See you in hell, Andrea.
Texas Mother Found Guilty of Capital Murder
Tue Mar 12, 6:01 PM ET
HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texas jury on Tuesday found Andrea Yates guilty of capital murder in the drowning deaths of her five young children last summer.
The verdict means that Yates, 37, now faces a new phase of the trial in which jurors will decide whether she will be sentenced to die by lethal injection or sent to prison for life. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
The former nurse confessed to drowning the children, who ranged in age from 6 months to 7 years, in the bathtub of their Houston home on June 20, 2001, but said she did it to protect them from Satan. She had been mentally ill for at least two years before the murders, twice attempting suicide and four times being treated in a mental hospital, experts testified.
Prosecutors sought a guilty verdict on the grounds she was sick, but sane enough to know the crime was wrong, the standard for legal sanity in Texas. She was indicted in only three of the children's deaths, which means the state could try her on additional charges.
Texas leads the nation in executions and Houston in turn leads the state.
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