[CrimsonTide4]

Texas Mom Gets Life Sentence in Drowning Case
Fri Mar 15, 3:17 PM ET
By Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texas jury sentenced Andrea Yates to life in prison on Friday for drowning her five children in a crime that shocked the nation and touched off bitter debate about treatment of the mentally ill.


The sentence, reached after a stunningly fast 35 minutes of deliberation, means Yates, 37, must serve at least 40 years behind bars. The only other punishment option under tough Texas laws was death by lethal injection.

Yates, who told police after the June 20, 2001 murders she wanted the state to execute her, nodded to one of her lawyers but otherwise showed little reaction to the verdict when state District Judge Belinda Hill read it to a packed court.

Members of her family, who believed she should be treated for her mental problems and not punished, expressed relief and cried as the verdict was read. Husband Rusty Yates nodded "yes" as his mother sat beside him and cried. Andrea Yates' mother, Jutta Karin Kennedy, bowed her head and silently began to cry.

Yates' life sentence came in notoriously tough Harris County, where prosecutors have sent more defendants to their executions than any other U.S. county and all but two states, Texas and Virginia. Hill is expected to formally sentence Yates shortly, possibly as soon as Friday.

The jury's decision ended a month-long trial in which the former nurse and high school valedictorian confessed to drowning her five children in the bathtub of their Houston home, but said she was trying to save them from the devil.

She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, citing a history of mental illness that included two suicide attempts and four psychiatric hospital stays, the last one a month before the murders.

Mental health experts testified that Yates was schizophrenic and suffering from postpartum depression that began after the birth of her fourth child and flared up again after the fifth.

Her lawyers argued that had she received proper treatment and not been rushed out of hospitals because of health insurance limitations, the crime would not have been committed. Just two weeks before the drownings, her psychiatrist inexplicably took her off anti-psychotic drugs, they said.

NOT A FUTURE DANGER

In giving Yates a life sentence, the eight women and four men of the jury determined Yates was not a future danger to society. Had they decided she was a future danger, they would have had to decide whether there were any "mitigating factors" preventing them from sentencing her to die.

The same jurors surprised courthouse observers on Tuesday when they took just 3 1/2 hours to reject her insanity defense and find her guilty of capital murder after listening to experts say for three weeks that Yates was clearly insane.

The only standard for legal sanity in Texas is whether the defendant knew the crime was right or wrong when they committed it. Yates said she knew the drownings would be viewed badly, but felt they had to be done to save the children from Satan, who was urging her on.

A statute with a broader definition of insanity was thrown out by the state legislature in 1983 in angry reaction to John Hinckley's acquittal for insanity after his 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan (news - web sites).

Texas law also forbade lawyers from telling the jury that if they found Yates not guilty, she would not go free, but would be sent to a state mental hospital until Judge Hill deemed her cured.

Prosecutors argued that Yates was sick, but sane enough for Texas law. They said the killings were an act of revenge against her domineering husband, NASA (news - web sites) engineer Rusty Yates.

The case touched off a national debate on the legal rights of the mentally ill and the adequacy of their care.

The National Organization for Women (news - web sites) supported Yates and said her case highlighted the need for more education about postpartum depression.

The Yates case also stirred fresh criticism of Texas, which conducts far more executions than any other state, and has a reputation for harsh, Old West-style justice.