Please read Chapter 19 in the Minds on Trial book (Andrea Yates). Briefly summarize the chapter and your opinion of it. Then describe what aspects of psychology are relevant to this case. Finally, find three additional sources (links) on the internet that discuss the specific case, or a specific psychological issue relevant to the case. Discuss each of those links. Provide your links at the bottom of your comment.
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Andrea Yates is a woman who murdered her five children by drowning them in a bath tub. After killing her children she placed them on the bed with sheets covering them, but she left her oldest son in the bath tub because she couldn’t lift him out of it. Also her oldest son put up a struggle with his mother because he was frightened and new she was trying to kill him. After the death of her children she called the police and then her husband who came home to his children dead and the cops everywhere.
Once arrested for the murders of her children her attorney decided to plea insanity, while the prosecutor went for the death penalty. She admitted to having visions of a knife and stabbing someone. The decided that she suffered from postpartum mental disorder. Symptoms of postpartum mental disorders are fluctuations in moods, mood lability, and preoccupation with infant well-being, intensity of which may range from over concern to frank delusions.
Her husband Russell was a very controlling husband who decided what they did and when. It doesn’t really sound like she had much say in anything that the family did. They moved around a lot when he wanted to, he sold their house, and they lived in a mobile home. This would lead to Andrea becoming extremely depressed and lonely. When she did reach out for help she was told to read some passages in the Bible, which told her that she should love her husband and children and subject herself to her husband. She began to be entranced by Woroniecki’s preaching, which would lead to the concern of her both her husband and her family.
When she was caring for her father, who had Alzheimer, she tried to overdose on his medication, which would put her in the hospital where they said she had severe depression. Her nurse who cared for her said that she was severely mentally ill and wouldn’t be able to survive on her own. She was then put in the hospital for a second time when she put a knife to her own throat. She was severely depressed and also had some psychotic problems. The doctors thought she was schizophrenic because she was hearing voices and she thought that she might hurt someone.
Andrea was examined by two different psychologists to see if she was competent enough to stand trial. The jury ended up saying that she was competent to stand trial. Andrea Yates also believed that if she did get the death penalty that she could then kill Satan. The defense and prosecution both agreed that she was mentally ill, but they had to see if she had the understanding that drowning her children was wrong. Each side would use expert testimony to try to explain if she did or didn’t understand that killing her children was wrong. They said that in the eyes of the law she knew it was wrong, but morally she thought it was right because she wanted to save them from Satan.
Andrea Yates was found guilty of capital murder and was sentenced to life in prison. She would have gotten the death penalty if certain testimonies weren’t found to be false or inaccurate. There has been a lot of controversial evidence with this case and it keeps being brought back up due to the false information used in the trail. There were a lot of appeals asked for.
Psychology played a part in this case because it was based on her ability to comprehend what happened. This had to deal with cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology is also seen when the jury was told about the Law and Order television show because that information was planted in the juries head, and it played a very big part in their ruling. Persuasion is also a way of using psychology. All of the mental problems that she was diagnosed with also were part of cognitive psychology because they all had to deal with her mind and what was happening with it. Persuasion was used by the psychiatrists that were on stand to get the jury to believe what they had to say about whether she knew what she was doing was wrong. There is also social psychology used in the case because all trials are a social game. People go back and forth with each other to try to get a verdict on what happened. I think that the fact that the jury was made up of eleven women and one man also played a part in social psychology.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1837248.html
This link is of more recent information about her retrial and how she was ruled insane. It says that the jury thought that she needed to be treated not punished. I don’t really agree with what happened in her retrial because I do think that she needed to be punished for what she did.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57397956/is-andrea-yates-ready-to-rejoin-society/
Andrea Yates has been in two different mental hospitals since she was said to be insane. Now ten years later she is to the point where she could be released. She will meet with a judge to see if she is able to be brought back to society. Her doctors say that she isn’t the same person she was when she killed her children and that she is ready to go back to society.
http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Yates-family-tragedy-changed-nation-2081536.php
Postpartum psychosis is a very rare mental illness that can happen to new mothers. When it is not treated properly it can go badly for the mother and family. This happens in 1 out of 1000 women having children. They can become confused, nervous, quite, hear voices, see things, or have thoughts about hurting themselves. Andrea Yates’s attorney and his wife helped to create Yate Children Memorial Fund to help educate women on this mental illness.
The Andrea Yates case is one of the few cases that sticks out in my mind from big events that happened during my childhood. In reading about the case from a more in-depth perspective than Forensic and Legal Psychology gave us, I learned a lot more about the insanity defense in real situations. The chapter outlines Andrea’s life as a dedicated mother, wife, and daughter. It describes the series of events that occurred as the crime took place, including details about how she killed her children and what may have led her to do so. The chapter then takes readers back in time a little bit to discuss her previous mental health issues that have been evident off and on since the birth of her children. It also discusses the environmental factors that may have contributed to her mental deterioration: having five children, caring for her father with Alzheimer’s, moving often, and living in a motor home. Andrea was in and out of inpatient care a few times after attempted suicide, though it doesn’t appear that anything besides medication and some visits to a psychiatrist were used to help her, while her behavior wasn’t very well monitored and she was constantly left alone with the children. Many people began holding her husband, Russell accountable for her actions because he left the children in a dangerous situation. Andrea was then declared by a jury to be competent to stand trial and was eventually convicted of her crimes and sentenced to life in prison. Regardless of her obvious mental illness, testimony in trial and the law itself led to the jury’s verdict that she knew the difference between right and wrong at the time of the crime.
This case greatly parallels the chapter in C&K about the insanity defense and how truly difficult it is to actually receive a verdict of guilty by reason of insanity. After reading that chapter I found myself to be better education about how poorly the laws regarding insanity are written. Reading this chapter allowed me to better understand the impact of these laws and legal definitions in the cases of real people with real problems. I think it is obvious that Andrea has a mental illness that should have been better treated and monitored before she went to the great lengths of killing her children. I also think that at the time of her first trial, the justice system served her very poorly. It is ridiculous to me that someone like Andrea who quite blatantly has a mental illness and goes into psychosis at times should be held so fully and completely responsible for a crime as any other person who does the same thing for blatantly evil reasons. I think it is extremely frustrating that the definition of insanity in our legal system is so skewed that almost no one can qualify for it. There are many different factors that led up to this crime; I do not in any way think that Andrea should have been convicted; I think this case is a good representation of how easily the criminal justice system can fail those who are mentally ill. I realize that people worry that insanity is just a way for people to get off easy after committing a crime, but with how little that defense is actually used I think this is an unrealistic fear. I think that psychologists and psychiatrists should be consulted to rewrite the faulty legal definition of ‘insanity’ in the court of law in order to better represent those who may not be able to adequately represent themselves.
Psychology was a very big and important factor in this case from the very beginning. The question of Andrea’s insanity along with her history of mental illness are examples of psychology in law at its finest. The chapter talked about how Andrea often wouldn’t disclose much information to her psychiatrist and family/friends. This is social psychology at work because Andrea may have realized how she might appear to others even if she felt that there was nothing she could do to rectify her condition/situation. Abnormal psychology can be used to evaluate the different ways in which she thought she was saving her children from Satan and hell by killing them. This branch of psychology can also be used when looking at Andrea’s nightmares, visions of killing people, and voices she heard in order to better establish her state of mind not only at the time of the killings but also at other important points in her life. Cognitive psychology was also evident when trying to determine Andrea’s competence to stand trial. This branch of psychology would have been helpful in trying to determine Andrea’s motive because she viewed what she did as a solution to a problem; saving her children from hell. All of Andrea’s mental history can be surveyed by using different methods of psychology to look at how her condition(s) presented themselves and progressed over time. All of this then becomes useful in determining insanity which should technically, in my opinion, be a matter of psychology and not based on a legal definition.
The first link is from February 2009, only a few days after Andrea was found to be not guilty by reason of insanity. It briefly summarizes the crime and initial verdict, along with input from her husband along with both the prosecutor and defense. In the article, CBS News legal correspondent Andrew Cohen is quoted saying, "No one should believe that she is getting off easy. She's going to be committed to mental health facility, probably for the rest of her life.” While I would normally agree with this, the second link is from June of last year, when her lawyer is (was) hopeful that she would be released the following November after a hearing. While family and friends say that she has made great progress, I don’t think releasing her is necessarily the right thing to do. Though she hasn’t been released yet, I think doing so would cause an uproar and set back and progress that has been made to make the justice system more conscious of mentally ill/insane individuals.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1837248.html
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/decade-drowning-children-lawyer-claims-andrea-yates-ready/story?id=13883269#.T3D_GjEgf40
Postpartum psychosis affects anywhere from 4,000-8,000 women in the United States every year. It is a very serious illness that needs immediate treatment, usually involving admittance to a hospital. While there is some speculation about the causes of this including drops in estrogen and a frequent disruption of sleep, researchers are now beginning to believe that it is also related to bipolar disorder. They found that for 25% of women who suffer from bipolar disorder, it was preceded by postpartum depression.
http://bipolar.about.com/od/relateddisorders/a/postpartumpsych.htm
This chapter discussed the Andrea Yates case. She drowned her five children in 2001. After she drowned each of them one by one she laid them in bed and placed a sheet over them. She left her oldest son, Noah, in the tub because he was too heavy for her to carry. After killing her children she called the police and then her husband to come home. Rusty Yates was a very controlling husband, who some see responsible for this crime. He kept forcing Andrea to have more children, and he left her alone with the children after two suicide attempts and knowing she was mentally ill. I find this whole case very controversial. I think Andrea Yates should be rightfully punished for the murder of her five children because it was a horrific crime. At the same time though she as obviously mentally ill so she should receive psychological help. I think she should be in a high security mental health institute where she could receive the correct medical care, and once she is deemed "healthy" or to no harm of herself or others serve the rest of her life in prison.
Andrea Yates had been battling depression for a long time. Her first experience was in 1994 a few months after her first son was born. She imagined a knife that transformed in stabbing someone. Andrea never shared this with anyone. Later she became more depressed when her husband decided to sell their home and buy a mobile home. As they kept having more children and still confined in the small mobile home, Andrea Yates became more depressed and lonely. This led to her first hospitalization in 1999. She tried overdosing on her father's Alzheimers medication. Yates was diagnosed with severe mental depression. Her nurse claimed she couldn't function by herself because she wouldn't eat or drink anything. She was the hospitalized because she put a knife to her own throat and her husband had to wrestle it away from her. After the second hospitalization her doctors believed she suffered from depression with psychotic features, or she was battling schizophrenia because of the voices she was hearing in her head.
When she was arrested Yates was observed from psychologists. The jury of her competency trial came to the verdict Yates was indeed competent to go to trial. Her defense was trying to go for the insanity plea. This is very difficult in Texas because of the M'Naughten insanity test, it does not matter whether or not the defendent knew consequences of his/her crime, but only if they knew if the act was right or wrong. During her trial both the defense and prosecution knew Yates was mentally ill, but they just needed to find out whether or not she knew what she was doing was wrong. The defense came to the conclusion "Even though Yates knew killing her children was legally wrong, she believed it was morally right because of her religious delusions." (pg. 235) She believed she was saving her children from Satan. The prosecution believed Yates had to know what she was doing was wrong because she associated her actions with satan; therefore, knowing it was evil. She knew the killings were wrong in the eyes of the law, but overall thought she would be saving her children.
When it came to the jury's decision they first came to the verdict Yates was guilty of capital murder. She would then face a sentencing hearing to determine if she would receive life in prison or the death penalty. She avoided the death penalty because false information was given at her trial saying she had seen an episode of law and order where a mother drowned her childer, but no episode like this actually aired. Yates could not have planned the murder of her children based on this episode, and this is why she received life in prison.
Her case was later appealed to the federal courts because the false testimony about the law and order episode affected the jurors descision. It gave them the idea that her murder was premeditated, and helped them rule against insanity.
Psychology was relevant through this whole crime. Behavioral psychology was present when she was committing the crimes. She decided to act in a way she thought was helping her children be saved by satan, but in reality it didn't help them. Social psychology was used during the trial when other mothers related to post-partum depression after having children. Cognitive psychology was used by the jury and psychologists because they needed to come to their own opinion of whether Andrea knew her actions her wrong.
http://crime.about.com/od/current/p/andreayates.htm This website looked at the history of Andrea Yates and what may have helped lead to severe depression. When she met Rusty they were very reclusive, and spent most of their time praying and learning about religion. Andrea became even less social when she stopped jogging or swimming when she had her second child, and then they decided to homeschool their children. Their lives were very closed off.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
What I found interesting on this website was that Andrea and Rusty were both very much for the death penalty until Andrea's arrest. It talked about how they discussed it was God's will to have society uphold their laws. They had even marked parts of the scriptures they read to prove this. Rusty claimed their belief had come back to haunt them by.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2006/06/26/mental-health-stigma-reduction-proof-is-in-the-politics/
This website talked about the social stigma of mental illnesses. I though this was important because it relates to the social psychology of the case. The stigma that comes along with being diagnosed as mentally ill is hard for many to deal with. This is why many people with mental illnesses go without medical treatment. People are often embarrassed by their mental illness, and I can see this in Andrea Yates when she did not want to receive the help she obviously needed before she commited the murders of her children. The social stigma our society has created pushes a depressed person to hide in their homes, and not deal with their problems. This could very possibly of been the case in Andrea Yate's case.
I find the Andrea Yates case to be terribly devastating, yet interesting. Andrea Yates murdered her children my drowning them in a bathtub. Afterwards she called 911 and her husband. This is the part of the chapter that I found devastating. It is always sad when children die, but having the mother kill them all by holding them underwater in a bathtub is heartbreaking.
There were a lot of details about the case that I found interesting. Yates’ attorneys used the insanity plea and brought up various instances in which she was developing a severe mental illness. For example, after the birth of her first son she had a vision on someone being stabbed. She also attempted suicide by overdosing on her father’s Alzheimer’s medication. She was deemed as being severely mentally ill. She was hospitalized a second time after her husband got a knife away from her which she was holding to her throat. It was recommended that Yates not have any more children, but she had a fifth child.
In the period of the marriage of Russell and Andrea Yates, it seems that Russell got to do what he wanted when he wanted. The family moved from Texas to Florida for Russell’s work. He then decided he wanted to live on the road so they did. Later they sold the family house and bought a mobile home. During this process, Andrea’s father, whom she had been caring for, passed away.
During the trail, two psychologists offered their expert opinion as to whether Yates knew that he actions were wrong. One stated that Yates knew it was legally wrong, but believed that it was morally right. The other expert pointed out various aspects that showed that Yates knew her actions were wrong. Such as that killing her kids was an idea from Satan. Because it comes from Satan, he says, she knew it was wrong.
There was a controversial statement made during the trial about the show Law and Order. It was said that there was an episode where a woman drowned her kids in a bathtub and was found insane. This turned out to be a false statement. The Judge denied the motion for a mistrial, but Yates was sentenced to life in prison, not having to face the death penalty.
There was a lot of psychology involved in this case, some of which was pointed out in the chapter. For example, people looked to Andrea Yates as less responsible because of the likelihood that her depression was caused by “understandable stressors” which led to her actions. Russell Yates was seen as being very responsible because of his lack of attention to Andrea’s mental health condition. This can be considered an aspect of social psychology. The testimony about Law and Order and the persuasive effects on the jury are also psychological aspects. Cognitive psychology was also involved because of the mental illness. She had to be determined whether or not she was competent enough to stand trial and whether she knew that her actions were wrong.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
This article says that the jurors listened to taped confessions of Andrea . She said that she had to kill her children because she had failed them as a mother. It also says that Andrea spoke of Satan insider her and the only way to get rid of him was to be executed. To get the death penalty, Satan demanded that she had to kill her children. This article also says that “Rusty” collapsed into a fetal position once he found that his children were killed.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1837248.html
This news article says that Andrea and Rusty Yates were divorced, but remained “friends.” This article also brings up the possibility that instead of attempting to save them from hell, she killed them because of how she was acting as a mother for them.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/10-years-later-the-tragedy-of-andrea-yates/254290/
Russell and Andrea divorced in 2005. Russell has remarried and had at least one child. The ten year anniversary of this trial was on March 12, 2012. It says that Andrea is doing better.
Andrea Yates captured everyone's attention after drowning her five children in her families bath tub in June 2001. Andrea Yates suffered from postpartum mental disorder and the first indication of the disorder occurred not long after giving birth to her first child. She had a vision of a knife that transformed into a vision of someone being stabbed. Yates’ mental disorder worsened when the family made some unconventional moves, moving to Florida then back to Texas in a bus converted into a mobile home. During these times Yates got very preoccupied with religion and this worried her family. She attempted suicide in 1999 after giving birth to her fourth child and shortly after that she held a knife to her own throat until her husband took it from her. Even after all these incidents she gave birth to her fifth child then had to deal with the death of her father who passed away just three months prior to Yates killing her children.
When Yates was evaluated by a clinical psychologist he found her to be psychotic. She was having hallucinations of Satan and it took her 2 minutes to respond to questions asked by the psychologist. During the pretrial competency hearing the jury initially found her incompetent to mount a defense but after further deliberations Yates was found competent to stand trial. The expert witness for the defense believed that Yates killed her children for their best interests and she had no rational motive for killing her children. The prosecutions expert witness Dr. Dietz testified that Yates knew her actions were wrong. The expert went on to say that Yates had the thought of killing her children and attributed that thought as being from Satan but of course the thought came from her mind. A major snag in the case occurred when Dr. Dietz was being cross examined, he was questioned about his lack of clinical experience and stated that he was a consultant for “Law & Order” and that an episode of a woman with postpartum depression who killed her children in a bath tub aired shortly before the Yates crime occurred. However on the morning that Yates was found guilty it was discovered that the episode of “Law & Order” had never aired. The defense attorney claimed that the erroneous testimony skewed the jurors view and he asked for a mistrial. The judge dined the motion but during the penalty phase of the trial the jurors took the incorrect testimony into account and Yates was sentenced to life in prison rather than the death penalty.
This article gives an overview of postpartum depression. The article states that 1 in 1,000 women suffer from postpartum psychosis and that women who have symptoms of the disorder need to be treated in a medical facility. Most women respond well to treatment and recover, clearly Andrea Yates did not. However, it is unknown if Andrea Yates was suffering from postpartum psychosis or other psychological conditions. As stated in “Minds of Trial” Yates was thought to have schizophrenia at one point and women who have schizophrenia are likely to suffer from postpartum psychosis.
http://pregnancy.about.com/cs/postpartumdepress/a/aa062101a.htm
I found an interesting article about Andrea Yates current condition as a resident in Kerrville State hospital in Texas. Yates makes aprons and sells them for money for Yates Children Memorial Fund which strives to spread the word about mental illness. Yates hopes to one day work at an animal clinic who offered her a job.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/how-andrea-yates-lives-and-lives-with-herself-a-decade-later/254302/
Yate’s attorney has stuck by her from the very start and earlier this month he stated that he feels Yates is ready to rejoin society. I believe that if Andrea Yates has truly recovered and is not the same person who committed that terrible crime then it would be a big step for many people involved with the severely mentally ill. You just don’t hear many stories of someone who was psychotic make a recovery and rejoin society as a functional citizen.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57397956/is-andrea-yates-ready-to-rejoin-society/
The whole case of Andrea Yates is sad. A mother (Andrea) suffered from severe depression and post-partum depression and ended up drowning her five children in the bathtub. After she drowned the last child, she called 911 as well as her husband, Russell. Some people say that Russell should be prosecuted as an accessory to murder because he knew of his wife's condition, yet allowed her to stay at home with the children. He was also a very controlling husband. He wanted to have a lot of children, even though Andrea did not necessarily want that. Andrea had been suffering from depression for a long time. She was taking care of her father who had Alzheimers. He eventually died, and Andrea took that very hard and probably contributed even more to her depression. She was hospitalized twice before the drownings because she was suicidal. After the birth of his first child, Andrea states that she had a vision of a knife which turned into the stabbing of someone. This is when you can argue that she is mentally ill. During the time before she drowned her children, she became very close with the Woronieckis'. These people were very religious and it is possible that Andrea was influenced by their beliefs. During the trial, it was stated by an attorney that Yates believed by killing her children, she was saving them from Satan and from them burning in hell. It is obvious that this woman suffered from severe mental illness.
The question about Andrea Yates is if she was insane at the time of her crime. According to Texas law about insanity, the only important factor is if she knew what she was doing during the crime was wrong. Did she know that killing her children was wrong? A defense expert testified during trial that Andrea did what she thought was best for her children. She may have known that killing them was LEGALLY wrong, but she thought it was MORALLY right. She had no rational motive for killing her children. During the pre-trial process, jury of 11 women and 1 man listened to the case. This seems unusual. Based on what we know about juries, they should be more equal to get a more equal opinion about the outcome. During this pre-trial, the jury and judge deliberated about whether Andrea was competent to stand trial. Originally, a vote of 8 to 4 said she was not competent, but after further deliberation, they found that she was competent to stand trial. Based on what I know about the case, I am not sure if she was competent. There is just something terribly wrong with this woman.
One interesting aspect of the case and trial that I had never heard before was about the Law and Order episode that was brought up during trial. An expert for the prosecution stated during trial that he consulted with the television show Law and Order. He stated that an episode aired a few weeks before the crime that was about a woman who drowned her children and claimed the insanity defense. He was arguing that she got the idea from this episode. This probably had a huge impact on the jury. After this, she was found guilty of capital murder. The defense did a little research and discovered that the TV episode was never even written. They wanted to get a mistrial, but the judge did not allow it. Instead of the death penalty, she was sentenced to life in prison. The defense took her appeal to the Court of Appeals, which ruled in her favor.
There are a lot of psychology principles in this case. As previously discussed, the issue of her sanity is in question. Did she know what she was doing was wrong? It was well-known that she was mentally ill and suffered from very severe depression, but did this contribute to her Andrea killing her children? What was her thinking at this time? All of this ties in very strongly with clinical psychology. She was suicidal and was taking care of her dying father. This put a huge amount of stress on her. Other areas of psychology that were present is that of social psychology. First, a major influence on the jury was the testimony of the Law and Order episode. They jury did not know that it was not correct. They were told that is was real and that is very convincing. If I were told about that, I would probably have thought that she got the idea from the episode. Secondly, the book talks about gender roles that society puts on people. When women commit crimes, we usually attribute it to biological or psychological issues that are out of her control. When men commit a crime, we attribute it to situational factors within his control. Because of these gender roles, a lot of women felt sorry for Andrea. When it comes to the insanity defense, it is generally more accepted when a woman uses it than a male.
One website that I found that focuses on the Andrea Yates case, describes some of her time at the county jail. Dr. Ferguson, a psychiatrist in the jail, said tha Andrea asked her for a razor so she could shave her head to see if the marks that she would continually scratch were still there. Dr. Ferguson states, "In all the patients I've treated for major depression with psychotic features, she is the sickest I've ever seen." http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/yate-m16.shtml
The second website stated that in July of 2006, she was acquitted by reason of insanity and was sent to a mental health clinic. It also discusses the seriousness of postnatal disorders. Andrea suffered a lot after the birth of her first child from depression. Psychosis can result after birth in only 1-2 in 1000 women. She was only charged with the death of 3 of her children, which is confusing to me. In November of 2006, a judge said that she would remain in the hospital for another year and then may have the chance at another trial. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)69789-4/fulltext
The last website I looked at talked about how she is doing now. An attorney who worked the case 10 years ago, said that Andrea is doing very well. She is trying to get used to the normalcy of society. She now takes medicine by injection and is suffering from bipolar disorder. He still says that her mental illness is present. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/how-andrea-yates-lives-and-lives-with-herself-a-decade-later/254302/
Andrea Yates is a woman who systematically drowned all five of her children in a bathtub, and then successfully pleaded insanity. It is widely believed that she was suffering from postpartum depression; however nobody is completely certain about what mental disorders she has. Basically, this chapter in the book points out that many factors may have combined to influence her and force her to "snap," and kill her children. Some people think that it was a conscious decision, that she was angry at her husband for making her have more kids than she wanted to have. Others said that although she knew that it was legally "wrong," that she still believed that it was for the greater good because she thought she was doing it to save her children from Satan.
http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/new_abolitionist/february-2002-issue-23/andrea-yates-needs-treatment-not-death-sentence
I read this article which is about why Andrea Yates, or anybody with a mental disorder really, should never receive the death penalty. However, this website was all about how NOBODY should receive the death penalty, so they shouldn't even have to bring up that mentally ill or mentally handicapped people should especially not receive the death penalty. It gave me some perspective on the case, however I kind of believe that these people are subject to viewing people's crimes lightly, because they believe that nobody should ever be executed, regardless of their crimes.
http://articles.latimes.com/2002/mar/17/opinion/oe-dersh17
This article is about a theory that the prosecutors in Andrea Yates' murder trial weren't really expecting her to get the death penalty; but they were simply using it as a legal tactic to somehow get a jury who is more likely to not award her the insanity plea. I wouldn't put it past our legal system to use loopholes and manipulate juries to influence the outcomes of trials, but I don't really understand the concept of seeking the death penalty to somehow influence who you get as jurors.
http://boards.library.trutv.com/showthread.php?290555-Was-Andrea-Yates-really-insane-when-she-killed-her-kids
Finally I read a message board to get regular people's thoughts on the subject. Many of the people brought up good points, that regardless to whether or not she was actually "insane," the whole story is tragic and haunting. The main idea of this message board is that she was in fact insane. I would agree, based on a few of the disgusting details about the case. However, I don't believe that insanity is a reason to not punish somebody. If a person commits murder, they are just as dangerous regardless of whether or not they knew it was wrong. Some may even argue that people who are insane are even more dangerous than sane murderers.
Another reason for not necessarily wanting to take it easy on the criminally insane is because people would exploit that plea much more, and malinger about their sanity, to receive a lighter punishment. The book did bring up a good point that insanity pleas aren't nearly as prevalent as people think, exactly for the reason that most times the people who successfully plea insanity still end up getting put away for life...they just get put away in a mental institution instead of a regular prison.
I think this story is really interesting but also super messed up! I don't understand how a mother could kill all of her children.
In June of 2001, Andrea Yates was outside playing basketball with her oldest son and husband, but out of know where she goes inside and sleeps until the next day. Andrea had been dealing with severe depression for two years, so the next day her husband made sure that she took her antidepressant medication. After her husband left for work that morning, she went upstairs and filled the bathtub with water. One by one she took each of her children and drown them and then laid them on the bed and covered them with a sheet. After she killed all of her kids she called 911 and then called her husband and told him he had to come home because the children were hurt.
Andrea Yates had had many problems with her mental health before this occurred, but I still don't think it is an excuse to kill your children! She had been hospitalized twice, once for over-dosing on her father's Alzheimer's medication and once for trying to slit her throat with a knife. Her and her husband led a very unconventional lifestyle which had a huge contribution on Andrea's poor mental health.
After her arrest she was evaluated by two clinical psychologists. They both concluded that she had psychotic episodes, was having hallucinations, had problems concentrating, took a long time answering questions, and did not show any signs of faking her illness. Dr. Gerald Harris determined that Yates was incompetent to stand trial because of her delusions, but Dr. Rubenzer determined that she was competent to stand trial despite her mental illness.
Both the prosecution and the defense agreed that Andrea Yates was mentally ill, but they were arguing whether or not if she knew what she was doing at the time of the crime was wrong or not. After three weeks of testimony, Yates was found guilty of capital murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
I think this was a very interesting and informal story. The insanity plea is very hard to determine because there is no actual way to find out with 100% certainty that someone was sane or insane at the time of the crime.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Insanity+Defense
http://ppdsurvivor.blogspot.com/2008/03/andrea-yates-case-and-insanity-defense.html
http://jonathanturley.org/2008/03/17/the-insanity-defense-and-the-limits-of-legal-reason/
Surprisingly, until my junior year into my psychology major here at UNI, I hadn’t heard much about the Andrea Yates case. I remember hearing about it briefly in high school with the trial and everything, but never in full detail until the fall semester of my junior year. Now I feel like I have heard about it rather a lot in this short year. I also swear I wrote a blog about this earlier this year, but maybe I’m just confusing that with my familiarity of the case.
Andrea Yates suffered from postpartum mental disorder. She had five children, and with each child, here psychological functioning worsened. Until one day, March 11, 2002, she drowned all five of her children in her bathtub. She then proceeded to call 911 to turn herself in.
Andrea Yates was definitely mentally unstable. She suffered from delusions of the devil. She had multiple failed attempts of suicide. She also had problems with her husband. It sounded like he was a very controlling man. Though this may play a certain role with her instability, I believe her problems are much deeper than marital issues. It was thought that she had both depression and schizophrenia.
Yates went to trial twice. She pleaded insanity and the first trial found her guilty. Then they had a retrial due to the fact that an expert witness confused reality with a dramatic television show, and the jury accepted her insanity plea.
It is easy to see where psychology plays a role in this case. This woman is severely mentally ill, but was she insane? Could she determine the difference between right and wrong? Testimonies from expert witnesses from clinical psychologists played a crucial role in the outcomes of this case. Hence the whole second trial. It also is evident in a jury, as we saw in the movie 12 Angry Men. Social psychology would a played a role there, even if the media didn’t cover it.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
The above URL talks in detail of the trial of the Andrea Yates case. One thing it pointed out was how restrictive the insanity plea was in the state of Texas, where the trial was being held. This site was very detailed and I learned more than I wanted to about the delusions that occurred in Andrea’s mind. She talked about how the devil lived inside her and how she needed to die to free him. The only way to do this was to execute her children and so she would be sentenced to death by the death penalty. There were plenty of other disturbing pictures this website painted, and it is hard to see how any jury wouldn’t give into her sanity plea once presented with these facts.
http://articles.cnn.com/2007-12-11/us/court.archive.yates8_1_russell-rusty-yates-kaylynn-williford-joe-owmby?_s=PM:US
This website discussed the second trial of the Yates case. In this trial, the jury acquitted Yates of her original charges, and accepted her insanity plea. It was also said that Andrea’s mental state seemed worse the second trial than the first. Her husband, Rusty Yates, was pleased with the outcome telling reporters that the outcome was a miracle. I found this very shocking. I can’t imagine a man who cared or loved about his wife so much that he could be happy for her ever again about anything after she murdered his five children, even if it “wasn’t her fault.” I can’t decide whether to be awed and inspired by his feelings, or question his sanity along with his wife’s.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/10-years-later-the-tragedy-of-andrea-yates/254290/
This last website, out of the three, was my favorite. This is because this article was just published a few weeks ago, and discusses where Andrea Yates is now, ten years later. Her husband has apparently remarried, so maybe what I talked about in the above paragraph should be revoked. I guess he has another child as well. I guess this would make him brave, bringing another child into the world. Apparently Andrea is doing much better and is much more psychologically stable. In June 2011, her lawyer argued that it may be time for her to be released. I’m not quite sure what I think about that. He as well as professionals would need to be absolutely certain of Yates’ mental state. I question whether anyone can be fit to leave hospitalization after being so mentally deranged at one point in time.
Please read Chapter 19 in the Minds on Trial book (Andrea Yates). Briefly summarize the chapter and your opinion of it. Then describe what aspects of psychology are relevant to this case. Finally, find three additional sources (links) on the internet that discuss the specific case, or a specific psychological issue relevant to the case. Discuss each of those links. Provide your links at the bottom of your comment.
Andrea Yates is a woman with a history of suffering from severe mental illnesses. She had been prescribed a variety of drugs to try to get her depression and ‘visions’ to a manageable level. After the birth of her fourth child, while dealing with a dying father and a husband who moved the large family into a mobile home, Andrea was diagnosed with sever post-partum. She had previously tried to commit suicide two or three times, until she ultimately took the life of her 5 young children.
She drown her four boys and one baby girl in a bathtub full of water one by one and then she placed them in bed covered with a sheet, except for the oldest boy whose body was too heavy for her to move. She then called the police and her husband and told him to come home, to which he asked, “Why, is anyone hurt?” Andrea responded by simply saying, “Yes; the children”.
Both the prosecution and defense attorneys of the Yates case had expert witnesses to debate whether or not Andrea Yates was insane by Texas law at the time of the crime. During the battle of the expert witnesses, the defense attorney asked the prosecution’s expert witness about their level of expertise and where they worked. When answering the question the expert witness claimed that he had helped create an episode of Law and Order that had aired before the murders that involved the same scenario as this case, with the woman receiving a verdict of insanity.
This probably led to the jurors’ viewing Mrs. Yates as someone who knew this was wrong and she did it anyway because she saw “a way out” from the episode. However, this testimony was proven to be false as the episode had never aired, or even been written. The defense tried to appeal but was not allowed to retry the entire case. In the trial where her penalty was to be assigned she received life in prison without a chance of parole instead of the death penalty—perhaps because the members of the jury recognized the unfairness of the previous false testimony.
Relevant to this case are many aspects of psychology. Her mental illness has caused the entire case to be psychologically challenging from years before she even committed the murders. The aspect of motivation, the level of knowledge of the expert witnesses, societal gender influences, and prescription medications and their effect on the brain are all other aspects of psychological influence relevant to this case.
From this site: http://www.toobeautiful.org/houchr010625.html I discovered that when Mr. Yates arrived at his house he was not allowed to enter. Here you can also get a sense of the relationships between the Yates family and their surrounding neighbors. Additionally, another case is mentioned where a woman kills her 4-month-old son by strangulation with rosary beads and obtains a verdict of insanity. Most children who are killed at the hands of their parents are usually younger than age 3 and die of neglect, shaking, or blunt trauma, not drownings and strangulations.
From this site: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,127850,00.html I learned that she was ultimately only tried for three of the five murders of her children. Also that her husband filed for divorce, has remarried, and having children with his second wife. Andrea Yates attorney, George Parnham, helped her deal with the divorce process.
Here, http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/03/15/yates.husband.reaction/index.html, you learn that Rusty Yates blamed the government and the inaccurate diagnoses of his Ex-Wife for the whole thing by saying:
"If it hadn't been by drowning while we were gone, it would have been smothering them at night or poisoning them at breakfast," Yates said. He urged families of the mentally ill to seek out the best psychiatrist in their city rather than depend on the guidelines of their insurance plan.
He claims the medical community is responsible because they did not protect his family from Andrea, and that if he would have known that she could become dangerous if she got pregnant again, then they would have stopped having children.
This chapter about the Andrea Yates' case was very sad and hard to read for me. Andrea suffered from depression and post-partum depression. She drowned her five children in her bathtub and called 911 and her husband right after she did it. She developed her depression after the birth of her first child. Her depression seemed to worsen as the years went on and after her family kept up and moving in a mobile home. Andrea's husband, Russell was very controlling and kept forcing Andrea to have more children even though she did not want a lot of children. Russell knew of Andrea's illness and left the children at home with her, some say he is to be blamed for the murders. Andrea attempted suicide twice and in my opinion was severely unhappy and ill, but her husband never did anything about it. According to the reading it seemed that Andrea never really had any say in her life and her husband was in charge and got to do whatever he wanted to do.
During the trial Yates' attorney pleaded insanity in order to help her. She was evaluated by a clinical psychologist and was said to be psychotic. When she was being questioned she said she was having visions of Satan and that she was being talked to. It took her a while to answer each question. She did not know what she was doing was wrong. Andrea believed she was doing what was best for her children and may have known that it was legally wrong but thought it was morally right. Andrea was examined by two psychologists to see if she was competent enough to stand trial. In the end she was seen to be competent enough. The defense and prosecution both agreed that Andrea was mentally ill. But they still had to see whether or not she knew that killing her children was wrong.
Andrea was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. She was not sentenced to death because of false or incorrect testimonies. There was a lot of psychology involved in this case. People looked to Andrea Yates as less responsible because of her depression. Russell Yates was seen as being very responsible because of his lack of attention to Andrea’s mental health condition. This can be considered social psychology because Russell was one of the only people who talked to Andrea about her illness. The testimony about Law and Order and the effects on the jury are also psychological aspects. Cognitive psychology was also involved because of the mental illness. Andrea had to be examined whether or not she was competent enough to stand trial and whether she knew that her actions were wrong.
This is an article about Andrea's crime. The beginning is the call to her husband and how he reacted when he received the call. This shot a chill through my body because it says word for word what she said to her husband right after she drowned the children. When Russell received the call he was puzzled and rushed home when she told him what she did. I couldn't even imagine what he felt like when he got that call from her.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html
This website is very interesting because it is a description of Andrea's life and takes you step by step through her life. I liked reading this because it starts in the beginning of her marriage and takes you all the way through the trial. I learned some things that I didn't know about Andrea, like she was going through therapy and stopped going.
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/djglp/downloads/gen10p61.pdf
This is an article about Andrea Yates ten years later. What she's doing and where she's at. She is still being incarcerated and treated for her mental illness. Lawyers are still arguing today about when she will be released.
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/decade-drowning-children-lawyer-claims-andrea-yates-ready/story?id=13883269#.T3E20OxWqhA
The case of Andrea Yates is one of the most interesting cases involving the insanity plea. She was married and had five children. In 2001 she killed all five of her children by drawing them in her bathtub. After murdering her four younger children she placed them in a bed and covered them up with a sheet. Her eldest son who was 7 years old was left in the bathtub because he was too heavy to carry. After committing these five murders Andrea called the police as well as her husband telling him that their children were harmed.
Once she was arrested her attorney decided that she should plea insanity in her trial. It had been revealed that since at least 1999 Yates had started becoming mentally ill. Shorty after the birth of her son in 1994 Yates had a vision where she saw an image of a knife that transformed into a vision of someone being stabbed. This vision was the first indication that she might be suffering from postpartum mental disorder. These events foreshadowed her continual decline in mental illness.
The public heavily scrutinized the role of her husband, Russell Yates, in the death of their children during the trial. Throughout their marriage, Russell seemed to be very controlling. He made huge decisions without considering the well being of the family and his wife. Based on her history of mental illness and suicide attempts you would think that the husband would have mad more attempts at seeking help for her. I’m surprised that she was allowed near the children at all because it seemed apparent to me based on her history that she could be a possible threat. If anything I would not allow her to be alone with them.
Two different psychologists examined Andrea to see if she was competent enough to stand trial. The jury decided that she was competent to stand trial. The legal standard for insanity pleas was very strict within the state of Texas. It was well agree that Andrea Yates was mentally ill. The question that had to be answered and proved was whether or not Andrea Yates at the time of the killing knew that what she was doing was wrong. Each side used expert testimony to explain whether she did or did not understand that killing her children was wrong. They both seemed to agree that Andrea knew that in the eyes of the law what she was doing was wrong, but morally she thought she was protecting her kids from dying at the hands of Satan in hell.
Psychology plays a large role in this case especially since it involves an insanity plea. Abnormal/ Clinical Psychology come into play because Andrea Yates was diagnosed a number of mental illnesses. She was thought to suffer from depression, postpartum disorder, and schizophrenia. She displayed so many symptoms that it was probably difficult to accurately diagnose her. I also enjoyed reading about how one of the expert witnesses came to the conclusion that Andrea Yates knew what she was doing was wrong. The expert witness testified that because she never told anybody about her visions she knew they were wrong, also the fact that she blamed the killings on Satan shows that she could not accept the blame as her own. She needed to have a reason for having these wrong thoughts.
http://law.onecle.com/texas/criminal-procedure/chapter46C.html
The above link is a resource I found when looking up the Texas legal standard for insanity pleas. The link shows how an attorney is to go about filing for an insanity plea. It gives specific guidelines on how to expert witnesses and what these witnesses can testify on. It explains that the defendant must be able to stand trial in order to be tried for insanity pleas. The court may order to have a defendant examined on this basis as well.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
The next link I found is from a TIME article. It gives another over view of the case similar to the one we read for this blog. However this overview mentions an interesting fact. Before Andrea had been arrested the Yates family, Andrea and Russell, had strongly believed in the death penalty. They had found proof for it’s validity in the bible and Andrea had even underlines the passage in her bible.
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/decade-drowning-children-lawyer-claims-andrea-yates-ready/story?id=13883269#.T3E4uBxODC0
This article is more recent and has to do with the release of Andrea Yates after undergoing years of psychological treatment. She is now being held at a minimum-security mental hospital in Kerrville, Texas. Her lawyer who was fighting for her release says that he is highly optimistic she will be released. Her lawyer thinks that she will only need to be treated in a community-based outpatient facility.
This chapter discusses the tragic case of Andrea Yates. Yates is the infamous mother who methodically drowned all five of her young children who ranged in ages of 6 months up to 7 years old. This chapter describes both the circumstances of the crime and trial, and the psychological components that played such a large role within the entire episode. The chapter began by describing Yates' somewhat common upbringing and living conditions prior to the murders. Yates had been raised in an entirely functionable situation and married Russel Yates after college. Russel and her had a happy marriage in the beginning, but the combination of stressful living conditions and postpartum depression put Yates into a mental condition that eventually sparked her unbelievable actions. After the birth of the couple's fourth child, Yates developed serious mental problems that included disturbing religious hallucinations and psychotic thoughts. The couple sought medical treatment for Andrea in the form of both medication and therapy. Russel's changing opinions on the lifestyle of the family also added to the problems. After recieving a job at NASA, the family moved to Texas and actually leased their home and subsequently moved into a mobile home. This was partially due to the religious and lifestyle desires of Russel.
The next part of the chapter highlighted the trial procedure, especially the different expert testimonys of both the defense and prosecution. Dr. Phillip Resnick testified on behalf of the defense and Dr. Park Dietz testified on behalf of the prosecution. The two experts varying testimony played crucial role in the case, and would serve as the primary focus the jury would refer to in reaching a verdict. Some of the testimony would also play an indirect role in the defense seeking an appeal because the judge's failure to grant a mistrial based off some inaccurate testimony. The pscyhological components of these testimonies will be discussed later in this blog.
I guess it is kind of hard to accurately express my opinion over the chapter. Reading the gruesome details of the actual crime left me furious. In these tragic of cases I rarely can find any empathy or sympathy for offenders like Andrea Yates. While the crime and defense of Yates angered me, the actual details of the trial procedure greatly interested me. I enjoyed reading about the reasoning and approaches behind the testimonies of both expert witnesses. I had never really realized how such expert's testimony could so intelligently articulate its position about its argument. That is basically just a fancy way of saying I liked how the experts formulated their arguments. Overall the chapter left me with mixed emotions, but I still appreciated the interesting content it had to offer.
The major psychological components that were relevant to this case were found in the defense and prosecution's expert witness testimony. These two psychological experts both utilized their evaluation of Andrea in order to determine the standing of her insanity plea. The defenses expert witness, Dr. Phillip Resnik, believed Yates did not have any particular motive in killing her children. Rather, she had acted in a way that she believed to represent her children's best interest. Resnik claimed that the religious delusions Yates suffered from caused her to commit the crimes to save her children from satan. Finally, he found that Yates might have realized what she was doing was legally wrong, but genuinely believed it was morally justified. The prosecutions expert, Dr. Park Dietz, focused on whether Yates understood the wrongfulness of her actions during the crime. Dr. Dietz held that Yates indeed understood that killing the children was wrongful and illegal. Yates had acted in a fashion that demonstrated a real politik fashion, or the end justified the means. Basically, Yates committed the illegal crime in order to serve her moral, religious, or personal beliefs. Another major psychological aspect that was discussed was how Yate's possible viewing of a Law and Order episode might have triggered her crime. Although the Law and Order episode had never erred, the testimony substantially impressed upon the jury. The jurors readily adopted the idea that the television show had provoked Yate's actions. The case would result in a life sentence for Yates, however, without some of major points of the expert testimony Yates would most certainly been sentenced to death.
I addressed three additional sources to find out more about this case. The first website I found highlighted some interesting information into the details of the day of the crime. For instance, I was surprised to discover that Yates had actually called the 911 dispatch after the murder, essentially turning herself in. Yates sounded coherent and a little shaken up on the dispatch call, but still conscious enough to seek help. Additionally, she allowed the officers to enter the house. Interestingly, Yates actually told officers she was a bad mother and expected to be punished.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html
The second source I addressed had some surprising information about Yate's personal life. I was surprised to find someone who was so mentally disturbed was so accomplished growing up. Andrea Yates was valedictorian, captain of the swim team, and was an outstanding member of National Honor Society. It can be hard to believe this given the violent nature of her crime and her disfunctional lifestyle.
http://crime.about.com/od/current/p/andreayates.htm
The last source I decided to explore gave me some good information on the current status of Yates. Yates is currently being held in North Texas Skyview Psychiatric Hospital. The hospital is maximum security and she shares a room with five other individuals. Currently, she is recieving medication, counseling, and group therapy. She has been encouraged to socialize with others and maintain social skills. Her defense attorney remains confident that she will be released soon.
http://karisable.com/andreayates.htm
Please read Chapter 19 in the Minds on Trial book (Andrea Yates). Briefly summarize the chapter and your opinion of it. Then describe what aspects of psychology are relevant to this case. Finally, find three additional sources (links) on the internet that discuss the specific case, or a specific psychological issue relevant to the case. Discuss each of those links. Provide your links at the bottom of your comment.
Chapter 19 in the Minds on Trial book is about Andrea Yates and the process of her trial. The trial was centered on whether or not she was insane when she drown her 5 kids. Insanity was especially hard to prove at the time in Texas. The expert witnesses of either attorney debated whether she knew that her actions were wrong. Something that I found interesting was the fact that she called her husband to come home after she killed their kids and when he asked if anyone was hurt she responded with, “yes”, and, “the children”. With such direct response to a simple question , it leads me to believe that she knew her actions were wrong. This is something not discussed in the chapter.
The trial is full of errors on the parts of many people. Mainly, the expert witness for the prosecution gives a false testimony that, once discovered, saved Andrea’s life and she was given life in prison, while her attorney continues to appeal.
Psychology is relevant to this case because Andrea had been suffering from a severe mental illness that had been treated poorly. Expert witnesses were used during the trial and social norms/beliefs/values questioned.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1837248.html This site provides Andrea’s final sentence of not guilty by reason of insanity. She has been committed to a state mental hospital and will have to appear before a judge periodically to see if she should be released.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445-2,00.html This site provides more information about an interview with Andrea Yates. In the interview, Andrea states that the presence of the Devil went away after she was done killing her children. She showed signs of regret but told her attorney that she felt like she HAD to do it, all the while praying they would be going to heaven.
http://www.glennsacks.com/in_defense_of_russell.htm This site shows how society does not feel as though enough justice has been done for these children so they seek to lay blame elsewhere—Rusty Yates becomes the scape goat. However, this site talks about how he was worried about his wife two days prior to the murders and took her back to the doctor, where they were sent home with nothing.
This chapter deals with the Andrea Yates case. She drowned her five children in the bathtub then laid them on a bed and covered them with a sheet. Then she called 911 and her husband. Two years prior to the killings it was noted that she had a severe decline in her mental illness. She would go for the insanity defense while the prosecuting attorneys would seek the death penalty. Andrea had attempted to take her own life twice before once by taking her fathers Alzheimer's medication and the other time by holding a knife against her throat. It was believed that she suffered from a postpartum mental disorder. As her case gained more media attention questions came up about Russell Yates being responsible for the killings as well. After her arrest she was evaluated by a clinical psychologists and they reported she was psychotic and had difficulty answering questions and paying attention. The key issue in her trial was whether she was insane during the killing of her children. Dr. Resnick suggested that Yates killed her children to save them from Satan. He believed that she knew that it was legally wrong but believed it was the morally right thing to do. Dr. Dietz also suggested that she knew that it was wrong in the eyes of the law but it was the best thing she could do for her children. He also brought up the Law & Order episode and how it gave Andrea the idea to plea insanity. She will have a new trail because this information was incorrect. This case presented interesting information on the gender bias behind crimes. My opinion of this case is that it is a terrible sad story and I believe that she is insane but after she gets treatment in a psychiatric treatment facility she should have to go to prison and serve time and be punished for killing her five children. Social psychology plays a role in this case because of the fact that society viewed Russsell as partly responsible and the fact that women are more likely to receive sympathy for them and favored to win the insanity defense. Another aspect of psychology present is clinical psychology because there was clinical psychologists brought in to determine what Andrea Yates suffered from and if she was psychotic. Cognitive psychology plays a role in this case as well because the idea of the law and order episode was planted in their heads to it affected what they thought also when they were trying to determine if she was competent to stand trial.
On this site it says that she would receive lethal injection death if the jury found her guilty. It also says on this website that her husband believed in the death sentence. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
On this site it says how in her confession she said that she was not a good mother and that her children were not developing correctly. It also says that in the first trial instead of the death penalty she was sentenced to life in prison and that when she was seventy seven she would be eligible for parole. http://crime.about.com/od/current/p/andreayates.htm
This site talks about her second trial and the verdict was not guilty by reason of insanity. It also talks about her relationship with Russell. He divorced her after she killed their children but still continues to support her and that they reminisce about their children. Andrew Cohen said that she is not getting off easy and that when she does regain some sanity she realizes what she did to her children and spirals back down to where she was before.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1837248.html
Andrea Yates lived her life like any other person. She received a degree in nursing, and continued on by marrying her husband. Eventually, her first child, Noah, was born along with four other children. However, her story didn’t end like everyone else. She turned to drowning her five children in the bathtub, and then laid them on the bed to be covered by a sheet. As the truth unraveled, Yates was diagnosed of sever postpartum depression and psychosis was much more serious than people assumed. After her first child, she started to have visions of a knife attacking her. The problems got worst when her husband moved them across the country and into a trailer home. She became isolated and alone; however, she continued to have children. Her father was also suffering Alzheimer’s, and eventually passed away. From here, she tried to committee suicide twice and was committed the hospital on multiple conditions. She became overwhelmingly involved in her religion which took its own toll on her. She believed that she was saving her children from Satin by killing them, also known as religious delusions.
Her attorney attempted to plea insanity. The court, however, found her competent to stand trial. The biggest debate was to prove that Yates knew that drowning her children was wrong. In her original case, a testimony suggested that an episode of “Law and Order” swaying the jury to find her guilty of capital murder. However, this episode never took place. During her sentencing to decide if she should receive the death penalty, the jury decided to grant her with life in prison.
Clinical psychology plays a large role in this case. Clinical psychology ultimately deals with mental disorders—preventing, diagnosing, and treating. In this case, Yates suffered from a very sever mental disorder. Her mental disorders were questioned from the start of the trial. Unfortunately, she was never really helped. Her husband didn’t acknowledge how deep her problems were, and others didn’t spend enough time with her to see them. She often kept her thoughts and vicious plans to herself. If Yates would have been assessed, she may have been able to get a diagnosis. That diagnosis could have prevented the death of children. Yate’s husband was often regarded as the criminal because he didn’t see her problems or help her. Abnormal psychology can also be viewed in this case. Yates heard voices and saw visions of killing people. Like mentioned earlier, she also believed that she was protecting her kids from satin.
The first article I found discussed yates retrial where she was found not guilty. In this article, it states that she was committed to a state mental hospital until she is no longer a threat. One interesting thing I saw was that it mentioned her ex-husband. I wasn’t aware that they had gotten a divorce in the time of her trials. Mr. Yates discusses that the jury looked at why it happened this round instead of what happened.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/us/27yates.html?_r=1&ref=andreayates
The next article I found was a biography of Andrea. She was born the youngest of five in a Catholic household. She went to the University of Houston for nursing school and graduate from the University of Texas. She then worked as a nurse to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. After she met Randy, they bought a house and started their family. Her depression began after the birth of her fourth son, which lead to her begin the religious studies of Woroniecki. From here, her illness worstned. At one point, Mr. Yates found her chewing in her fingers and committed suicide the next day. She was prescribed many different types of psychotic drug treatment. She spent many tiems in the hospital but always discharged. The most chilling thing was the article stated that she called the police and just kept repeating that “it’s time.”
http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00803/Yates_Frameset.htm
The next thing I looked up was postpartum depression. The article stated that it usually occurred within the first three months after delivery. First, it listed things that were acceptable after a pregnancy. It then listed things that might increase your chance of postpartum depression. One thing that was interesting was it is higher if you are under the age of twenty. The symptoms seemed to be generic, though. I felt like anyone could be experiencing these side effects. The ones that really stuck out, however, were things such as unable to care for the baby and being afraid to being alone with the baby. They also listed treatments and test associated with this condition.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004481/
The Andrea Yates case is a devastating murder case that stands out in my memory. When I first learned of this case I was only 11 years old. I could not understand how a mother could kill her children and not be given the death penalty. Over the years, and after reading this chapter, I’ve been able to better understand how incidents like this can happen, and how hard it is to determine the appropriate punishment.
Andrea Yates was a young mother who murdered her five children in their family bath tub. After killing all of them, she called the police. She also called her husband (who was at work), Russell, and told him to come home.
Andrea had a history of mental illness and had attempted to kill herself in the past. She struggled with post-partum mental disorder. She felt isolated, alone, and extremely depressed. She had been hospitalized for mental illness, previously in her life. Some people feel her husband is equally as responsible for the murders because he knew of her mental illness and continued to allow her to take care of the children on her own. Yates’ delusions caused her to believe that the only way to save her children from Satan was to kill them.
Andrea’s husband seemed to be rather controlling. He wanted a large family with a lot of children, and Andrea may have wanted differently. Andrea already showed signs of mental illness after having her first child. Andrea and her husband continued to have children, despite these warning signs. In addition to her children, Andrea also took care of her father who suffered from Alzheimer’s. He later died, which may have contributed to Andrea’s mental breakdown.
Psychology played a huge role in this case. The court needed to determine if Andrea was competent enough to stand trial and they determined she was competent. Andrea’s defense attorney pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The courts needed to determine whether or not Yates was competent that she was breaking the law at the time of the murder. They determined that she knew what she was doing was wrong according to the law, but morally she thought she was doing the right thing and “saving” her children. Andrea was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison.
The first online article I found is from The Atlantic. It talks about how Andrea Yates is doing presently. In 2005, a Texas appellate court overturned Yates' conviction and ordered a new trial. A prosecution witness, Park Dietz, had falsely told jurors that Yates had watched an episode of "Law and Order" in which a mother had drowned her children in their bathtub. The purpose of the testimony was to establish premeditation -- but no episode had ever aired. That new trial, in 2006, followed worldwide publicity about postpartum depression. Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Yates currently resides and is treated at the Kerrville State Hospital, which is located approximately 70 miles from San Antonio
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/how-andrea-yates-lives-and-lives-with-herself-a-decade-later/254302/
The second website I found was a memorial for the 5 precious children that lost their lives. This website was made by Andrea’s family. It describes each of the five children that were killed. It talks about each of the children’s personalities and interests. It shows pictures of the family and talked about their hobbies.
http://www.yateskids.org/
The last website I visited was a personal blog of Rusty Yates. He talks about the current events taking place in his life. It was last updated in October of 2009. He talks about how he is starting law school and he also talks a little bit about his new family. He also uses the blog to dispel rumors about his wife’s case. He also mentioned that he has visited Andrea, and that she was doing well and had been medically stable for five years. It’s extremely fascinating to be able to hear first-hand accounts of what happened.
http://yatescase.org
Please read Chapter 19 in the Minds on Trial book (Andrea Yates). Briefly summarize the chapter and your opinion of it.
Its about the story ofAndreaary Yates. She drowned her 5 children in a bath tub and laid of the five of them in a bed with a blanket over them after they were dead. She left the 5th and oldest in the tub because he was to heavy to cary. She then preceded to call the police then her husband to get him home. There were several things that were puzzling to the murder like they fact that she was a valedictorian and college graduate.
It was later discovered that the spiral down into Andras depression all started with her first child and continued during their move to Florida, her father suffering from alzhimers, the birth of her other 4 children and many other things. She tried to commit suicide by taking her fathers proscription medicine. Later she attempted suicide by putting a knife to her throat. After being released from the hospital she did fairly well for a year.
Andrea was not the only one who was blame for her childrens death. Many people found her husband equally responsible for the murder. During the trial the jury first had to decide if she was mentally stable enough to stand trial and after several hours of deliberation they found she was. Next the had to figure out if she was insane at the time of the murders or not. She was found to be guilty of murder. The jury then faced the decision of if she would face life in prison or the death penalty and they decided she would get life in prison. But, due to the fact that the jury wrongfully thought Andrea got the idea of murdering her children and pleading the insanity plea from Law and Order she was given a second trial.
Then describe what aspects of psychology are relevant to this case.
On big aspect that is relevant to this class is the influence of the jury. There were three decisions the jury had to make. The first one being weather she was mentally able to stand trial or not, the second on being weather she was guilty of murder or not, and the third being weather she would face life in prison or the death penalty.
In persuading the jury weather or not Andrea should be guilty of murder they had to convince the jury she was not mentally insane at the time of the murder and knew what she was doing was wrong. On big defense they had for Andrea was that she knew what she was doing was legally wrong but she found it morally wrong to protect them. The fact that everyone agreed that Andrea was mentally not there it made it easier on everyone since the only thing they had to prove was the state of mind at the time of the murder. The jury was largely influence to vote against Andrea when the hear about the "FALSE" Law and Order episode where apparently a woman drowned her children and plead insanity and that aired days only days before the murder of her children, so that is where Andrea go the idea from. Since the jury didnt know this episode was not a real episode it was compelling evidence as to why Andrea did what she did. If they had not heard this they may have decided she wasnt guilty of murder due to mental insanity.
Finally, find three additional sources (links) on the internet that discuss the specific case, or a specific psychological issue relevant to the case. Discuss each of those links. Provide your links at the bottom of your comment
In Andreas second trial she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Rusty still remained married to Andrea 4 years after the murder of their children. They now remain friends and he goes to visit her. Rusty has not gotten re-married and has son. Rusty apparent enrolled in law school in 2009 to improve the way society responds to crime, expically mental insanity crimes. As of june of 2011 Parnham hopes to go to the judge and argue that Andrea is now not a danger to herself or anyone else and that she will remain sane after she is released.
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/decade-drowning-children-lawyer-claims-andrea-yates-ready/story?id=13883269&page=2#.T3E-jfmsC8Q
Postpartum depression only occurs following child birth and can last up to a year, and happens in 10 to 20% of women. Symptoms can involve preoccupation with the childs heath or thoughts of harming the child. It is not know what contributes to PPD but it is thought that hormone levels, situational risks, and life stressors. In order to treat PPD it is recommended that one takes prescribed medication and goes to therapy. C affine is something that should be avoided because it triggers anxiety and mood
changes.
Postpartum Psychosis, PPP, occurs in 1 10th of 1% of new mothers and can occur withing the first one to three weeks following child birth. Symptoms involve refusal to eat, frantic energy, confusion, memory loss, and paranoia. Women who experience are urged to be hospitalized until it subsides and are likely to experience it again if the have another child.
http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/go/postpartum
Andrea went to school in Texas. There she was valedictorian, captain of the swim team, and officer in the NHS. After high school she went on to college to get a 2 year degree in nursing. When she was 25 she met Rusty in the apartment complex she lived in. At the time she met rusty andrea was getting over a previous relationship. Despite her trouble getting over her previously relationship they got married in '93 and planned on having as many kids as life would let them. After Andrea had be hospitalized several times her family urged Rusty to buy a home to get her out of the bus which he did. Andrea seemed normal for a while but then stopped taking her meds when she got pregnant with her 5th and final child then was faced with the death of her father. She was hospitalized again but the doctor released her and took her off her meds, shortly after being released from the hospital andrea committed the murder of her children.
http://crime.about.com/od/current/p/andreayates.htm
I remembered reading about Andrea Yates in a chapter from the other book, but this section went in to way greater detail about the trial and Yates’ history of mental illness. I remember thinking how could a mother do that to her children, no matter what the circumstances? This chapter helped explain that a little more. It also sort of toyed with being sympathetic towards her and putting more of the blame on her husband.
Andrea Yates was a married woman with 5 kids that suffered severe mental problems. She developed postpartum depression after her fourth child was born and was forced to deal with many obstacles that worsened her illness. She recalled having vision of hurting someone, possibly having to do with Satan. She then became very religious, and after the death of her father, whom she had been caring for, she hit rock bottom. After being discharged from inpatient therapy, she drowned her children in the bathtub, and then called the cops and her husband. She claimed that by drowning her children she was saving them from an eternity in hell. Obviously, the defense tried for the insanity defense. It was clear to the psychiatrists and experts who examined her that she was not mentally stable. The big question of the trial would then be, at the time of the crime, did she know whether her actions were right or wrong.
There were many expert witnesses from both sides. The defense focused on the fact that she wanted to save her children from Satan. She knew it was illegal and wrong, but sincerely believed that it was morally right. The prosecution focused on the fact that even involving Satan indicated that she knew her actions were wrong or evil. The expert for the prosecution, Dietz, even suggested that she had gotten the idea from a very similar Law and Order episode that he had been the consultant for. It turns out that this episode never aired, and that caused a huge controversy for the trial. The jury found her guilty and because they were aware of the false information given by Dietz, they sentenced her to life in prison instead of death. The defense took the case to the Court of Appeals and they ruled it Yates’ favor.
There are many aspects of psychology throughout this chapter. One of the main ones is the role of Andrea Yates’ husband. He played a pretty huge, indirect part in the murder of his children. He forced harsh living conditions on her, he was very controlling, he refused treatment that could have helped her, and he got her pregnant when he knew she was mentally unstable. Another aspect is how the jury perceived Dietz’s testimony. They were interviewed after the trial, and proved that they put a lot of credibility on it.
I had heard of postpartum depression before but I wanted to know more about it, so I decided to research further on that topic. I found an article that explained the caused and symptoms of postpartum depression and Andrea Yates fit every single one of them from have many stressors to not eating. http://www.webmd.com/depression/postpartum-depression/postpartum-depression-topic-overview
I found an article about her trial and it included some of her husband’s opinions about it that I found interesting. He was for the death penalty before his wife’s arrest. This makes me wonder how many of the people who are for the death penalty, know someone who has been affected by it, and how much does being affected by it change one’s views. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
I was curious to see how the trial played out after being appealed. Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was sentenced to a mental institution in 2009. It weird to think that someday she might get out.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1837248.html
The Andrea Yates case was brutally sad. Andrea was a mother of five children. Sadly, she was a very depressed woman suffering from Post-Partum Depression. Post-Partum Depression (PPD) most often occurs in women after they have given birth. Her severe depression is thought that have played a role in her killing her five children. The Book “Minds on Trial” described the murders a detail. It was pretty hard to read as four of the kids where pretty young and she drowned them in the bathtub. There was one older child who was aware of what going on and he put up a struggle before he too was drowned. After she drowned them she put the four littler ones in a bed and covered them with a sheet. She left the older child in the bathtub because she was able to lift him. After all of this she called the police and her husband and told them what happened. Andrea was arrested and the prosecution tried for the death penalty while her defense attorney pursued the insanity plea.
After reading this chapter in the book is sounds like Andrea lived a pretty tough live. She was under a great deal of control from her husband. He made all of the family decisions and made many decisions for Andrea. They moved many times because he wanted to she really didn’t have a say. Because of all this constant pressure and control she was left feeling lonely and depressed. There were many signs of her severe depression and her husband paid little attention to these. The one that stuck out to me the most was when she was caring for her father who had Alzheimer’s. While taking care of him she tried to overdose on his medication. This put her in the hospital and was later diagnosed with depression. She was again back in the hospital when she put a knife to her own throat. With all of these different signs of depression her husband still allowed her to watch and take care of their children.
Andrea’s trail was very publicized. As I stated earlier the prosecution was searching for the death penalty while the defense for Andrea was pursuing the insanity plea. Being the insanity plea was being used Andrea was evaluated by two psychiatrist to see if she was competent for trial. After the evaluations the psychiatrist decided she was competent enough to stand trial. As part of using the insanity plea the attorney’s had to decide whether or not she know what she did was wrong. In order for insanity to work she had to have no idea that killing her kids was wrong. In the end they decided she did realize it was wrong and was sentenced to life in prison. The reason she didn’t get the death penalty was because of some miss information in some of the testimonies.
Psychology was a huge role in this case and further more the trial. The court had to use psychology a lot mainly because the insanity plea was being used. They had to try to kind of see through Andreas eyes for a moment to see if she was truly insane. They had two psychiatrist evaluated her who defiantly used social psychology. They had to ask her questions and just talk to her to figure out her competency. In doing all of this they were able to come to a conclusion that she was not insane and that she knew that killing her kids was wrong. Overall, I believe social psychology played the largest role in this case.
The first link I found was very interesting. It was an article that discussed the phone call Andrea had with her husband. I talked about this earlier but after she killed her children she called her husband. What she said was kind of chilling. The conversation started by Andrea saying “you need to come home” to her husband. He responded by saying, “what is wrong” and she said, “its time, I did it.” He asked her to explain and she said, “it’s the children.” Making it seem almost what he knew what she was talking about he asked, “which one?” and she replied “all of them.” Frightened he left quickly from his job at NASA. I never knew how the conversations went and it was just a little chilling and shocking to read their conversation.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html
What I thought was most important and interesting from this article was the discussion of religion in Andrea and Rusty’s life. I found that they were both devoted Christians who followed Christianity very closely. Part of what I read was that Andrea killed her kids to save them from satin. Andrea learned from their priest that if she and her husband did not bring up their children in the name of Jesus Christ, she and her children would be bound for Hell. It was interesting to read about how this could’ve possibly played a role in the murders.
http://www.nndb.com/people/026/000085768/
Through this link I was able to find out that the insanity defense is rarely used. The reason it is rarely used is because this type of defense is rarely successful. There have only been a select few cases out there where this defense has worked including the McNaughton case. McNaughton was acquitted of charges of trying to kill the Prime Minister of Britain. It was interesting to find out that this defense is rarely used and I can see why defense attorneys never use it because they know it would be a waste of time to try it when they know it will probably be unsuccessful.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/crime/trial/faqs.html
The case of Andrea Yates is incredibly interesting as well as terrifying. Andrea Yates was a 36-year-old mother of 5 who, after suffering from and being diagnosed with severe mental depression for 2 years, murdered her children by drowning them in the bathtub. After drowning her children, she immediately called 911, asking for a police officer as well as calling her husband, telling him to come home from work because "the children were hurt." Her husband, Russell Yates, came home to 5 dead children and numerous police officers. Andrea's depression was hypothesized to be postpartum, meaning she started expressing depressive symptoms after the birth of her child. Shortly after her first son, Noah, was born, Andrea started suffering from delusions of knives and stabbing. She never told anyone of these delusions until after her arrest. This delusion was not an isolated case, either. Andrea continued to suffer from delusions in the future, including images of visits from Satan.
The Yates' home was not a very stable one from what the chapter tells us. Russell and Andrea moved from Texas to Florida, and back. During this time, Andrea, who was starting to suffer from depressive symptoms, became obsessed with the teachings of an evangelical preacher. This may have been the start of her incredibly religious hallucinations. One thing I was rather confused about was Russell's decision to move his rather large family into a trailer park, and later on an old converted mobile home. This surprised me because while Andrea no longer worked after the birth of her first son, Russell was a NASA engineer (who made about $80,000 per year). Surely he could afford better housing, but chose not to. My family raised 4 children in a house, in a safe neighborhood, on a salary of under $30,000 per year at one point. While the cost of living in Iowa is no doubt lower than that of Texas, I feel like the home conditions were not as beneficial, for Andrea or her kids, as they could have been.
Yates had a long history with mental instability. She was hospitalized for two separate suicide attempts as well as prescribed medications from psychiatrists and undergoing talk therapy, though she was not very forthcoming with information. During the trial, psychologists from both the defense and the prosecution, found that Andrea was indeed mentally ill, however, this does not mean that she was legally insane at the time of the trial. As stated in our textbook and this one, legal insanity means that she had to either 1) not understand the quality and consequences of her actions or 2) not understand the difference between right and wrong. The question of motive came out a lot during the trial. It was thought that maybe Andrea killing her children was an act of revenge against her husband, who was said to be very controlling, religious, and demanding. Evidence of this comes from the fact that Andrea had 5 children in the span of 7 years, even after psychiatrists advised not having any more children after Andrea's first suicide attempt. The defense argued that Andrea saw the killing of her children as the right thing to do. She was trying to protect them from Satan. In her mind, the only way to save them from a fate of eternal suffering was to kill them. Eventually, after under 4 hours of deliberation, Yates was found guilty of capital murder. She was however saved from the death penalty and only sentenced to life in prison. Personally, I disagreed with this verdict. I think there was plenty of evidence to provide reasonable doubt as to whether first degree murder actually occurred that night. I personally believe that Yates was truly legally insane at the time of the crime.
One very controversial part of the testimony was given by a forensic psychologist from the prosecution, Dr. Park Dietz. When Dietz's clinical experience with postpartum psychosis was brought into question, he spoke of the experience he had with consulting for the television show, Law and Order, one episode of said show being about a mother who killed her children by drowning them in a bathtub and then being found insane. The existence of this episode however was found to be false. While it was decided that Dietz had not purposefully lied under oath, his testimony was still false, giving the defense cause to appeal.
There are several different psychological factors brought into play here, but I think the most prominent were clinical and social psychology, and perhaps a little bit of health psychology as well. Clinical psychology was present in the diagnosis and former treatment of Yates's severe depression. Social psychology was found in persuasion and group behavior that is always found in a courtroom and jury cases. It can also be found in the apparent gender differences discussed a the end of the chapter regarding sympathy for Andrea's case. Health psychology also played a role, I think, due to Andrea's quality of living prior to the death of her children. I think the poor quality of life she endured had a serious effect on her mental health.
www.law.duke.edu/journals/djglp/downloads/gen10p61.pdf
I used this article to learn a little bit more about Andrea Yates's home life. It provides a timeline of her life and trial.
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=9a88af8c-a14d-4ff2-8f4e-5c57aa91c7fd%40sessionmgr10&vid=1&hid=14&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=afh&AN=9606282992
This article describes the prevalence of postpartum depression (which is found to be about 13%) and possible risk factors for developing it. Curiously, I found that low social support and status as well as poor martial relationships can be factors in the development of postpartum depression. These are things that I believe Angela suffered from because of her isolation with her apparently controlling husband in a trailer park in Texas.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1837248.html
This is a short news article talking about the results of Andrea Yates's appeal trial. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a state mental institution. I personally agree with this decision after reading about the trial, but I guess I can't really know what my thoughts would be had I actually witnessed the trial.
Chapter 19 tells about the horrible murder of Andrea Yates' children, which she is responsible for. The details are many and gruesome and anyone who hears the story is bound to be disturbed. What may be even more disturbing is the fact that she immediately called the police and upon their arriving confessed to the murders. Clearly a case of insanity, Yates was found to have a severe mental illness. She had tried to commit suicide before and was hospitalized a second time after a second incident when she held a knife to her throat.
Many tried to figure out why Yates would have killed her children. It was said that maybe she was suffering postpartum and was upset about her living conditions. It had been her husbands idea to have as many children as they did, and it was her responsibility to care for them, and his decision to sell their home and move them into a remodeled bus. There was a lot of debate on whether or not she was competent to stand trial. Yates had started hallucinating and would take as much as two minutes to answer a question. After much discussion, she was found to be competent. In the end she was given life in prison. However, it was determined that Dr. Park Dietz provided some errors that caused an appeal of the sentence.
I have heard this story of Andrea Yates and her children many times, and every time I still cringe. However, it's an important case that everyone should hear about. Especially those going into psychology or something to do with the police force. Andrea Yates was clearly very sick and needed help. Her husband, Russell Yates, got a lot of criticism for not realizing earlier how dangerous his wife was and getting her better help than she was receiving. And while Russell couldn't have known exactly what she was thinking, if you're married, I would think you should have some kind of an idea about your significant others psychological state. Also, during the trial, there was a lot of discussion about her competancy and whether she realized what she did was wrong, and whether when she committed the murders she realized what she was doing and that it was wrong. It was also found that she was suffering from postpartum and a severe mental illness. Before her trial she also admitted to seeing images of Satan all over and the idea that she was trying to protect her children from him was suggested. Clearly, her psychological state was not good and she needed major help. It just goes to show you how terrible the mind can be when you are psychologically ill and what it can lead to if you don't get the right treatment.
This first article tells more about the case. It's an in-depth review done by tru TV that describes the Yates' lives and provides the conversation she had with her husband when she called him and hinted to him she had just killed their children, as well as the conversation she had with the responding officer about what she did.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html
My second link is an article written through Time Magazine. It too goes through the details of the case and talks a lot about the trial. It also focuses on her psychosis state.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
My last link was done by abc and tells about Andrea Yates life now. Written a year ago, it's entitled: "10 Years Later: The Legacy of Andrea Yates' Crime." It talks about Andrea's life now, where she is, and how she spends her days. Her defense lawyer, George Parnham, also talks a bit about her and comments on why he thinks she did it. He also admits he's crossed a professional line awhile back as he now treats Andrea like a daughter.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=8201721
This chapter is about Andrea Yates, a woman whom murdered all of her children. She kill her kids, all who were younger than ten years of age, while her husband was away at work and lined them up next to each other as if they were sleeping. It was known that she was sick in the head however she received no treatment for her apparent mental illness. When she plead insanity during her trial, he husband seemed to have forgiven her (being a very religious man) saying it wasn't her fault, that she would have never committed these acts if the government would have given her the help she needed from her mental illness.
Personally, I find it to be absolutely disgusting for nay parent to cause harm to their children, especially a mother to infants. This reminds me of the Casey Anthony case quite a bit. I understand Andrea Yates was insane, because one would have to be criminally crazy in order to murder their own children. However, what I do not understand still is how simply pleading insanity has the possibility to get you off. I am reading "Inside the Mind of BTK" for my book report and in it the author, John Douglas, is asked to help get a serial killer off death row so he can be better studied. He snaps back with stating that he can only be useful in studies for the first few days, then nothing is going to change. I could not agree more with this statement.
My first link is from the NY Times and talks about how Yates gets off on the retrial. They bring up the fact that she will live out the rest of her days until she is deemed no longer a threat. Bullshit. The woman murdered her 5 children! If she can murder her own young who is to say she won't hurt a complete stranger?!
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/us/27yates.html?_r=1&ref=andreayates
My second source talks, in one part, how she was raising her children wrong, how they were destined to burn in the fires of hell. Whether or not she truly believed that would not have mattered if she wanted to help them. Killing them will only send them to hell sooner, right? Her defense there should not have helped her win her plea. Vulgar human being.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
Finally, my last source brings up why she seemed sane to many people. She planned and premeditated her children's deaths as well as completely aware of her surroundings and what she was doing. She could even speak clearly and was not shook up. Unbelievable.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20020327.html
3/26/12
Chapter 19 Yates
This chapter covers the crime and case of Andrea Yates. She was the mother of five that drowned all her children in their household bathtub. This chapter discusses the events in Yate’s life (both life events and what she was going through mentally). Andrea faced many mental issues – from what I remember they really started acting up after their first child. She had a combination of postpartum depression, depression, and possible schizophrenia symptoms. These symptoms increased or started acting up again after each child she had also when her father passed away (she had been taking care of him while he suffered from Alzheimer’s). During this time Andrea became very involved with an evangelical couple. Russell and Andrea Yates began to live like their friends, the evangelical couple. They sold their home and many of their possessions so that they could move into a bus and travel or live in trailer parks. Experts that evaluated and testified in Andrea’s case said that these living conditions made her conditions worse – which makes sense.
This chapter goes on to discuss how this court case was set up. Andrea‘s attorney was trying to have her found legally insane. In most states there are two stipulations to proving that someone in legally insane 1) the nature or consequences of the act are known 2) knowing whether the act was right or wrong. However, in Texas they only require that person known whether their act was right or wrong to determine their sanity at the time of the crime. This changes the approach of the attorneys and the way that the jury has to address this case. The have to focus solely on this element of Andrea’s case.
This chapter also discusses if the father of these children played a role in their murders. Was he an over bearing husband that made his wife continue to have children even though with each child her postpartum depression and overall condition would worsen? This chapter made it sound like it was his idea to live in a mobile home. This seclusion added to Andrea’s feelings of loneliness and her depression. Also, it’s pretty hard to believe that a father and husband could be so oblivious to his wife’s condition. He had to have known that his children were in danger in his wife’s care.
Lastly, this chapter addresses the differences of the insanity plea between men and women. Women tend to be more likely to be deemed legally insane. The contributing factors are out of their control. Whereas, with men the contributing factors to insanity are often assumed to be situational. I found this part of the chapter most interesting.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7341/is_31/ai_n32050628/
This article discusses the differences between men and woman defendants. They go on to discuss that if the same evidence were presented for a defendant that was male he may be found guilty but if it were a female defendant she may be found not be found guilty. There appears to be a large body of research dedicated to gender differences in the court room. There are gender differences in terms of the defendants, attorneys and the jury.
Chapter 19 described the case of Andrea Yates. Andrea Yates was a wife and a mother of five young children. She did not have many hardships growing up and lived a normal life. She was valedictorian, a state swimmer and a college graduate. She had a great job and what seemed to be a normal life. Her and her husband decided to start a family and soon after her first child was born, she became a stay at home mother. Soon after the birth, visions of stabbing and knives invaded her mind. Andrea's life soon started to spiral out of control into a life filled with post partum depression. Her home life became stressful once she had more children along with moving from her home into a trailer. Andrea found herself unhappy in her living conditions and stressed from the job of being a stay at home mother in a trailer away from home. Not only was she stressed from her home life, her family also consisted of issues. Her father was suffering from Alzheimer's disease in which she would do what she could in order to take care of him. Andrea held a large load of responsibility for other people's lives in her two hands. Her religious beliefs as well as her visions began to flood her brain. Andrea tried to commit suicide by attempting to overdose on her father's medications. This led her to her first hospitalization and to speak with a psychiatrist. She was diagnosed with severe depression with psychotic features. She heard voices, saw visions, and felt as if she were in the presence of satan. She went through different medications for her mental illnesses in order to find a the right medication to help her, but nothing seemed to perform perfectly for her. This chapter also goes into discussing the expert testimonies in the trial which played a large role. Resnick testified Andrea believed she was saving her children from Satan by killing them therefor she knew what she was doing was legally wrong but morally right due to her delusions. Dietz attempted to disprove her claim of insane by stating she put the blame on Satan and that the thought was given from Satan because she knew that the action was wrong and that she recognizes the idea of killing your own children is evil. She knew it was not a good thing and was not right. I found this chapter very disturbing due to the fact of how a person can bring life into this world and not cherish that person's life with everything they have. It angers me that people can take another person's life away as if they had every ounce of control over that person's fate. I could not find it within me to feel an ounce of sympathy towards her because if you were in such a mental state and became depressed after having one child, you should never reproduce numerous times afterwards. The other part which bothered me was the fact the husband was also being put to blame as much as Andrea. Some people were making it as if he were her right hand man in the process. The beginning of the chapter even stated he made sure to hand her her medications in the morning, wouldn't you think a person who would want their children dead not give their mental spouse her medications?
Psychology is evident in many ways. Biopsychology is evident in which Andrea depended on her medications prescribed by her psychiatrist in order to keep the chemical imbalances from occurring. When she did not have her medications, she suffered from depression and psychosis, but with the help of medications, she was able to function normally. What was difficult about it was finding the right medications as well as the correct amount of such medications in order for the medications to perform at the maximum potential. Abnormal psychology is also evident in relation to the biopsychology. She suffered from post partum depression as well as signs of psychosis and schizophrenia. These mental illnesses were a large weight in the trial and in her plea of insanity. Psychology of gender differences was also mentioned in the chapter regarding the differences of the insanity plea regarding gender. The chapter stated how woman will have more sympathy in an insanity plea compared to men. Some people believed Russel should have been prosecuted because she did not heed the warning signs. In most cases people attribute a woman's violent behavior to biological or psychological factors and the violent actions of a man are in relation to his control over situational factors. In most people's eyes, men know what they are doing and women will have something wrong with them. The competency trial proved interesting to me because she was found competent to stand trial although she had difficulty with attention and concentration as well as no evidence of faking the illness.
Here are my three links:
http://articles.cnn.com/2007-12-11/us/court.archive.yates8_1_russell-rusty-yates-kaylynn-williford-joe-owmby?_s=PM:US
This article describes the ending of the case and also has some quotes from the jury panel on Andrea Yates's case. The article also encloses quotes from the attorneys and family members of the defendant. It also goes into explaining some of the expert testimonies as well as some of Andrea's history with her illness.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
This article contains an interview portion between Dietz and Andrea. She claims Satan would leave once she killed her children or else her children would have been tormented by him. It also has information about the experts as well but more about why she killed her children and what she had going through her head.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/yate-m16.shtml
This article gives an overview of the timeline of the case. What was most interesting about this article to me was when Yates wanted to shave her head in order to show Ferguson, the medical director at the County Jail, where she picked at her head due to Satan. This article also describes Texas rules in defining insanity.
Andrea Yates is a woman who drowned her five children in a bath tub. She then proceeded to lay each of her children underneath sheets on the bed, however she ended up leaving her eldest son in the tub, since he was older and more heavier to get out. She called the police and then her husband who had to come home to a place that didn’t look like the place he had left earlier that same day. Cops were everywhere and all five of his children were gone. This chapter then goes into details of how she may of came about killing her children and her mental illnesses that have been off and on since the birth of all her children. Environmental factors, they say may of played a part to her mental deterioration. Examples of this would be having to go through five pregnancies, then taking care of each one of her children, her father with Alzheimer’s, always on the move when she was growing up, and living in a motor home. She did try to commit suicide, and was in and out of inpatient care a handful of times. It goes into saying that her husband, Russell started to become accountable by their own peers and people around them, for leaving their children in an unsafe environment. Later she was tried, and the jury convicted her of the crime and she was sentenced to life in prison because she did know the difference between right and wrong when the crime was committed.
Psychology did play a part in this case because it dealt with her ability to comprehend what happened, while her children were being suffocated by her. Cognitive psychology is seen throughout the trial, practically at the time when the jury was told about the Law and Order TV show, so that information handed out was now stuck inside the juries head, and it played a key role in the outcome of their ruling. All of Andrea’s mental illnesses or problems connected to cognitive psychology as well, because they all dealt with her mind and what was happening with it. Social psychology played a part in the trial when the jury was made up of eleven females and one male, and also with the way everyone involved with the trial was going back and forth with the verdict of what truly happened. The persuasive effects on the jury also were psychological. The psychiatrists who were asked to be on the stand made the jury believe what they said was true by saying whether they felt she knew what she was doing was right or wrong, while she was committing the crime.
This site shows that Andrea was found not guilty by reason due to her insanity, so then she has been committed to a state mental hospital, with hearings that happen periodically, before a judge, so they can determine whether or not she should get released. If she would have been convicted of murder, she would be in a prison cell for life.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1837248.html
This site is a website that was made for the five little ones who were drowned by Andrea. Their family members made this site where all of their pictures are seen and some facts about them are shared. It’s a very sweet site, and makes me sad just looking at the pictures of all the kids. They had so much life left to live, but it got taken away from them so quickly.
http://www.yateskids.org/
This site talks about where Andrea Yates is now. She’s at the Kerrville State Hospital, still getting treated for her mental illnesses. But I find it interesting that she is taking a very active role in the Yates Children Memorial Fund, which was created by Parnham and his wife, they wanted to spread the word of mental illnesses and postpartum illness, in particular. Andrea makes cards and manufacturers aprons, which she has been selling anonymously, and then the money she receives for these she donates to the Fund. Along that Andrea will write thank-you letters to donors and other supporters.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/how-andrea-yates-lives-and-lives-with-herself-a-decade-later/254302/
Chapter 19 (Andrea Yates)
This chapter is about the case of Andrea Yates. Andrea Yates had a normal life up until she had her first child. Her early life was very successful. She was her high school's valedictorian, a swimming champion, a college graduate, and a professional nurse. After her and her husband Russell had their first son Andrea stopped working as a nurse. She then had her first vision in which she saw an image of a knife that transformed into a vison of someone being stabbed. She didn't tell anyone until after her arrest for killing her five children. After the event of the murders it was believed that she suffered from postpartum mental disorder. There were many stressors that were believed to have caused Andrea to become severely depressed. Starting with having five children in a span of seven years. Also after their fourth child in 1999 Andrea's father was suffering from Alzheimer's and she cared for him until he died in 2001. They even had another child in November of 2000 which added more stress on Andrea. Her husband worked for NASA and would often be away at work. He eventually decided to sell their home and have everyone move into a mobile home. The mobile home was said to be in deplorable condition. All these stressors combined and her history of severe mental illness, is believed to have triggered the killing of her five children. She was raising all these children by herself and recovering from her pregnancy while caring for her sick father until he died. I feel that would make a sain person become severely depressed let a lone a person suffering from a mental disorder. Andrea attemped to commit suicide by overdosing on her father's medication and on another occasion she tried to slit her own throat. She was then hospitalized and was diagnosed with severe depression by a psychiatrist. After being hospitalized a second time for trying to cut her own throat the psychiatrist diagnosed her with having severe depression with psychotic episodes. She started hearing voices and had concerns that she might hurt somebody. Doctors also believed that she could have suffered from Schizophrenia as well. After the next year or so she was functioning better after continuosly seeing her psychiatrist and due to taking various antidepressants. A physician recommended that they should not have anymore children but shortly after that's when they had their fifth child Mary who only lived six months before being drowned in a bath tub along with the rest of the children. Within days of her arrest she was evaluated by a clinical psychologist in order to determine if she was competent enough to stand trail. He stated that during his interview she had hallucinations of Satan and would take up to two minutes to process and answer questions. At first she was said to be not be able to stand trial because of her religious delusions. But eventually their opinions shifted and she was found competent to stand trail. Andrea was sent to a hospital instead of getting the death penalty.
I believe that her husband's selfishness was a huge contributor to his wife's breakdown. I feel that by them living in those poor conditions, not to mention close quarters contributed to the murdering of their children. Also by him impregnating his wife even though he knew she was not mentally stable was not right at all. I think that her husband should have been blamed for the deaths as well. This chapter was very sad and also eye opening that not only is a person responsible for a murder but in some cases it's the things going on in the environment around them. In the end I agree that she deserved to be hospitalized instead of getting the death penalty but I don't think that she should be able to leave. I feel that she could still be harmful to others and by letting her out would be to much of a risk. I also feel that there was some foul play that involved the husband. I feel that he is guilty of something although it wasn't proven. He did many things that a person shouldn't have done to his pregnant unstable wife.
The main aspects of psychology in this chapter I believe were abnormal psychology, bio psychology, social psychology, and clinical psychology. Abnormal psychology was present when the chapter described all of Andrea's episodes such as her attepted suicides and her hallucinations. Also Bio psychology when they talked about the various antidepressants Andrea took in order to function somewhat normal enough to become unhospitalized. Clinical psychology was shown when she was diagnosed multiple times with different disorders. When she was first diagnosed with severe depression. Then after her second suicide attempt she was diagnosed with severe depression with psychotic features. Some doctors even believed she had schizophrenia. Also Social psychology when in court the jury decided that she deserved the hospitalization rather than the death penalty. Also how the defendant's attorney persuaded the court to enough to find Andrea Yates to be not guilty and to get Andrea the opportunity to recieve medical treatment instead of death.
Here is a times magazine article that adds more to the story. For instance how Russell also known as Rusty supported the death penalty until his wife appeared in court. Also that Dietz a very important role in the case was paid $500 an hour in hope that he would persuade the jury that Yates was insane under Texas law
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
This article is another source of media and it shows what the key factors of the case were. Also gives information about after the case. Russell filled for divorce, and information about how much he sold his home for after his children where murdered in it.
http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?10+Duke+J.+Gender+L.+&+Pol'y+1
This paper breaksdown the case and informs you about various things including the important aspects of the case, about the yates family before the murders, etc.
Chapter 19 gives us the story of Andrea Yates, a mother who murdered her children in the bathtub. I remember this case vividly as it was widely discussed in my first year of college. I don't remember disliking her husband as much as I do after reading this chapter though. It is absolutely terrible that Russell was continuing to make his wife have children despite having the prior knowledge of his wife's depression and psychotic episodes. I think it would only take one suicide attempt before I would begin to worry for the safety of not only her, but the kids first and foremost. It seems as though this guy was so wrapped up in his work (I assume an engineer at NASA has very long work hours) that he could not even provide basic emotional support to his wife. What's worse is that he subjected her to a circus style of living. I have nothing against living in a trailer or mobile home, but a converted bus for a family of 6?! I can definitely understand how someone could have "lost it" or "snapped" in this kind of situation. However, I cannot in ANY situation advocate violent behavior or taking someone's life (except maybe in the case of rape or torture).
The way I have been talking would make one think that I am a supporter or Andrea Yates. Let me assure you that I am not. I agree with Dietz's testimony in that Andrea knew that Satan does evil things and by killing her children she knew she was not doing a good Godly thing. For this reason, I understand how the insanity defense failed for Yates. I pity the woman more than anything else. I honestly believe that if she had a receptive husband and decent mental health care (not just throwing pills at her, but therapeutic approaches that would include the family), this whole situation could have been avoided altogether.
It was tough to hear about how Yates killed her children and how she would cover each body individually. The most horrifying image to me would be one of Noah wondering just what exactly his mother is doing/thinking right before she takes his life. I remember getting chills up my spine when I heard how nonchalantly Yates called her husband and told him to come home. I think the saddest part of this whole case is seeing something like this happen to someone who apparently had so much going for her in life (former valedictorian, college graduate, professional nurse).
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html
This site paints a gruesome image of the crime scene with its vivid descriptions. It also gives us a transcript of the 911 call on the night of the murders.
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/decade-drowning-children-lawyer-claims-andrea-yates-ready/story?id=13883269#.T3J2-dVGip0
Yates's attorney George Parnham has been very active in his fight for women's mental health treatment. He is quoted on this site as saying that it would "be a waste of human lives if nothing good come of it". Parnham is also optimistic that Yates could begin outpatient treatment as soon as this year.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Andrea-Yates-seeks-weekly-release-from-mental-3439312.php
This is another bit of recent news that reveals Yates's intentions of going to church weekly if allowed. The highlight of this article for me was finding out that Russell had already re-married in 2008 and apparently never wants to comment on the case these days.
The story of Andrea Yates is an extremely sad one. Sad because of many reasons including the death of the children, the depression she suffered, and the accusations that her husband faced. The story raises many questions as to whether someone who is mentally ill should be able to be held accountable for their actions. In my opinion, I think that the jury should have rule right from the beginning that Andrea Yates was not competent to stand trial. There was something clearly wrong with Andrea Yates, as we can see from her actions.
On the morning of June 20th, Andrea Yates drowned all five of her children one by one. After drowning them in her bathtub, she laid them all in a bed next to each other and covered them up. After killing all of her children and covering them up, she called 911 a little before 10am to report the deaths of her children. She also called her husband who returned home to a horrific scene. The story was soon to be covered by national news.
The weirdest and scariest part of this story is that Andrea Yates was once a high school valedictorian, swimming champion, college graduate, and even a professional nurse. These facts should make this story very real to everyone who reads it because the depression and delusions that Andrea Yates suffered from could happen to any of us. Before Andrea Yates began suffering from postpartum depression, she was very much like many of us. After Yates married her husband, they moved from Texas to Florida where she often wrote to a friend saying she was “lonely”. This loneliness soon turned into depression after she started having children. On multiple occasions Andrea Yates tried to commit suicide and despite the fact that a mental health professional said that she should not have any more children, they had another child.
Both the prosecution and the defense had psychiatrists on their side arguing that she was or was not mentally fit to stand trial at the time of the crime. The prosecution had a great argument saying that she was saving them from the devil, so therefore she knew that she was doing wrong. In the end, Andrea Yates was sentenced to prison for life. This did not last long due to the appeal process. I wished to learn whether she was ever found guilty or innocent, but the book did not discuss this. I assume this is because she got her appeal in 2005 and this book was published in 2006.
Since the book did not go into whether or not she was found guilty or innocent the second time around, naturally this was the first thing that I searched the internet for.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/07/28/the-second-andrea-yates-verdict/
This article says that Andrea Yates was in fact found Not Guilty by reason of insanity the second trial. I strongly agree with this verdict and think that this should probably have been the verdict the first time. I think it was extremely unfair to her that the psychiatrist on the stand made a mistake (or in my opinion should have been held in contempt). He said that there was a Law and Order episode in which the same thing happened as what Andrea Yates did. This was later found out to be false. If it was not found to be false, she could have been on Death Row and executed. I do not believe anyone that is mentally insane should be executed. Apparently Texas has different views.
I know that I'm turning this blog in a few days late, but now that I am searching for further information on Andrea Yates, it may not be such a bad thing. I found that this was just posted three hours ago:
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/28/10910591-andrea-yates-who-killed-her-five-children-will-ask-for-pass-to-attend-church
Apparently, Andrea Yates will ask the judge for a pass to leave her mental facility two hours each week to attend church. This is very interesting because this is new and current information about her. I love to read about things in class and later see it in the news and relate it to my coursework.
Finally, here is a TruTV link that I found about Andrea Yates. TruTV is one of my favorite websites to read about criminals and court cases. This link provides the same story in the Minds on Trial book, plus other opinions about her. The article is titled: Ill or Evil?
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html