Woman Who Drowned Kids Appeals Conviction (Andrea Yates)

[wicket]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041214/ap_on_re_us/andrea_yates_appeal

Andrea Yates' murder convictions for drowning her children should be overturned because the state's expert witness gave false testimony about working on a nonexistent episode of "Law and Order," her attorneys told a state appeals court Tuesday.

Yates was sentenced to life in prison in the 2001 deaths of three of her children after jurors rejected her insanity defense. She was not tried in the deaths of the other two. Psychiatrists testified that Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression.

Her attorneys told a three-judge panel of the appeals court that she deserves a new trial because of 19 errors that were committed in her 2002 trial.

Yates' attorney Troy McKinney focused on expert witness Park Dietz, who McKinney said "told a whopper of a falsehood" when he said he consulted on an episode of the TV show "Law and Order" involving a woman found innocent by reason of insanity for drowning her children.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. I hope she gets it, she deserves a new trial but I wouldn't bank on it

[Warpy]

8. Yeah, she was listening to the devil, so she's SOL

The crazy woman who said Jesus told her to kill the kids was ruled insane and got a trip to a nuthouse instead of to prison.

See? It all depends on which imaginary voice you listen to, and who you think that voice belongs to.

[Fiona]

2. Sounds like a pretty flimsy

reason for overturning. But she should never have been convicted of murder. She was obviously out of her mind, and needed medical attention, not prison.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

10. If the jury afforded this witness greater credibility because of his so

called expertise, it may not be flimsy, but courts almost never overturn sentences in spite of the fact that many expert witnesses ESPECIALLY in the area of mental health are full of crap

[RobinA]

44. Park Dietz

Agree with him or not, Park Dietz is huge in this field, but the jury may have given him greater credibility because he may or may not have worked for a TV show? God help us all. Lemme just drop some acid, sit back, and really appreciate this bizarro world we seem to be destined to live in right now.

[hlthe2b]

11. Agree... and I still think a bright light should have been shone on her

husband's role in all this (not that he participated in the drownings, but his role in her psych issues not being effectively addressed)

[Princess Turandot]

20. I thought they should have indicted him on something..

maybe 'depraved indifference', because I don't see how he could have lived in the same house with the woman and not realized that she was sick. He just saw her as a baby-maker as far as I can tell. He didn't even look that overcome about the death of his kids.

[FuzzySlippers]

21. Unfortunately, being a complete and total fuckwit

isn't an indictable offense.

[wicket]

27. Freerepublic would have to shut down if it was!

:evilgrin:

[LiberalFighter]

46. It wasn't that he should had realized her condition...

He was responsible for and molded her into that condition.

A case of two people not meant for each other in marriage.

[stanwyck]

48. second that

why would a caring father leave his children in the care of a certifiably insane person? She had already been institutionalized and given heavy psychotropic prescriptions. His actions were negligent; both as a father and as a husband.

[Sannum]

3. She should have had treatment before this tragedy.

Not the "pray and it will go away". I feel sorry for this woman. I have heard that when she is medicated, she is so remorseful that she has to be on suicide watch, and when she is non-medicated, she is incoherent. She needs to be in a locked hospital for the rest of her life getting the right kind of treatment instead of prison where her special needs are essentially ignored, just as they were when she kept on getting pregnant.

[Gin]

4. Her sentence was a travesty...the jury didn't understand mental

illness. I hope she gets a new trial and treatment.

Her husband played a part in this whole sad mess. I saw him on the day they found the kids...giving an interview..on the front lawn...with an odd smile on his face. Considering the magnitude of what just happened...I expected him to be overwhelmed with dispair...that's not what he displayed. (IMHO)

[Sannum]

6. He is already in a church "singles" group.

Looking for another woman to breed, I guess. He is going to divorce Andrea, but he doesn't want to file because he thinks he will go to hell if he does. He is leaving it to her to do. I read a long article about this a few months back. The really sad part, is this could have been prevented and she could have had treatment! I feel so sorry for Andrea. She was failed by the doctors and the legal system. I hope her appeal works out for the best.

[wicket]

14. He filed for divorce a few months ago:

http://www.nbc56.com/artman/publish/article_314.shtml

[Southpaw Bookworm]

24. According to a DU post today

Who lives in the area, Rusty had a girlfriend not long after the trial.

[Piperay]

7. and I'll bet her husband has

to beat off hordes of "good Christain" women who would just love to be his next wife and heal his pain. :puke:

[SemperEadem]

29. yeah, I was thinking the same thing

there will be no shortage of women who believe that they can be the kind of woman he needed rushing to be his wife--and bask in the 'notoriety' of his infamy.

[jbane]

18. I've allways thought that husband...

looked a little too relaxed for a man who had lost his children.

[eternalburn]

5. As long as women's medicine takes a backseat ......

...in research priorities this kind of tragedy is going to happen.

Perhaps if post partum depression and psychosis is studied instead of punished we could find a way to help before things go this far.

[pansypoo53219]

9. park dietz is a shithead

ever since listening to his testemony during the jeffrey dahmer trial(great Milw radio!) his idiot name keeps up popping up in the worst places. he also told Janet reno that sending the ATF into a milinial cult's compound would be fine. right. and then you have Waco.
i think the bezst reason for a new trial is park dietz gave testimony, because he is an IDIOT.

[msgadget]

12. It doesn't say whether or not she is actively participating in this appeal

or if her lawyers are independently pursuing all avenues. I have empathy for her mental illness but I can't imagine what there is outside of jail for Mrs. Yates. Won't the absence of her children weight more heavily on her if she leaves her present residence and re-enters 'normal' life? One wonders if that would be an even greater punishment.

[imenja]

13. probably won't work

I think her sentence should be commuted downward, but I tend to think this appeal won't be successful. Remember the expert in the Martha Stewart case who perjured herself? The court ruled that wasn't sufficient grounds to overturn the verdict.

[Bluzmann57]

15. This woman drowned her own children!

I don't care what kind of fucking voices she heard, or what her husband told her, she should know right from wrong. She needs to be in prison for life. I'm tired of this bleeding heart shit always sympathizing with a woman because she's a woman. Millions of women across the world have had children and consider them to be the greatest things that ever happened. Why should this person get special treatment because she's a woman? If a man did this, he'd rightfully be reviled. Andrea Harris should be reviled too.

[msgadget]

16. No sane woman would have, she had an untreated mental condition.

I remain horrified by her crime but there was no history of her hating or wanting to be rid of them. She cracked, that's all there is to it.

[EFerrari]

49. Not true: She had a MIStreated mental illness.

Two days before this horror, the Yates were in a shrink's office begging for help. They were not helped; she was sent home!

Everyone on her "treatment team" but especially her doctor should be in the cell next to her.

[FuzzySlippers]

17. No man has ever had a post-partum depression

with psychotic features.

[Princess Turandot]

19. I don't think anyone is saying she should be sent home..

she should have been sent to a psychiatric facility for life. She had no 'sane' reason to kill them: this wasn't a situation where a guy gets fired from his job and comes back and in a rage kills 5 co-workers. She wasn't a female version of Ted Bundy. The treatment of the mentally ill who commit crimes is incredibly screwed up, and I think that is a large part of what people are responding to, not just spewing 'bleeding heart shit' because she is a woman.

Do you think the guy who shot Reagan was more crazy than this woman, because he thought Jodie Foster was sending him messages, rather than God? He was sent to a mental facility, not to prison. There was a horrible situation here in NY several years ago where a diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic pushed a young woman in front of an incoming subway train. He had been released from short term psychiatric care with a prescription and no follow-up care plan. He eventually stopped his meds, because heavy duty anti-psychotics have a lot of unpleasant physical side effects, and patients often need monitoring to keep them on them. It later turned out that he had been in and out of so many state programs and it was clear that they knew he was dangerous if unmedicated. But NYS closed most of its longterm psych facilities several years ago, so they just released him to the streets. The system killed that woman as much as this crazy guy did, who was convicted of homicide and sent to prison.

[Lizzie Borden]

54. The guy who shot Reagan...

his family has lots of money. I'm sure his folks could afford a much better lawyer for him.

[pop goes the weasel]

22. it's not because she's a woman

it's because she has schizophrenia, and despite her diagnosis, was not receiving the care she needed because the supposedly sane people in her life, especially her husband, didn't step up and do their part in getting her treated. I fully blame the people who knew she was seriously mentally ill yet insisted that, because she is a woman, she be left home alone with the children. Yeah, like that was a smart move. The person suffering the delusions can't distinguish reality from their delusions, so the responsibility falls on the more mentally healthy people around them to act wisely.

And I'd feel the same way if I were to learn of some man who was forced into a role that was destroying what was left of his sanity and then turns around and kills innocent people, say, after he returned from a shit-hole war. Think there might be any of them around?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. Yes, I am really appalled at some of the posters on this thread

who think that all mentally ill people who commit crimes are "faking it" or that Andrea Yales "got off easy" "just because she's a woman."

Compare her with Susan Smith, who drowned her two sons because she thought they'd get in the way of her love life.

Some people really are delusional, some people really crack up and do horrible things. Others are cold-hearted killers.

I agree that Andrea Yates' husband needed to be convicted of something. "Depraved indifference" would be a good start. I wonder what the statue of limitations is on that.

[LeftyMom]

28. Please don't think I'm excusing her or her family

(as a mother myself I never would) but she was getting help with them. The MIL was coming over in the mornings and keeping an eye on the kids while the husband was gone. The MIL ran late that day, the husband knew she shouldn't be with the kids alone but chose to trust her with them until his mom got there. The extended family was trying to help and it seems like the husband just made a grave miscalculation in allowing her to be alone with the kids.

At least that was the story I heard at a web community I used to belong to where she was also a member (although only a few people knew her, she mostly stuck to the swap area to get girl diapers for the youngest and never asked the community for help.)

[knitter4democracy]

30. I also heard that she was also taking care of

her father (or FIL) with dementia in addition to the kids, homeschooling and all. She didn't have enough help. Period. How could her MIL help that much with that big of a problem? I feel so bad for her and just wish the support had been there. If she really couldn't be alone with the kids, why was she with them at all and not committed for help?

[LeftyMom]

31. I don't know about the FIL thing

but the HSing may not have been too overwhelming. Since fundie families tend to be large curriculum marketed to them (BJU, Abeka, Rod and Staff, etc) tend to be textbook based and largely self-instructional. It's also not unusual in large HSing families for the older children to have some responsibility to read to or otherwise help with the young ones. People blame the husband for her being home with the kids, for her HSing, for the number of kids (which was likely her decision too, I'm pretty sure they were a QF family) but from her fundie viewpoint those were likely central parts of her life and taking them away entirely proably would have made her feel even more depressed.

I don't doubt that she had too little help, but my point was that the family was trying to help her. Probably not enough, but they were making an effort.

[msgadget]

33. LeftyMom, I'm glad there's someone here who can defend her

family. Her actions affected not only her but everyone who came in contact with her. I won't bash her religion but I'm sure other families might have handled it differently.

I found text-based HS curriculums to be extremely rigid and stressful, especially since some are sequenced according to holidays and seasons, meaning you can't just opt out for awhile to get yourself together without being 'behind'. With older children who can be set to task alone I'm sure they're a blessing (no pun intended), but younger children require Mom to sit side by side with them through every assignment. It can be tedious under the best of circumstances getting a child to read, for instance, or through math facts. I don't know how she lasted as long as she did.

[Bridget Burke]

42. She'd helped care for her father.

Who died of Altzheimer's. In fact, she'd tried to commit suicide by taking some of his medicine--before her last pregnancy.

And "fundy" is not exactly the right word. She was raised Catholic & her husband was Protestant but they were not churchgoers; he had his own personal religous ideas. Churches can offer social support, but there was none for Andrea.

Her family did what they could--but on that last day her husband didn't want to leave work early. However, he can start a brand new family after the divorce.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

55. In my extended family, there's someone with "their own religious ideas"

They say they're Orthodox Christians, but I've known a lot of Orthodox Christians, and none of them make their grade school age daughters wear headscarves (even in the strictest varieties of Orthodoxy, only married women cover their heads), and none of them talk like fundamentalists or use fundamentalist curricula to home-school their kids.

They are out of their frigging minds.

Example: They were staying at my mother and stepfather's place, and everyone was watching reruns of "Murder She Wrote." About halfway through the program, the wife started ranting about how the characters were breaking all of the Ten Commandments and how the show was evil. :wtf:

[Djinn]

23. Nothing to do with her being a woman

it's to do with her being schizophrenic, yes millions of women across the world love their children, so did Andrea Yates, unfortunately she also had a serious undiagnosed and untreated mental illness.

I pray you never have to experience the pain of schizophrenia nor have to watch what it can do to people you love but if you do you may learn a thing or two - particularly about the ignorance of most of the population.

[Andromeda]

38. You don't understand mental illness.

Andrea Yates is schizophrenic and that is a physical mental disorder.

Her brain chemicals are not firing on all cylinders and at the time she killed her children she thought she was doing the "right" thing.

Nobody was sympathizing with her "because she's a woman" but because she's an extremely ill woman who had no control over what she did because at the time she was having a psychotic episode.

We have a backward legal system that doesn't address the issues of post-partum depression in women and psychosis/schizophrenia in both men and women in many states and the laws need to be changed.

In that respect, the laws we have now are for the most part equal opportunity injustice for all.

[Darth_Kitten]

41. Cripes, if this isn't mental illness I don't know what is.......

She was obviously SICK and didn't get help. Let's punish sick women, because women who've had children should be saintly angels who never get sick? Tell me, how can people literally out of their minds be held accountable for NOT making the right decisions?

Men don't get postpartum depression/psychosis. Hell, hardly any of them raise a finger to change diapers/feed the baby a bottle. When they go through the SAME emotional/mental/physical upheaval that woman do, then I'll light a candle for all those poor hard done by paragons of fatherhood out there. :( :eyes:

[Bono71]

50. Actually, I agree with you. She did not get the death penalty...

she was sent away for life for KILLING HER KIDS...

Good grief...

[stanwyck]

51. you don't believe

a person can be mentally ill? Insane? Only physically ill? Don't you understand...she was incapable of being a mother. She's insane. Biologically she could have children. Emotionally, she could barely function.
It's not special treatment for being female. It's understanding that brains, like other organs, don't always work.
Her condition was known. And her husband left his children in her care.
Why the special treatment for him? Because he's a man? He acted with gross negligence concerning his children's care.
Reviled? Your quality of mercy is a bit strained.

[Erika]

26. Yates was mentally ill. She is not a criminal.

America is in the dark ages concerning mental illness.

[Dem2theMax]

32. "America is in the dark ages concerning mental illness."

Amen to that statement.

[Bono71]

52. She murdered her kids. She is most definitely a criminal.

[Cronus Protagonist]

34. Compare this murderer with Peterson who was convicted with NO evidence

And got the death sentence. Something's wrong with the court system here. Not that I have any sympathy for Peterson, but the disparity is stunning.

[msgadget]

35. Pardon?

Scott Peterson is stunningly sane. Besides which, there's absolutely no comparison between the two crimes. I think Scott's got a thread of his own already.

[Cronus Protagonist]

37. I think one could make many comparisons

But why bother?

[msgadget]

39. Why not?

I'm not argumentative and curious about the similarities I'm not seeing. Do you think juries and public sympathies are biased toward Christian females and against unfaithful men?

I get that. But, the crimes bear no relation to one another. In one case a woman reported missing by her husband is found dead. In the other a mother methodically drowns each of her children. The husband had to prove he had no motive and couldn't or wouldn't have harmed his wife. The mother's lawyers' job was to prove she was insane and therefore not responsible. He lied publicly and was unfaithful. Her mental illness was documented and untreated.

Now, if you'd compared his verdict to that of Susan Johnson(?), the mother who drowned her boys because her boyfriend didn't like kids, I'd probably agree with you.

[Bridget Burke]

43. Please--bother.

Scott Peterson has no mental problems. But it does look like he killed his wife. I'm against the death penalty & would prefer he be sent to prison for life.

Andrea Yates was--and is--insane. Whenever she becomes more "sane" she's put on suicide watch.

[Bono71]

53. No evidence? There was plenty of evidence in the Peterson case.

[Andromeda]

36. Andrea's case is a good example

of the effect of religious fundamentalism on families with mental health issues. She was home-schooling her kids and after child number three or four the psychiatrist told her husband she shouldn't have any more babies but being the good Christian that he was he made sure she got pregnant again and again.

Isn't that what God put women on the earth for? No birth control, no self-control -- no nothing. Be fruitful and multiply even if you're as crazy as a loon.

Her husband made sure she popped out a baby a year knowing it was risky to her health and potentially dangerous to her children.

Andrea Yates should be in a mental institution where she can get the proper treatment, not sitting in an 8 x 10 prison cell.

[wicket]

40. kick

:kick:

[ckramer]

45. She doesn't deserve to live...

given the crime she had committed...there shouldn't be an excuse.

[pop goes the weasel]

47. I bet you get mad at tornadoes, too

Believe it or not, not every bad thing that happens is someone's fault. Not even when people, and not bad weather, are the actors.

Imagine that a car suddenly veers into on-coming traffic and takes out a sedan carrying a family of 5. The entire family is killed, but the driver of the car somehow manages to survive. What a horrible person, to drive so recklessly, right? Lock him up and throw away the key!

But what if the reason the person veered into oncoming traffic is that he had a stroke? Yeah, he had been having headaches, and had even seen the doctor, but the doctor gave him some migraine pills and brushed him off. Turns out to have been little strokes, not migraines. Now who are you mad at? Do you think that the person who had the stroke planned it? I bet not. You probably understand that sometimes things, horrible things, happen to a person that are beyond the individual's control. Those sorts of horrible things include psychotic breaks.