http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/06/children.drowned/
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(CNN) -- A Texas appeals court in Houston Thursday reversed the capital murder convictions of Andrea Yates, the woman who drowned her five children in a bathtub, citing the false testimony of a prosecution witness.
According to a report from The Associated Press, Yates' lawyers argued last month before a three-judge panel of the First Court of Appeals in Houston that psychiatrist Park Dietz was wrong 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.
After Yates was convicted, attorneys in the case and jurors learned no such episode existed, the AP reported.
Jurors in 2002 sentenced Yates to life in prison in the 2001 deaths of three of her children. She was not tried in the deaths of the other two.
Yates told authorities that Satan told her to kill the children. Despite a documented history of mental illness, a jury rejected her plea of innocent by reason of insanity and convicted her of murder in 2002. She was sentenced to life in prison but will be eligible for parole in 40 years.
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I hope they give her the death penalty when they try her again.
RUgreek
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