Insanity or Cop-out?
 

Recently a Houston mother, Andrea Yates killed all FIVE of her children by drowning them. I'm sure many of you have heard about this sad story and are shocked by it; recently it was revealed that her lawyers will enter an insanity plea. We have an ongoing debate in my house as to whether she was coherent at the time and should be held accountable or if she was truly insane.

My mother (bleeding heart) thinks she went crazy and had no control over her actions.

My stepdad and I believe she was aware of her actions (It takes a while to drown 5 children, and she chased one of them down to kill him) and should be held fully accountable for them.

What do you think?

Tamika

She knew WTF (please pardon my french http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/wink.gif )she was doing.That was planned. Why didn't she drown herself and spare the lives of those innocent children?

She thought.......
* she wasn't ready to die
* she wasn't going to get charged for the murder
* she thought it was going to work
* she thought she was going to live her life
but instead she will be in prison
* she thought the public would have mercy
* But she thought WRONG

Everyone KNOWS how to make babies if you decide you don't want anymore responsibilites either use the birth control made available to you or stop having SEX...it's plan and simple

No sane mother could kill all of her five children. An insane one could....

Those who have never dealt with major depression have no idea how they would react if they were dealing with it.

My heart aches for the children, but I cannot believe that she was able to control her actions. Even her husband admits that she was severely depressed.

Depression, left untreated, has caused many major crimes... and until we remove the stigma of mental illness being something to be ashamed of, we will continue to have tragedies like this.



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Bee Jae
Technology Task Force
www.deltasigmatheta.com
www.deltasigmatheta.org

I agree. As a mother, I know firsthand that a mother's love is unlike any other. So, for a mother to kill all FIVE of her children...she has GOT to be INSANE. This is a serious tragedy.


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S.H.A.D.E.
10-Lambda-SP00
Memphis Alumnae Chapter
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

Lady of DSTinction

I agree. As a mother it is un-fathomable that a sane person would intentionally drown all five of her children the way she did.

Nopw old girl who drove her car into the lake to kill her three...who knows.

Apparently this woman suffered from severe post-partum PSYCHOSIS not depression.

10-15% of new moms experience postpartum depression which usually subsides within a few weeks.

This woman suffered THAT type of illness with her second to last child (the 2 year old). She tried to kill herself by taking pills.

They put her on Haldol. She stopped taking it.

Then with the NEW baby (was 6 months old) she had this episode. She said she thought of killing them all months before but didn't for some reason.

Get this...home Sally is preggers YET AGAIN!!!


I am sympathetic. The only problem I have is why have more kids if after the fourth one you tried to kill yourself.

Both post-partum PSYCHOSIS and depression are serious illnesses and need attention immediately. I think that the woman in Texas had no control over her actions at the time. That's just like the woman I read about in the Jet magazine last week. She killed herself a couple of months after her ONLY daughter was born. She was happily married and looking forward to the birth of her child. But after the baby's birth, she started changing. Her husband and her family noticed changes in her and sought help for her. She was in and out of the hospital, and a week after her last hospital stay, she jumped out of the window of a building. It's like she had just come to the end of her rope, and instead of harming her daughter, she took her own life. Sad, I tell ya, just Sad. http://www.greekchat.com/forums/ubb/frown.gif

I do believe that she had post-partum depression issues, I won't deny that. But I also believe that when she was committing the act she was fully aware of the fact that she was KILLING her children. That seems to be something of a contradiction, but if she does indeed have an illness, which I do believe she does, I don't think the illness manifested itself for the first time when she was commiting the crime against her children. Meaning that something in her had to know she was becoming a danger to them.

I feel sorry for her, I do, but I can't seem to forget the fact that she chased one of her children down, and the method she used to kill them is not one that can just happen and be deemed an accident or a moment of insanity. It takes time, and some form of thought to drown 5 children. But I am understanding some of the points brought up, I'm not too stubborn to bend. I guess its just hard for me to comprehend since I'm not a mother.

Tamika

There are so many issues to look at regarding this case. What I can't believe is she was home-schooling these kids. How in the world was she able to do that considering her condition?

And dear old dad - now, HE has me worried.

I don't know what to think but I do know that some precious, innocent babies are gone and THAT hurts my heart.

What we often think of as being insane does not necessarily meet the legal definition of the term. It will have to be shown that she was not aware of the consequences of her acts. Not that she was not in her right mind to want to kill her five children but that somehow she could not comprehend she was killing them. Another legal theory on insanity is that it was an uncontrollable impulse to kill. Neither of these things is a necessary result of severe depression. Whether or not it was a result of legal insanity has yet to be seen.

Personally, I find the difficulty with heinous crimes to be they are so unfathomable to those of us who would not do such a thing, people are quick to say "she must be insane to do that." I think that is a more comforting thought than she is not insane and STILL did it. She may in fact be legally insane in this case but there are many who are not. On one level it seems that every mass murderer/serial killer must be insane to do what they do but we convict them all the same.