The Insane Cases: The Defense Of Andrea Yates

When the police were called to Andrea Yates suburban Hudson Texas home in June 20th 2001 they were not prepared for what they were about to see. The police were shocked to see Andreas five children dead while Andrea acted completely calm and admitted to drowning them one by one in the family bath tub. Andrea had previous mental health issues which she had been hospitalized including suicide attempts. She had been suffering with very sever postpartum depression and post part partum psychosis, two illnesses that would make Andrea very dangerous to herself and those around her, especially her children. Andrea went to trial against the Harris County Texas District Attorney who were convicting her of capital murder and asking for the death penalty,

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. He claimed he recently saw a “Law & Order” episode shortly before the killings, featuring a woman who drowned her children and was acquitted of murder because of

Park Dietz. The fact that this testimony was false came to the courts attention when author of the show later stated on Oprah that such episode didn’t exist. This means the first Jury would have made their decision considering false facts. Therefore, a new trial would only be truly fair. Through out the new, reconsidered trial not only did yates appear more stable but her attorney introduced more witnesses to help show that she was, in fact, a fragile woman who loved her children, but delusionally believed death would save them from sin. This time around Andrea also had a new group of juror to listen. The last group he had consisted of eight women and four men. Its possible that woman, especially those who’d faced similar challenges in day to day life as mothers with small children like Andrea, might have been especially unsympathetic. The second jury was more diverse as it was evenly divided between men and women. Jurors listened to testimonies from investigators, medical experts, and people close to Andrea. Officers who reported to Andreas home after she called 911 testified that Andrea appeared wet and unemotional as she calmly confessed to the police. Andreas best friend said that Andrea was a loving mother and a very sweet friend, but after the birth of her fourth child, she became