mental and physical health problems. This caused Tracy a lot of pain, and no number of painkillers could appease the suffering she felt. Robert could no longer bear to watch his daughter in so much pain, thus making the decision to end her life.

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In the field of criminal law there is a certain type of criminal defense that comes to the court and has a low success rate. These cases concern the mental capacity of the defendant and if they have enough mental capacity, or are sane enough, to be aware of their crime and consequences of crime. The insanity defense is extremely rare because of how difficult it is for the defense to prove to the court and jury that the defendant did not have the mental capacity to understand what they did wrong and the consequences from it. The case of Myers III v. State of Indiana is one example of criminal responsibility and mental capacity. This case has information that can be connected to the textbook with the insanity defense tests, mental competence

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Katherine Jaros Dr. Ann Burgess FORS5317.01 4/19/2023 Understanding Andrea Yates: Mental Health and its Relationship to Violent Crime INTRODUCTION Mental health in criminal offenders is a highly complex and controversial issue that plays a critical role in determining how we understand and evaluate violent crimes. A significant number of offenders who commit violent crimes have some form of mental illness or disorder, which drives interest in studying such cases. Furthermore, during the legal process, there are always two sides that approach mental health in criminals and put it in consideration differently as they argue for opposite outcomes in the courtroom. Defense lawyers seek to emphasize the role that the illness or disorder

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The court dismisses the plea quickly because “the justice system ignores psychosocial complexities and histories in favor of black and white definitions of right and wrong” (Myers). The justice system in this time very rarely accepted pleas of insanity or mental illness. Capote wrote that “after an hour’s conversation with the defendants, the doctor rule[d] out that neither man

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