Andrea Yates

The Andrea Yates case is at the forefront of the question as to competency, and mental insanity in terms of the law. As for the case itself, it consisted of what appeared to be a family of five. The mother of the family Andrea Yates, the Father Russell Yates, and there subsequent five children appeared to be a fully functional family, however upon the murder of the five children by Mrs. Yates in June 2001 that drastically changed. When it grabbed the media attention questions arose as to who she was? What sparked her actions? And could it have been avoided? All of these are common associated questions in which the media coins when cases of this nature arise. Following the development of the case the format of the justice system became clear in terms of its polarity and role. The Defense headed by lawyer Phillip Resnick would seek to claim insanity, whereas the prosecuting attorney headed by Dr. Park Dietz would seek to testify that Yates was competent and knew that what she was doing was wrong. Firstly, as the case pointed out the continued question of the association between “psychology and law” comes into question. This became clear when the qualifications for identifying mental insanity in terms of Texas’s law were addressed. In terms of the M’Naughten rule; the perpetrator must know what the nature of consequences are, and secondly that the act was right or wrong. However, in under Texas jurisdiction only the second qualification has to be met. As a result, in terms of claiming insanity as a defense the qualifications were extremely narrow.
In terms of the case several factors were addressed under the development of the psychosis break that Andrea Yates experienced that horrific night in June in 2001. Firstly, the family was experiencing some dynamic socioeconomic and residential changes. The father in this case Russell Yates would go own to pursue his dynamic career with NASA. As a result, the family would succumb to moving, changing from a solid home to a mobile living unit, and changing residency. This in correlation with the fact that Yates father had succumb to Alzheimer’s disease were all leading factors of her mental break (due to stressors) Further, in terms of her psychological state a history of depression was noted, recurring attendance to hospitals for bad eating hobbits, and so forth all were leading up to a point of a significant event or “break” in here mental health which could be extrapolated to physical reactions. (In this case catastrophic)
Her mental health, in this case her postpartum mental disorder, her delusions and hallucinations, alone with her distorted view of reality all directly deal with psychology. This deals specifically with her mental state. In this case Yates suffered from somewhat the same characteristics of schizophrenia, psychotic disorders were behaviors, and thoughts are profoundly influenced. In this case, as stated it happened only after one of the children were born were she admitted only after the crime that she had thoughts of harming the child in order to protect him from the devil. Further, her symptoms became clear that a mental state was inherently altered. For example her belief that she needed to protect her children from the devil was evident as classification of a “positive symptom” of schizophrenia. Specifically known as the psychological term “grandeur” a delusion that she was an overly important person in terms of protecting her children. Further, upon questioning by law enforcement it was noted that she took a long time to respond to questions and seemed distant from reality, yet another sub-class of her mental disorder. In this case, it was a negative effect of her disorder known as the alogia effect, or brief and empty replies to questioning. All related to psychosis and schizophrenia.
Although it was clear that she indeed had succumb to prolonged depression, characteristics of mental disorders and so forth, in terms of the law (specifically in Texas) it would be hard for the defense to claim insanity. In the end, she did indeed receive life in prison however, avoided the death penalty due to embellished evidence presented by the prosecution during the case, and would then be appealed. I found it very interesting that in Texas a juror of peers are the ones who determine whether or not she was coherent to stand trial. Although she indeed was found to be, due to the fact the jail had prescribed medication, none the less I found it daunting.
In terms of how her mental health related to the case the defense lawyer (Dr. Phillip) claimed that she under psychosis thought she was doing the right thing to protect her children from the devil. This connects exactly to what I stated about the symptoms she possessed. As for the defense, it was claimed sense she indeed knew she was “protecting from the devil” and that she knew the “devil was evil” that she knew what she was doing was wrong. Further, sense she told know one what she had done she knew her actions needed to be hidden because “they were wrong.”
Consequently then she was found guilty. (But would lead to appeal). Some media outlets attempted to claim blame on the father as that he knew his wife was ill and continued to have children however this was relatively irrelevant. As a result, this case was interesting as that it directly represented how the defense and prosecution select “experts” and how mental health comes in to play in terms of law. It also relates to the gender questions of law and perceptions of men and women in terms of guilt. Overall it defiantly left an impression and made clear how complex and difficult the insanity case is to prove (in terms of law) and the different ways competency are identified.
What I found in terms of searching online is that as I mentioned before due to incorrect testimony the case would be appealed. Upon searching I learned a jury indeed found her not-guilty by reason of insanity the second time around. This clearly marked the debate of justice, and mental health as that outrage followed after failed prosecution for the children’s death in terms of prison time.

Terms: Competency, insanity, M’Naughten rule, psychosis, stressor, depression, stimulus, postpartum mental disorder, delusions, hallucinations, schizophrenia, positive symptom/negative symptom of schizophrenia, grandeur, alogia symptom of schizophrenia.

www.nbcnews.com/id/.../jury-yates-not-guilty-reason-insanity
usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/.../2006-07-27-yates-verdict_x.htm
www.democraticunderground.com

Andrea Yates case contained many psychological characteristics. For starters, Andrea suffered from severe post-partum depression, and had spiritual hallucinations of voices telling her to commit suicide. Andrea had a history of many suicidal attempts such as taking Alzheimer’s pills, holding a knife to her throat and going long periods of time without food or water.

Despite her husband knowing of her poor psychological conditions, she had many change occur in her life such as moving into a trailer, and her husband left her to take care of the kids every day. Also, she continued to have children even after she was already suffering from these psychological problems. This caused her psychological conditions to worsen, which led her to the point of drowning her children.

After Yates’ arrest, clinical psychologist looked more closely at her current psychological state. They did indeed diagnose her with a severe case of post-partum depression. They also found that she had some difficulties concentrating and understanding what was going on. Yates even believed that she deserved the death penalty so it would rid her of her Satan delusions. For much time after the murder she received treatment in many psychological facilities. During this time she was given the M’Naughten Insanity Test to see if she was qualified to use the insanity defense. This test helps to show if the person was insane during the time of the crime. It measures insanity in two different ways which are to know the nature or consequences of the act, and to know that the act was right or wrong.

They decided at first that she was indeed insane at the time of the crime. During the trial they also said that it was “part of a series of patterns” that led up to the event. However, they found that Yates legally knew the act was wrong, but was morally right in her mind. At the end of the trial she was given the penalty of life in prison, but avoided the death penalty. She currently spends most of her time in and out of psychiatric hospitals. However for years to come after the trial, people debated her sanity.

The thing I found interesting that I did not know dealt with the Law and Order episode, where some experts think she got the idea from. The episode was about a woman killing her children and getting off with the insanity defense. I never knew that was a part of the trial, and that she tried again after her first verdict to use that as an excuse for her actions. I read more about it and found that she was an avid Law and Order viewer, but did not get her idea from the show because that episode was not aired until after the murders.

The book did not state this, but she was acquitted for her actions in 2006, on her plead for insanity. The court finally found that she was indeed insane during the time of the crime, and continues to be admitted in psychiatric hospitals.

Another article I read dealt with the insanity jurisdiction laws in Texas, and they talked about how strict and difficult it is to declare insanity. I find this interesting because they make it so hard to declare it, but it may be a good thing in most cases. Then it talked about the second trial, and how they successfully changed her verdict through more witnesses who stated that Yates loved her children, she was just mentally ill.

I knew about this case prior to reading this, but I never really read the full story and knew how they measured her sanity. What she did was a sad thing, but I honestly believe that she was insane.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/08/arts/television/08law.html?ref=andreayates&_r=0
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/andrea-yates-released-psychiatric-hospital-attend-church/story?id=16021269
http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/07/28/the-second-andrea-yates-verdict/

I’ve done reports on Andrea Yates’ case previously, and I find it very interesting. The way she committed her crime and her actions just intrigue me. I first want to discuss the insanity part of this chapter, and then move on to the competency to stand trial.

Yates’ postpartum mental illness is very interesting. Many women suffer from a mild form of this called postpartum depression, but symptoms such as hallucinations, an extreme change in personality, and self-harm all indicate signs of postpartum psychosis. This, combined with Yates’ previous risk factors (isolation, changes in environment) all led up to a horrific crime. Determining whether or not she committed the crime is the easy part; what’s difficult is determining whether or not she was insane at the time of the crime. The book refers to mens rea, a Roman term generally meaning that the criminal knew the crime they were committing was wrong. The actus reus, the actual criminal act, is already apparent in Yates. However, the jury in this case was trying to decide whether or not she possessed the mens rea.

The book also discusses the M’Naghten rule and how it related to the Texas Court System’s definition of insanity. While the standard rule is composed of three parts, Texas has only adopted the second into their insanity definition. So, in order to prove that Yates was not sane at the time of the crime, the defense had to show that Yates did not know that the crime she was committing was wrong.

Going further, I wanted to quickly discuss the “policeman at the elbow test.” I believe Yates was insane at the time of the crime, and I think this test helps my case. The fact that Yates made no attempt to hide her guilt and even called her husband shows her insanity. The “policeman at the elbow test” suggests that insane criminals would have committed the crime even if a police officer stood next to them. Thinking about it, I think, no matter what, Yates would have found a way to murder her children.

Discussing competency and CST, I agree with the court in their initial belief that she was not competent. This is shown in her irrational acts after the arrest (taking several minutes to respond to officers, having hallucinations in her jail cell), and also the fact that she believed her conviction and execution would kill Satan.

Because of the serious crime Yates was being tried for, the court must also take into account the flexible standard, meaning that criminals being tried for petty crimes are not required to be as sane as criminals facing murder charges, for example. Also, they have to consider many other aspects of Yates’ state of mind, including the fact that she had already been on antipsychotic medication (it was ineffective at stopping the crime) and had been in a psychiatric unit for three months prior to her competency hearing and showed no signs of restoration to CST. All of these points greatly affect Yates’ case, including her CST and her insanity plea.

This link discuss evolutionary psychology and how it affects Andrea Yates’ case. It was interesting to read because I’ve seen first-hand the mother-child relationship of animals in the wild when we had stray cats around our house. If a kitten was sick or dying, the mother instinctively knew not to use up any more of it’s own valuable resources on this offspring, so it would either quit taking care of it, or kill it (sometimes eating it to regain lost resources). Maybe, subconsciously, Yates felt this? Interesting.
http://newfoundlandnews.blogspot.com/2009/09/evolutionary-psychology-of-andrea-yates.html

The link below only briefly talks about Yates, but also brings up a good point: is it ethical to put someone on heavy antidepressants, in order to restore them to competency so they can stand trial and be executed? Something to think about.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/forensics/forensic_psychology/5.html

This last link shows a direct quote by Andrea when she was being interviewed by a forensic psychologist. She states that before she committed this crime, she did not think it was wrong.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html

There was a lot of very interesting psychological characteristics associated with Andrea Yates and her trial. I did not know about all of the mental problems she had before she murdered her children. I just thought all of her problems occured briefly before murdering her children. It is easy to suspect that someone must not be in their right mind if they are able to kill all five of their children. I also think the fact that she thought she was doing her children a favor by killing them shows her psychological issues.

This book talks about how Andrea Yates suffered from post partum depression. She had been going through a lot of stress including her four children and the struggles of caring for her father suffering from Alzheimer's. These stressors caused Yates to dip into a state of severe depression with psychotic characteristics which enabled her to experience delusions.

Yates tried to kill herself two times. The first time she attempted suicide she used her fathers medications to try and overdose. This attempt resulted in her staying at a mental facility to provide her with treatments. After she was released from the facility she was enrolled in a program which enabled her to undergo vigorous mental therapy sessions at the hospital in the day, and be home with her family at night. The second time she tried to kill herself was when she held a knife to her own throat, because she feared she would do harm to others.

Her attempts for suicide should have been a big warning to her husband that she should not be able to take care of their four children alone. It is strange that after all of these psychological issues she was able to keep caring for her children and so often left alone with them. It is also strange to me that even though she was going through all of these hard times her husband still had another child with her. I would have thought that while someone is suffering from so many problems especially psychotic symptoms that were going along with her severe depression.

There was also a lot of interesting information about her trial in this chapter. Her trial was a long difficult process. Her defense tried to get her the insanity plea and at first she was found guilty of her crimes. She was granted a re-trial do to the witness Dietz' testimony that provided false information about a Law and Order episode that never existed. The re-trial granted Yates to be transferred to a mental institution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates#Anti-depressants_and_homicidal_ideation
Under the heading: Anti-depressants and homicidal ideation
This section of the web-site talked about how the combination of the anti-depressants Yates was prescribed by Dr. Saeed could have been responsible for her violent behavior and psychosis.

http://crime.about.com/od/current/p/andreayates.htm
This site talked about how the doctors had urged the Yates family not to have any more children, but Rusty wanted another child, and after Andrea had begun to become less depressed she stopped taking her anti-depressant and had another child. It also talked about how the death of her father played a huge role in the last of her severely depressed times. It appears that this time was the worst because she refused liquids, refused help, and read the Bible non stop. I think this psychotic period should have been a good indication to have her in a treatment facility long enough for her to fight off her depression, but instead she was released because she was not seen as suffering from any mental illnesses. Two days after a checkup is when she killed her children.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html
I thought this site was interesting because it went into full detail of the day Andrea Yates murdered her five children. It explained that when the police showed up she did not hesitate to tell them that she had killed her children and that she was a bad mother and expected to be punished. I think it is frightening to think that someone could have done such a horrible thing.

Before reading Andrea Yates’ case, I wasn’t aware of what happened. I was pretty young when this trial went on and my parents probably didn’t want me to hear about it because it is rather scary for a young kid to hear how a parent drowned their children.
Before I talk about the psychological characteristics, I want to talk about some of the things that I think had an effect on the later mental illness’ Andrea faced. The Yates family led an interesting life. First, after Andrea’s husband Russell got a job in Florida for NASA the family had to move. Following that move Russell decided he wanted to see what it would be like to live on the road, so the family leased their house in Texas, for a trailer, and lived on the road. After Russell finished his work they continued to live in their trailer, back in a trailer park in Texas. That’s not all though, they then bought an old GMC bus that their friends the Woronieckis’s used to own and transformed it into a mobile home. Andrea continued throughout this time living in a mobile home, taking care of children, while also feeling very lonely and depressed. To think this would be a dramatic change for someone who didn’t have multiple kids and suffered from postpartum depression, I can’t imagine how you would do it with those characteristics.
Now, to go onto talk about some of the psychological characteristics, Andrea suffered from a postpartum mental disorder, the onset of this mental disorder resulted after the birth of her first son Noah. Andrea was in and out of the hospital for attempted suicide multiple times. She also had very strong hallucinations and voices in her head. Andrea believed that Satan was out for you children, and the reason for killing her children was so that they could go to heaven instead of burn in hell with Satan. This was probably the characteristic that had the most impact on deciding whether or not Andrea Yates was insane. Many claimed since she knew that she wanted to save her kids from Satan, that she ultimately knew that what she was doing was wrong, but she had no choice. Another aspect of the trial that had a large impact on whether or not Andrea was to be ruled insane was what came from the cross examination from Dr. Park Dietz who is a forensic psychiatrist. He worked with the production of the show Law and Order and claimed they had a show recently air that was about a mother who drowned her kids in the bathtub and was hoping to receive the insanity plea. This affected the jury and everyone else’s view that Andrea drowned her kids in hopes that this way she would receive the insanity plea. It just so happens that no show ever took place on Law and Order at all, affecting Andrea’s trial quite a bit.

The following are three things that I found through the internet about Andrea’s case that I didn’t know after reading what was available in the book.
First, I found out that Andrea also took on the job of homeschooling her children as well. So on top of all that she was dealing with she also had to take the responsibility of teaching them during the days as well. This might be another factor that could have been looked at in the trial
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html
Second, I learned that when Andrea confessed to the murder of her children she said it was because she had failed to them as a mother, she didn’t mention at that time the real reasons in her head for killing the children.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
Lastly, something else I learned was that after the crime Russell Yates went on to try and divorce her same time the crime was going on.I feel like this probably had an impact on the trial as well. He also had consistent views against the death penalty before Andrea had committed the crime as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/03/us/divorce-is-sought-in-drowning-case.html?ref=andreayates

The Andrea Yates case was a very interesting case to read about. What made it interesting was the fact that it was about a women who killed five of her kids. The reason that I find this so interesting is the fact that I could never imagine killing someone. The fact that she killed five kids is just astonishing. What also makes it an interesting case to read about is the fact that it has to deal with insanity. Insanity was the argument that the defense made in order to avoid the death penalty. This case was heavily publicized because of the fact that people couldn’t imagine holding their own child under water until they couldn’t breathe anymore. Andrea Yates had multiple characteristics that were present during the time before and after she murdered her five children. The first of these psychological signs was the fact that she was taking medication for severe mental depression. Andrea Yates had attempted to commit suicide before and was placed on the medications to deal with her problems. The depression that she had was called postpartum depression. Another indication that she might have something mentally wrong with her was the fact that her husband had to admit her into a hospital after she had tried to slit her own throat with a knife. Medical personal at the hospital claimed that she had psychotic features. What they meant by psychotic features was the fact that she was hearing voices and she had concerns that she might hurt somebody. After she was taken into custody for killing her five children, the defenses clinical psychologist examined her and found that she was experiencing hallucinations where she saw Satan on the walls of her jail cell. The examiner also saw that it took her up to two minutes to respond to simple questions that he had about the case. Also, the prosecutions clinical psychologist examined her and found that it also took her a long time to answer questions and she had problems with concentration. The thing that both the defense and prosecutions clinical psychologists agreed on was the fact that Andrea Yates wasn’t faking her illness. In the months before the trial, she had been treated for psychosis. Another aspect that showed Andrea Yates might have a psychological problem was the fact that she believed that if she was sentenced to death, she would be able to kill Satan. She also claimed that the reason that she killed her five children was to save them from the horrible fate of dying and going to hell. Another thing that kind of led me to the conclusion that Andrea Yates was mentally insane was the fact that she had attempted to commit suicide multiple times. During one attempt, she actually tried to slice her throat; which I don’t think is a popular way to commit suicide. The final thing that led me to believe that Andrea Yates had psychological problem was the fact that she was diagnosed with postpartum mental disorder. This includes severe mood changes and psychosis which occur within four weeks following the birth of a child. Andrea Yates and her husband had five children in the matter of seven years. Also, the fact that she had written letters to people saying that she had become more isolated, lonely, and severely depressed after her family moved into the converted bus. How these characteristics relate to competence and sanity is the fact that all of these effects whether or not she actually knew what she was doing were wrong. I can’t imagine holding someone underwater until they drowned. However, in the case of Andrea Yates, it was known that she had mental problems, she had tried to commit suicide multiple times before, and she had been on medication to try and stop these problems. The fact that both the defense and prosecution attorneys agreed that she was mentally ill probably had something to do with the outcome of the case. Another thing that was important about her mental characteristics was the fact that they led the court to test whether or not she was actually insane. As well as whether or not she knew the act she was doing was wrong at the time of the killing. This was something that I found very interesting because Texas, unlike the other states, to be proven not guilty based on insanity, you must be able to prove that the individual knew that the act that he/she were committing was wrong. The characteristics, as well as her past of mental issues played a vital role in her case. The reason that it played a vital role is because of the fact that insanity doesn’t just develop overnight, if the person all of a sudden is pleading the insanity plea and has no history of mental issues, they are probably competent to stand trial. However, when the person has had a history of mental depression, has been put on medication, and had tried to commit suicide and is hearing voices from Satan, they are probably not suitable to stand trial. Some of the interesting information that I found on the internet was that Andrea Yates had actually shown signs of improvement after the family moved into a bigger home (instead of living in the cramped bus). She went back to swimming and running as well as other hobbies that she used to do before they moved into the bus. The reason that this is important to note is that maybe the murder was in part caused by the husband driving making her live in the bus. Also, it goes along with the speculation that maybe the reason that she was so unhappy was the fact that she was always pregnant. Another interesting fact that I found was the fact that because of the expert testimony of Park Dietz, expert testimony itself has been called into question. During the Trial Park Dietz said that Law and Order had recently aired a show that showed a mother killing her children in the bathtub. The prosecution argued that Yates had gotten the idea to kill her children by watching this show. This actually turned out to be not true and the defense won an appeal on the guilty verdict. However, it does bring into question the use of expert testimony in cases that were life and death literally hang in the balance. It was also interesting that it also brought into light that no matter how qualified a person might seem, he/she can still make mistakes. The final interesting fact that I found about the case was the fact Andrea Yates husband was really conservative. He supported the death penalty based off of Romans 13 which talks about how it is god’s will that the people on earth carry out his commands and kill murderers. The reason that this was interesting was that after his wife had done what she did, he was now against the death penalty. It was just another interesting fact that I found.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
This one talks about the husband
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)69789-4/fulltext
This one talks about expert testimony.
http://crime.about.com/od/current/p/andreayates.htm
This one talks about how she almost returned to her normal self after the family moved into a bigger home.

Chapter nine in the text and chapter nineteen in the “Minds on Trial” book, explain the case of Andrea Yates. While her husband was away, Yates drowned her five children in the bathroom. Her case has been studied throughout the years for many are confused as to why a mother would drown her children. According to Mrs. Yates, she was having visions from the devil and that the only way she could save her children from the burning fires of hell would be to kill them herself so in turn she may die and slay the devil herself. Upon hearing this, her attorneys decided to defend Mrs. Yates by raising the insanity defense. Thus, the debate determining Yates sanity began.
There were two psychologists who had debated this fact both on opposite sides. Dr. Phillip Resnick was the expert for the defense. According to Resnick “Yates did not kill her children out of feelings of revenge against her husband and there was no evidence that the deaths of the children were the result of a pattern of abuse or neglect. Rather, the evidence indicated that there was no rational motive for the drownings, suggesting acute psychosis, and that Yates believed by killing her children she was serving their best interests, indicating an altruistic motive. On the other hand, Dr. Park Dietz, the prosecution’s expert, exclaimed “Mrs. Yates knew that her actions were wrong in the eyes of the law… in the eyes of society… in the eyes of God… believing that the ends justified the means, which was to wrongly and illegally kill them.” Both of these psychologists touch on the fact of Yates seeing the devil and having knowledge of her hallucinations. I believe if one is truly having hallucinations of any kind that they would have some sort of psychological problem and should seek medical help. Even though Yates received help, she was not getting the treatment she needed and when stressors were added to her life, she “snapped” and was “unable to control her impulses.”
Some articles I have found also discuss the debate on Andrea Yates. The first two articles discuss the fact that Dr. Dietz presented false evidence to court and in consequence sending Mrs. Yates to prison. This evidence Dietz brought to the court was “an episode” of Law & Order where a mother drowned her children and was found not guilty do to insanity. This episode, however, was never aired and according to the director, never discussed. Yates’ attorneys brought this up to the court and demanded a retrial, for his testimony gave many of the jurors the impression that she had possibly planned on killing her children; when in fact, according to her attorneys, she was believed to be not entirely sane at the time. The last article explains who a jury, containing six men and six women, found Yates NOT GUILTY of murder by reason of insanity. According to the article, Rusty Yates, Andrea Yates’ husband, said “The jury looked past what happened and at why it happened. Prosecutors had the truth of the first day and stopped there. Yes, she was psychotic. That's the whole truth.”
The Articles:
1. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,143508,00.html
2. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6794098/#.UUEx3Rykp1c
3. http://crime.about.com/b/2006/07/26/andrea-yates-not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity.htm

There were several things that stuck out to me from the Andrea Yates case, especially after reading the two chapters for Tuesday. First of all, it is very surprising to learn how long she suffered from mental illness. Right after her first child was born in the mid 90's she began suffering from post-par tum depression and having disturbing visions in her mind. I learned the actual characteristics that diagnose post-par tum disorders including mood fluctuations especially. It is also very surprising to learn that although she was already suffering from mental illness, Andrea kept having children, 4 more to be exact, with the encouragement of her husband. Despite Andrea's instability in her mental health, the family also veered from a traditional lifestyle by living in a tiny mobile home. This probably only added to Andrea's stress, as she felt very lonely and depressed. There were many times that Andrea had to be hospitalized for her mental illness because she was beginning to hallucinate and wouldn't drink fluids or eat. She attempted suicide twice, and was participating in ongoing therapy with a psychiatrist. With all of these factors in the mix, and even when given the advice to not have any more children by her psychiatrist, Andrea conceived one more. It seems that this child pushed her depression to the breaking point, and only 6 months later Andrea murdered her 5 children. There are many questions as to why she did it, including getting back at her husband as a big one. Many people would agree that Andrea's husband, Russell, should have shown much more caution with Andrea around the children. Although he knew she had these mental illnesses, he kept pushing for more children and gave her an unstable lifestyle by selling their home and moving them into a small bus. As the trial got underway, there were different things that were tested for: Andrea's competency to stand trial and whether or not she could plea as insane. After expert opinion and analysis of her behavior, Andrea was found competent to stand trial. It was a toss up at first, but after more deliberation the jury came to this conclusion. Andrea would say things like that Satan made her kill her children, and she associated Satan with being bad. Next, Andrea's sanity had to be decided. I learned that Texas has a very low threshold for being sane enough to receive the consequences for one's actions. This is due to the John Hinckley Jr. case studied in chapter 9. Expert opinion was heavily relied on in this case. When an expert gives their opinion, their credentials and experience are heavily weighed out in trial. One of these experts, Dr. Dietz, attributed some of his experience to consulting for Law and Order. He also said that there was an episode almost identical to what Andrea Yates did that he helped consult with. This opened a whole new can of worms, as the prosecutor ran with this and made the jury believe that Andrea got the idea to kill her children from this episode as well as the idea to act insane. In the end, she did get sentenced to life in prison, but her lawyers were working hard to get a mistrial because of the comment Dr. Dietz made in his statement, as in further investigation an episode of Law and Order was never produced as he claimed. Surprisingly enough, there is still the possibility of a retrial for Andrea Yates.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/how-andrea-yates-lives-and-lives-with-herself-a-decade-later/254302/
I wanted to find out the status of Andrea today and found an article from ten years after she was convicted of the murder, written in 2012. It was from her attorney's point of view, and he said she was doing rather well in the attempt to become a functioning member of society. She will make things in her spare time to donate to the fund that is in her childrens' names. The fund is meant to help women who suffer from post-par tum depression get the help they need. Andrea also remains in contact with Russell Yates.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6278872&page=1
I next wanted to see how Russell "Rusty" Yates' life ended up being and found an interview from Good Morning America in 2008. It said that he remarried in 2006 and even has a son. He still keeps in touch with Andrea on a weekly basis, and they will discuss the past and their children. He said that his new child has helped him through the grieving process, as each time a new milestone is reached he remembers his other children.

http://www.religionnewsblog.com/22509/michael-woroniecki
Lastly, I wanted to find out more about the Woronieckis, who were mentioned in the chapter as evangelists who had kept in touch with Andrea and inspired her spiritually. I found a few places online stating that they were extremists of religion. They travel around, while still living in a trailer, with all of their children, all being very blunt and abrasive with their religious beliefs on others.

The most obviously relevant psychological factors to Yates’ sanity at the time of the crime are her array of mental illnesses and the signs that she was suffering heavily that apparently went ignored by her husband. The postpartum depression factor is the one I find most interesting because of the fact that everyone in her family knew that it stemmed from the birth of her fourth child, yet her husband continued to push her to have more children. This was an interesting point that was brought up at the trial as well because I personally never would have counted him partially guilty for the death of his kids simply by his act of impregnating a woman who was already suffering from sever postpartum depression, and was attempting to take care of her dying father at the same time. I’m not surprised that he never was tried as an accessory to the murder of his children, but I thought that it was an excellent point to bring up in front of the jury, to at least take some of the blame off of Yates herself.

Another interesting, and not immediately apparent factor was the incorporation of the information about the gender studies as they pertain to sanity cases at the end of the chapter. This became incredibly important when you consider that her competency jury consisted of 11 women and one man. This seemed odd to me though because the book stated that women defendants are more likely to succeed when using the insanity defense in court, but this jury still found her competent to stand trial. Yes, I realize that these are two different steps in the trial process that are fairly unrelated, however I would stand to speculate that the same psychological principles that causes a jury to sympathize with a woman’s sanity at the time of her crimes, might also be more apt to find her not competent to stand trial.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html
This link discusses in more detail than the book the actual scene of the crime and Yates arrest. What I found interesting was the book allows you to assume that Yates felt some sort of remorse for what she had done, by covering her children and laying them in the bed, and if that were true then that would lead one to believe that she did indeed know that killing her children was a wrongful act, and was at the time of the crime sane. However, this link gives a picture of a woman who is detached from feeling, shows no emotion about the acts at all, and is responsive to police questioning. If this is the true state of Yates psychosis at the time of the crime, then she is not showing any signs of remorse, no real emotional attachment at all toward the acts, and was therefore most likely not aware of the wrongfulness of her acts. To me this seems like such a pivotal issue in the case, especially when it was being argued in Texas, where the definition of insanity lies solely in the defendant’s perception of right and wrong. This idea is discussed briefly by both psychologists, one stating, rather logically, that if she thought this idea came from the devil, and she knew that the devil was evil and wrong, but then carried out the acts in spite of that, she had to have known that the act itself was wrong.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/how-andrea-yates-lives-and-lives-with-herself-a-decade-later/254302/
This link tells of how Andrea Yates is doing today, and how her case really changed the criminal justice system and some of its views on mental illness and insanity. This is simply a call between her lawyer and a reporter, but what’s interesting is that her lawyer actually states that he was glad that the first verdict was a guilty one because without the appeal to that psychiatrist’s testimony the case would have just been another one for the books. I find that statement interesting because when you consider the mindset of a defense attorney, you have to wonder what goes through their minds when they’re defending someone who they fully know is a murder. Did he truly believe that she was insane, or was he simply doing his absolute best to protect her rights, and it just so happened that one of the witnesses perjured themselves? He also talks about the importance of the case from a mental health advocate standpoint, because it’s hard to realize how far psychology as a science, and our understanding of mental diseases has come in such a short time. Especially with the advancements in technology that allow us to actually view the brain of a mentally ill person, and this information often times will lead to more appropriate medication and treatment of patients.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html
This link provides an incredibly detailed outline of the events surrounding the case. I want to focus only the part that discusses what the husband knew, and what he did. I find it eerie that he knew his wife was suffering from a mental illness that was causing her to be suicidal, and yet when her episodes started up again instead of taking her back to the doctor that had helped her in the past, he chose to find someone new. This doctor was not helpful, and after two attempted suicides and one month of a committed psychiatric stay, finally prescribed the same medication was on previously, but two days before the murders denied her the medication. Even further, he claimed to be unaware that she ever had auditory hallucinations, when those symptoms of her psychosis were outlined in the records and files of her previous doctor, and I’m sure that he had access to those records if he should need them for more accurate treatment of this patient.

Chapter 19 in 'Minds On Trial' describes the tragic and most controversial case of the mentally ill mother Andrea Yates and her ability to stand competent in her trial and her insanity plea. Andrea Yates ended the lives of her five young children by drowning each of them in a bathtub back in 2001. When she was arrested and put on trial she claimed in her defense in the murders was that she was insane at the time of the murders so therefore she pled the insanity plea.

Andrea Yates suffered from severe bouts of Postpartum depression, more so after the birth of her fourth child. But she had several mentral illnesses that she had suffered years prior to the murders. She gave birth to five children in the span of seven years and after each birth, Andrea's mental health took a drastic decline. She suffered from psychosis and took antidepressant medications on a daily basis. People claim she also suffered from Schizophrenia, a secere mental illness that causes one to lose touch with reality. After the birth of her first child Andrea would have visions of a knife and stabbing.

Later on her visions and Schizophrenia escalated, she claimed to have visions of Satan and she even attempted suicide not only once, but twice. I believe her visions of Satan partly play a role or motive in the murder of her children. Considering the fact that Andrea submerged herself in a 'fire and brimstone' religion, a very strict form of religion. She believed that by ending the lives of her children she was saving them from burning in hell, so in her mind she was performing a very altruistic act.

What I have trouble understanding is that in the state of Texas the only way one can be declared insane at the time the crime was committed is if one didn't understand the concept of right and wrong at the time of the crime. Andrea seemed to know that what she did was wrong, but why she eventually pled insanity but she also believed her purpose for murdering her children was higher than the standards of right and wrong. Andrea was later found guilty but eventually that would lead to an appeal. Some people in the media placed the blame of the children's deaths on Russell Yates, Andrea's husband and the father to her children. People came to this conclusion based on the fact that even though Russell knew she suffered through two suicide attempts and several mental disorders, he continued to have children with her. And with his field of work the family never really settled down in one place nad that was a stressor for Andrea. I feel that Russell 'Rusty' Yates is partly to blame for the murders because he should have opened his eyes to his wife's declining mental health and I feel if he acted sooner and gotten Andrea more help than she had previously received, he wouldn't have had to grieve the death of all his children.

The first link is to an article I looked up due to the curiosity of how Russell Yates is living all these years later. Russell remarried in 2006 and has a young son. He states that remarrying and having another child has helped with his grieving. Russell remains in touch with Andrea on a weekly basis. The second link tells more of the story that isn't fully explained in the book. The article tells of Andrea's confession of the murder of her children and how she feels she failed as a mother to them. When the police arrested her she had no hesitation of letting them know she ended the lives of her five young children. The third and final link I found is about Andrea's murder conviction for drwoning her children and how it was overturned by an appeals court due to the erroneous testimony given by a psychiatrist stating that Andrea got the idea to drown her five children in the bathtub from a non- existent epsiode of "Law and Order".

I think the readings assigned to us this week over the insanity defense and competency couldn't have come at a bette time because on Tuesday night of this week, I was channel surfing and I came across a news report about the trial of the theatre shooter James Holmes and how the court is determining if he will plea the insanity defense and I had just finished reading the chapter about Andrea Yates and thinking about her insanity plea. So I was just really excited that I made that connection and it helped me comprehend this weeks assignment.

Despite Andrea Yates mental health and whether she is insane or not, the idea of a mother killing her own children is very tragic and saddens me even all these years later.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/t/story?id=6278872&page=1&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.psychologicalscience.com%2Fpsylaw%2F2013%2F01%2Fandrea-yates-1.html
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6794098/#.UUHfx4y9KSM

Key terms: insanity defense, schizophrenia, psychosis, postpartum depression, hallucinations, dellusions, competency

The first psychological aspect I’ll discuss is competency to stand trial. This legal term refers to the ability to participate adequately in criminal proceedings and to aid in one’s own defense. It has two parts: the ability to interact rationally with a lawyer, and the ability to understand how court processes work. A clinical psychologist evaluated Andrea Yates and her competency to stand trial within days of her arrest. He found that she was psychotic. Andrea was experiencing hallucinations, and was very inattentive. She could not concentrate or give attention to questioning, sometimes taking up to two minutes to respond to a question. She was treated in a jail’s psychiatric unit for three months until she went before a judge and jury to decide on her competency to stand trial again. It seems that she was still incompetent at this time. She believed that by being convicted and receiving the death penalty, she would be able to kill Satan. This shows that she was unable to rationally assist her lawyer in a defense, which is a key piece of being competent to stand trial. The legal system has come up with the definition of CST for the defendant’s own sake. Because their own liberty is at stake, it is important for them to understand what is going on at every stage of the criminal justice process. If the defendant can fully participate in his or her own defense, it is more likely that the verdict will be fair. Though she still seemed to be showing psychotic symptoms, he jury ended up finding her competent to stand trial, moving the case forward.

The most important psychological aspect of this case is the insanity defense. Insanity means that a defendant lacked moral responsibility and culpability when they committed the crime, and therefore should not be held responsible for their actions, or be punished. The state of Texas has one standard for a person to be held insane at the time of the crime: whether they knew right from wrong. This concept is a difficult and controversial one for psychology and law to intersect at. The expert witnesses for both the defense and prosecution agreed that Andrea was mentally ill. She had a long history of major depressive disorder, anxiety, psychosis, postpartum mental illness, and had tried to commit suicide twice. There were even speculations that she might be schizophrenic. However, insanity is a legal term. Clinical psychologists that evaluate defendants such as Andrea Yates must step outside their area of expertise. They cannot diagnose the defendant with any established psychiatric diagnoses that they are used to. They must fit the defendant’s mental state into the legal concept of insanity. They must decide if the defendant knew right from wrong when they committed the crime. The expert witness for the defense claimed that Andrea knew killing her children was legally wrong, but believed it was morally right. He used the information of Andrea’s religious delusions to back up his claim. She had believed that killing her children was the only way to save them from Satan. The expert witness for the prosecution argued differently. He claimed that Andrea knew her actions were wrong “in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of society, and in the eyes of God.” He claimed that she simply justified her wrongful actions because she felt she was “saving them.” He used some clever information to back up his claim. Andrea had indicated that her idea of killing the children was evil, and was directly from Satan. The expert witness said that this means she knew the action of killing her children was wrong. She also kept these thoughts to herself, probably because she knew the thoughts were wrong. After hearing these expert testimonies, the jury found Andrea guilty. Of course there ended up being some false information about he Law and Order episode, which probably influenced the jury’s decision. After the second trial and 13 hours of deliberation, Andrea was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The first fact I discovered came from: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html. This stated that Andrea’s hallucinations, delusions, and thoughts of killing her children had been documented in medical records in 1999 after Andrea’s first suicide attempt. This shocked me! She had told her first psychiatrist of the horrible crime she would eventually commit. Now there are obvious confidentially laws that psychiatrists must obey, but they do have an exception. If a person poses a danger to themselves or others, the psychiatrists can, and should, release the information. It seems that Andrea’s original psychiatrist did not do his job. He simply “advised” Andrea and Russell that they should not have any more children. Perhaps if he had shared with Russell the true danger that Andrea posed to the children, the crime could have been prevented.

The next fact I found interesting is from: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/how-andrea-yates-lives-and-lives-with-herself-a-decade-later/254302/.
This was an article written for the 10-year anniversary of Andrea’s murder conviction (later to be changed to not guilty by reason of insanity). It said that Andrea is still being treated in a psychiatric institution, and that she now has a bipolar diagnosis. It also said that Andrea’s attorney is trying to create a discharge plan for her. This would gradually allow her to be released for short periods of time.

The previous article that talked of Andrea’s recent bipolar diagnosis really intrigued me. I searched for more information about this, and came across: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/5.html. It turns out that she had a family history of depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia. I also found that the rare type of postpartum depression (where the mother attempts to kill herself or children) is likely to occur in women who are bipolar. I find it odd that the psychiatrists that treated Andrea never saw more evidence of bipolar. The common treatment lithium may have been more helpful to her.

This chapter on Andrea Yates begins with describing the events of the day she killed her children, and right away it is made clear that Yates had been suffering from severe post-partum depression and psychosis for two years already. After Yates committed this horrendous crime, it was puzzling to a lot of people as to why she could have done such a thing. This is where her competency to stand trial and her mental state come into play.
Not only was Andrea Yates suffering from severe mental illnesses, she was apparently heavily burdened psychologically at home as well in the form of her husband and his demands (he was also aware of her mental problems, yet continued to act as he did). Having an unstable mental state and then having unreasonable expectations placed on you by your husband would be a terrible combination. Feeling as if you aren’t good enough in the home would do no good for a person who has severe mental health issues, it would only trigger events like this one to occur if the circumstances got bad enough. Yates was also faced with having to care for her ill father in 2001 while she was suffering from her mental illnesses, and this would cause a lot more stress on her that would also aid in her reaching her breaking point.
It was pointed out in the chapter multiple times that Yates had been hospitalized on more than one occasion for her mental illness. In fact, she was released only a few days before she killed her children. This just doesn’t seem right to me. Clearly there was not enough attention placed on her and her condition if she was allowed to be released while in such a fragile and dangerous state of mind. While she was hospitalized, she was determined to be suffering from severe depression with psychotic features, post-partum depression and possibly schizophrenia.
In terms of her arrest, Yates was arrested and was evaluated by a clinical psychologist within days. All of the psychologists that evaluated Yates determined that she was in fact mentally ill and that she wasn’t faking her illness. What the question is at this point is whether or not she is competent to stand trial at this time and if she is eligible for the insanity defense. Yates apparently believed that if she were to be found guilty and was given the death penalty that she would be able to kill Satan. With her defense team being aware of her delusions, they strongly believed that she was not aware of the court process and that she would be of no help to them in creating a defense. Even with this being known by the jury, they came back saying Yates was competent to stand trial. It’s hard to say if she really was competent to stand trial or not when it comes down to it, but it sounds like she wasn’t in regards to her defense team.
When looking at her sanity while she was committing the crime, people had differing opinions. In Texas, the criteria for being able to use the insanity defense were stringent, and it’s really hard to be able to use it. It simply came down to whether or not she knew the drowning of her children was legally wrong when she was doing it. It came out that Yates felt she was saving her children from Satan when she killed them and that she killed them in their best interest. She even covered their bodies afterward which was thought to have been something she did out of respect. With this all being said, it is clear that she did not understand that what she was doing was morally wrong, but many did believe she knew that it was legally wrong. Because the testimonies in which it was pointed out that Yates knew that the killings were legally wrong, she was found to be guilty of capital murder and was therefore up for the death penalty. The jury, however, was in favor of giving her life in prison instead.

http://crime.about.com/od/current/a/yates_trial.htm: This website is focused solely on the trial of Andrea Yates. It is able to provide a lot more detail than the book was able to simply because the chapter was focused on more than just her trial and didn’t have enough space to go into as much detail. I like how it has different sections, such as “recent developments” and “psychiatric developments” that you are able to read in order to break down the information a little bit. There are even smaller subsections under these larder sections to help break it down even more for you. There isn’t a whole lot of information on this site, but as I said earlier, the detail is great.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html: I like this website because it discusses the debate on whether Yates is evil or ill. These are the kinds of debates that could go on forever simply because you can twist and turn any information you get from the case and change the circumstances of why it happened and what was going through her mind if you really wanted to. It was nice how this website starts right from the beginning of the ordeal with the call that she placed to her husband and ends with a photo gallery so we, as readers, are able to get an actual look into the life of Andrea Yates. I said the previous website was detailed, but this site blows that one out of the water. The amount of detail on this site is amazing and anyone who would be interested in reading about Yates and her mental illnesses regarding her crime would love this site. You wouldn’t leave with any questions after reading it all.
http://crime.about.com/od/current/p/andreayates.htm: The last site I chose is about a profile of Andrea Yates. This site is interesting because it starts from when she was in high school and even talks about when and how she met her husband. Details like these in someone’s life who committed a crime of this magnitude and who suffers from such severe mental illnesses are crucial for getting a look at the larger picture of why it happened the way it did. A lot of times, the issues begin well before the crime occurred, so it’s good to get a well-rounded look at her life if you are really wanting to gain knowledge of her and the crime itself.

Drowning five children would a major case in any situation, because you must call into question the state of mind of the person. In the case of Andrea Yates she had an extensive history of serve mental illness that was never properly address. It’s so hard to believe that somebody that lived such a normal life would commit such a horrible crime. She lived a relatively normal life with until the birth of her first child. Her first sign of psychological problem was after she gave birth to her first child, when she started to have strange dreams. She seemed to be suffering from postpartum depression and it just got worse after giving birth to her next four children. From the reading we see that she underwent a lot of stress during the marriage which the husband never recognized. Mr. Yates seemed very controlling and never considered the stress his wife was going through when he chose to keep moving the family around. Having such a large family in home that’s not suitable for that size can put more stress on the main caretaker which was Andrea. Other factors adding to her stress was taking care of her father which suffered from Alzheimer’s and needed constant care. When Andrea started to show signs of depression she turn to a preacher that talked about evil things and the devil, this just added to her delusion she was suffering from.
Andrea Yates’s case sparked major controversy was it comes to mental competency in court cases. The case was held in Texas which one adopted one part of the M’Naughten test, which was the person, must know that the act was right or wrong at the time of the crime. This made it very hard for the defense to prove that Yates was insane and needed lots of help. It’s easy to see that Andrea Yates loved her children because she laid them in the beds and covered them instead of trying to cover up her crime. Because she suffered from religious delusions she was trying to protect her children from Satan and she felt she had no choice but to kill them. The question that needed to be dealt with was whether knew what she was doing was wrong. It’s believed that she knew what she was doing was wrong, but for she was doing it for the greater good. But suffering from extreme depression and not responding to any of the treats could have been a reason why she killed her children. Whether Andrea Yates was competent to stand trial was also a big issue. She seemed to understand what was happen and knew that she was facing the death penalty.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html. I found this article interesting because in the beginning it gave us view from Russell Yates side of the story. He talked about how much he still cared about his wife. He also talked about how much he has changed due to everything that has happened throughout the trial. He use to believe in the death penalty because of his religious beliefs and now that has changed.
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/decade-drowning-children-lawyer-claims-andrea-yates-ready/story?id=13883269. After years of treatment Andrea Yates could be released from to be put into a community-based outpatient facility. She seems to be showing signs of recovery and is now trying to re-enter society. She has been slowing working her way to lower security hospitals by showing improvements due to treatment.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6278872&page=1. I wanted to see what Rusty Yates was doing today and I was surprised how he has moved on. He has remarried and has a new child Mark with new wife Laura. He still talks with Andrea a few times a month and is still very supportive of her treatment.

The Andrea Yates case deals directly with the competency to stand trial after she killer her five children. Competency is the ability to stand trial and aid in the defense of their own case, understand the court processes, and understand the possible punishments if they are found guilty. This case split opinions about personality responsibility, mental illness, the responsiveness of the mental health system, and the culpability of people close to Yates. It was found that that shortly after the birth of Andrea’s first son, she had a vision in which she saw an image of a knife that turned into a vision of someone being stabbed. She never told anyone of these images until after her arrest. This was a key event that indicated she might be suffering from postpartum mental disorder. This type of mental disorder can include severe mood changes (psychosis), and usually happens within four weeks after the birth of a child. To help the case against Andrea Yates, the psychiatrist who took care of Yates during the first hospitalization testified that she was “severely mentally ill, she would not have survived. She was not eating or taking in fluids.” Yates was then diagnosed as having severe depression with psychotic features because she was hearing voices and had concerns that she might hurt somebody.

After staying in mental health facilities and taking a lot of antipsychotic medications, she started to function well. Her husband and her had their fifth and final kid at the same time she had to take care of her father because he had Alzheimer’s disease. Many people believe that these stressors, that all took part in a short span, and her history of mental illness, led to the terrible acts she committed. Some said that Russell, her husband, to be equally responsible for the deaths of their children because of his controlling nature, desire for more children, and crazy religious belief.

After Yates was arrested, Dr. Gerald Harris evaluated her, and he found that Yates was psychotic. An example of her being psychotic was how she was seeing hallucinations where she saw Satan on the walls of her jail cell. Other clinical psychologists evaluated her and found that she definitely wasn’t faking her illness. She was then found the she was competent to stand trial, but the biggest issue in her trial was whether she was insane at the time she drowned her five children. The M’Naughten standard was used in Yates’s trial. This standard required that a person must know the nature or consequences of an act or know that the act was right or wrong. The evidence indicated that there was no rational motive for the drownings, but rather Yates believed by killing her children she was serving their best interests. Yates was found guilty of capital murder and faced a sentencing hearing to determine if she would receive life in prison or the death penalty. She escaped the death penalty and was sentenced to serve life in prison.

Another interesting aspect to the case was Andrea’s husband, Russell. Some said the wrong parent was being prosecuted, because he did not act upon the warning signs that his wife might be dangerous. He claimed that he never knew of his wife’s violent fantasies. The whole case is a study of how men and women behave according with their gender roles.

On interesting thing that I didn’t know about her case was that they found that she read the bible frantically, refused medication when she knew she needed to take it, and at long periods of time she would not feed her kids because her and her kids were bound for Hell. Yates testified that all of these thoughts and actions originated from a Michael Woroniecki, who was their preacher. Yates went on to believe his words, and followed up with actions. I also didn’t know that Yates had a previous miscarriage that worsened her mental state.
http://www.nndb.com/people/026/000085768/

I didn’t know that Yates single handedly testified that her extreme sickness and psychosis occurred only after she killed her kids. One of the creepiest things I found on this website was Yates telling defense attorneys that when she was drowning her oldest son, Noah, his last words were, “I’m sorry”.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445-2,00.html

I found a biography of background information on Andrea Yates and found that before she was married, she graduated from the nursing school at the University of Houston. She then worked as a nurse at the University of Texas. I thought it was interesting that even though she had worked as a nurse, and probably witnessed psychotic people, that she wouldn’t recognize the signs in her self.
http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00803/Yates_Frameset.htm

The Andrea Yates case is a classic example of the insanity defense. Texas law states that in order for a person to be given the insanity defense, he/she must not have known that their actions is/are wrong. What is confusing about this case is whether or not Yates knew drowning her children was wrong. Dr. Park Dietz had a great quote in the chapter explaining his thoughts on the case. In short he said if Yates claims that she was saving her children from Satan by drowning them that she must have been competent during the crime because she knew Satan, not God had ordered her to do so. He claims she said nothing about God ordering her to kill her children. Thus she knew that Satan was bad and God was good. Also, another part of the case working against Yates was how she called her husband after the killings, acting calm and telling him to come home immediately. When her husband and the police arrived, she had already laid the children in bed next to one another. It is hard to say whether the act of dressing her children and placing them on the bed shows any sort of remorse for her actions or if she was, as one psychologist wrote, dressing them for their arrival into heaven.

I found the argument over who should be held responsible for the death of the children an interesting topic. On paper Andrea Yates should be the sole perpetrator because she was the one who actually did the drowning. On the other hand, digging somewhat deeper into the case and applying some psychology can bring about different perspectives. For example, Robert Yates knew his wife was stressed out after giving birth to their first son Noah. Compounding that fact with the reality of her husband being gone all day working for NASA and the constant moving that the family did somewhat shows Russell's lack of respect for his wife's well-being. Russell was only adding to the stress of his wife when they began to have more children. Andrea Yates was quoted as saying she would not like to have any more children, yet she still gave birth to her daughter. I can understand where some psychologists are coming from when they say Robert should be held equally responsible for the death of his children. He claims he did not know of the violent images his wife would hallucinate but he also didn't seem to have time to inquire about his wife's habits nor get her much needed help.

It is interesting how no one brought up the fact that she was being seen by different psychiatrists who had her on a variety of different medication but didn't seem to press the issue further. Sure it is easier looking back now and saying she should have sought better treatment. Although, one doctor did press her to undergo shock therapy which would not have been a bad idea considering her illness. They only reserve shock therapy for the deepest depressions and some forms of psychotic behavior and I believe Yates fell under that category.

http://lubbockonline.com/stories/062806/sta_062806066.shtml
This first link deals with one of Yates' cellmates testifying at her court trial. According to the article Yates told her cellmate she was surprised how long it took for the children to stop moving when being drown. Also claiming that her daughter was the easiest and her son the hardest. While disturbing, this article does shed some light on the situation by giving dialogue between two cellmates instead of people in the courtroom.

http://lubbockonline.com/stories/062806/sta_062806066.shtml
I was hoping to find some photos of the crime scene as disgusting as that may seem, but instead I found some family photos of the Yates. It is worth noting that Andrea Yates gave birth to five children in seven years meaning the age differential between each child couldn't be more than two years.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/10-years-later-the-tragedy-of-andrea-yates/254290/
This article was the best because it detailed how Andrea and Russell were doing ten years after the tragedy. Apparently Rusty has remarried and has one child. Andrea on the other hand remains under the care of several medical staff. She is still on medication and was said to have been doing better hoping for a release in the near future. It was also stated in the article that Andrea will be doing fine and have spurts where she had vivid flashbacks of the crime and breaks down.

The Andrea Yates case was a dark and saddening example of competency and mental insanity in the courtroom. Andrea Yates was on trial for the murders of her five children, whom she had drowned in the bathtub. Defenses objective was to receive a lesser sentence due to Andrea being incompetent or insane. Competency is the ability to stand trial and aid in the defense of the trial, understand the court proceedings, and participate in the trial evaluation. Competency is all about the suspects mental state at the time of the trial. Initially, the jury voted that Andrea was incompetent by an 8 to 4 margin, however they later revised this and deemed her competent to stand trial.

Subsequently, the defense's next action was to attempt for the insanity plea. Insanity has to do with the suspects mental state at the time of the crime, whether they knew their actions were right or wrong. It was previously known that Andrea suffered from postpartum depression, psychosis, loneliness, and anxiety. She had multiple stays at mental health facilities, where she received anti-psychotic medications, suffered religious delusions after the birth of her first two kids, and attempted suicide twice. She had even told her doctors that she was afraid that she was going to hurt someone.

Andrea's trial took place in Texas, where the revised M'Naughter rule was in effect. This rule states that the suspect must know the nature or consequences of an act or know the act was right or wrong. However, only the second part of this rule was in effect. They only had to prove if she knew her action was right or wrong. The defense stated that Andrea's psychosis had prompted her to kill her kids because it was in their best interest to protect them from Satan. She knew it was legally wrong, but thought it was morally acceptable. The prosecution stated that since she knew it was wrong and illegal she could not receive the insanity plea. Andrea was then found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

However, the defense later appealed for a retrial on the bases of an erroneous testimony by the prosecution's psychiatrist. This expert testimony had had a large effect on the jury's decision, so Andrea was granted a retrial in 2005.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/03/28/10910591-andrea-yates-who-killed-her-five-children-will-ask-for-pass-to-attend-church?lite

Since our book left off at the granting of Andrea's retrial, I looked up what had happened since then. This site stated that the murder conviction had been overturned by reason of insanity and that she was serving her time at a state psychiatric hospital. She had even asked for a 2 hour leave period in order to attend church. Her lawyer said he believes she is ready to leave the institute for at home care and even have a job, which I think is just crazy.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html

One interesting thing I learned on this site was that when Andrea was being interviewed by investigators directly after the crime she said that she was a bad mother and expected to be punished. This seems to me that she had known what she did was wrong and therefore shouldn't be able to receive the insanity plea.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html

Another interesting thing I found from this site was that prior to the retrial, Andrea actually faced the death penalty by lethal injection. I also read about the erroneous testimony by forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz. Dietz had been paid $500 an hour to dispute the defense's insanity claims. However, he admitted that he had mixed up facts that prosecutors wound up emphasizing to the jury.

The case of Andrea Yates was the case everyone was talking about in 2001. Andrea suffered from postpartum depression which people believed caused her to go crazy and murder her five lovely and innocent children. Her condition had been going on for years, after each child was born her husband wanted another one even though she knew she could not handle it. He pushed for more and her depression got worse, with the more kids that were being born their socioeconomic status began to plummet.

Some psychological characteristics that I found in this case would have to be her mental illness of suffering majorly from her postpartum depression, believing that Satan was out to murder her children, and the thoughts of suicide. All of these play a huge role in her case to figure out if she was insane or not at the time of the crime.

For her to believe that Satan was out to kill her children is a little sketchy, to have those voices in your head and to actually think that there must have been something wrong with Mrs. Yates. This is one of the reasons why people think she was insane; anyone who thinks that Satan is out for their children is pretty crazy in my eyes. Along with these thoughts, the thoughts of suicide crossed her mind a few times before, this to me does not make a person insane but it does raise a few questions.

http://crime.about.com/od/current/a/yates_trial.htm
This website talks about how Andrea Yates knew everything she was doing was wrong. She knew that killing was a sin and she knew that what she was going to do was not okay according to the bible. The website also states that she was psychotic and she believed that characters on cartoons were telling her that she was giving her children too many sweets etc. and that she was evil. This is quite odd to hear honestly.

http://www.nndb.com/people/026/000085768/
The second website shows the same evidence and story that every other website states but this website stated that she refused to feed her children and even herself and that she claimed that she was a bad mother, that is why she needed to kill her children.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=389198&page=1
The last website states that she tried to hide her plans of murder, which clearly states that she was sane and she knew that what she was doing was wrong. All of these websites state the same thing but small information that no one really reads into is put into these sites, which I am glad that they did so everyone could figure out the little details.

The Andrea Yates case has always been interesting to me, even though it is a tragic story. When I read chapter 19 in minds on trial there were many facts that I didn’t know about the case. For example I knew that Andrea Yates had post partum depression, but I didn’t realize that her husband pushed her to have more kids, as well as their living situation. I feel that her mental health was pushed aside, and her husband didn’t do what was best for her. She had multiple suicide attempts and she was on antidepressants, but they clearly didn’t work. I also didn’t realize how intense her delusions and hallucinations were when she was in jail. The first article was a narration of the story; I didn’t know that she was so calm and collected when she called her husband. The second article talks about how Andrea is dealing with everything now. The final article is about her kids more specifically.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/index.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/how-andrea-yates-lives-and-lives-with-herself-a-decade-later/254302/

http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Andrea-Yates-A-Cry-in-the-Dark

Andrea Yates, a mother of five boys, high school valedictorian, nurse, and wife to a man who worked at NASA seemed as if she had it all. Lurking however, in the depth of her mind, was a deep seeded mental illness that stemmed from what psychologists thought was a mixture of postpartum depression and religious beliefs. After several attempts at suicide, Yates was hospitalized and diagnosed with severe depression with psychotic features. She was prescribed several different anti-psychotic medications, one of which her husband made sure she took the morning before she killed all of her children. On June 19th, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned each of her five children in a bathtub and then carefully laid them side by side on a bed covering them with a sheet. After killing all five children, Andrea calmly called the police and stated that she had just killed her kids and subsequently was arrested. Days after her arrest, Yates was evaluated by a clinical psychologist to determine her competency to stand trial. Dr. Gerald Harris, the evaluating psychologist, found Yates to be psychotic and also found that she had some problems with attention and concentration. During Andrea’s trial to determine whether or not she was able to understand the court proceedings, she revealed that by being convicted and receiving the death penalty she would be able to kill Satan. Satan was one of the main reasons she believed she needed to kill her children; she wanted to save them from Satan. The delusion about Satan leads her attorneys as well as psychologists to question the matter of insanity at the time of Yate’s crime. The State of Texas’s standard for insanity has been characterized by extremely narrow circumstances and is nearly impossible to meet; you were deemed insane if you were unable to know that the act of committing a crime was wrong. Through Yate’s testimony during trial she expressed that she knew that killing her children was legally wrong however she believed that it was morally right because of her religious delusions.
Psychological aspects to Andrea Yate’s case are associated with clinical, social, developmental and cognitive psychology, as well as, sensation and perception. Andrea Yate’s clinically suffered from depression and psychotic episodes of delusions regarding Satan. She was eventually prescribed antipsychotic medication after several suicide attempts in hopes of altering her perceptions and sensations in everyday life to better her well-being. Socially, her husband Russell influenced her in a way that made her feel as if nothing was wrong and that she should just continue to take her medication and go on with life. He never once suggested that she should be hospitalized or that she should not be left home alone with the kids. There were several people, after the death of Andrea and Russell’s children, which believed that Russell was every bit as much responsible as Andrea. Developmentally Andrea was not always as mentally ill as she was. She attended college, was valedictorian at her high school, was a swimming champion and possessed a degree in Nursing. During the first four years of marriage to Russell she worked full time and didn’t have any associations with mental health issues. It wasn’t until Andrea became a mother, a role that socially, physically, and mentally changed her, that she started declining mentally into a state in which she felt it was necessary to kill her kids.
Links that I found that relate to Andrea Yate’s case are as follows:
1. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2005922/Ten-years-ago-today-Andrea-Yates-drowned-children--freed-end-year.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates#Russell_Yates
3. http://www.chron.com/news/article/Doctor-s-reputation-takes-a-hit-in-Yate-s-1948489.php

The first link is a recap of what Yate’s case was and described what she is doing now. Her lawyer George Parnham, was confident that she would be released after her recommitment hearing in November of 2010 and that she would be able to leave her minimum security mental hospital in Kerrville, TX. It was expected that she would attend a regimen of therapy in a community-based outpatient facility. Parnham states in this article that he thinks that she is no longer a danger to society and that her mental condition is stable. Since Yate’s trial, Parnham and his wife have campaigned for more awareness regarding women’s mental health issues.
The second link, through reading quite a bit regarding the trials as well as background information on Yates, gave me information that I didn’t know about her husband Russell Yates. Russell Yates was advised by Dr. Saeed, before the murder of his children, not to leave Andrea unattended. Weeks before Andrea drowned her children, Russell began leaving her alone for short periods of time hoping to improve her independence. It came out during trial that Russell expressed his views on people with depression as just needing a swift kick in the pants to get them going. It was also suggested before the murders that Andrea quit having kids in 2000. Shortly after being discharged however Andrea became pregnant with their youngest, Mary, and gave birth to her later that year; the murders happened shortly after.
The third link is in regards to Park Dietz, the California doctor whose testimony in the Yate’s case took a big hit. People generally view him as very professional and an unbelievable expert. However during the Yate’s case his reputation definitely took a hit. Dietz mistakenly made a testimony to something that wasn’t true regarding a law and order episode. What I didn’t know was that he has been the center to a lot of very high profile cases such as Jeffery Dahmner, John Hinckley, Ted Kaczynski and more. He has testified in all 50 states and helps develop shows like law and order and different movies.