Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who was convicted five years ago of murdering her children, was found not guilty by reason of insanity in her retrial.
Yates drowned her children, aged 6 months to 7 years, in the bathtub of their home in 2001. Her attorneys have insisted all along that Yates suffered from severe post-partum psychosis at the time of the killings.
The jury had spent 11 hours Monday and Tuesday trying to determine if Yates was legally insane. Wednesday morning, they reviewed the state's definition of insanity and then asked to see a family photo and candid pictures of the five smiling youngsters. After about an hour of deliberations, they said they had reached a verdict.The "insanity defense" is argued in less than one percent of all felony cases nationwide. It is successful about 25 percent of the time.
In Yates' first murder trial, in 2002, the jury deliberated about four hours before finding her guilty. That conviction was overturned on appeal.
2 comments:
did anyone talk about arresting her ex-husband rusty for being a bastard? no- i didn't think so.
If only that was a crime.
After Andrea's conviction in 2001, ol' Rusty moved right out of that coverted bus he had been forcing his family to live in. He relocated to a high-security apartment complex with a stocked fishing pond.
Nice, huh? Drive your wife so crazy that she drowns your children in the bathtub, and then it's time to move up in the world. If he could have managed that before he drove his wife insane, his kids would still be alive.
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