Second Trial Begins for Andrea Yates
HOUSTON — Five years after Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the bathtub of her suburban home, a jury is hearing evidence for the second time on her criminal responsibility for the deaths.
Yates, 41, was convicted of capital murder in 2002, but an appeals court threw out the case, ruling that the erroneous testimony of a prosecution witness might have prejudiced the jury.
During opening statements Monday in her retrial, defense attorney George Parnham told the new jury that Yates was seriously mentally ill and thought Satan was living inside her. The only way to keep Satan from getting her children, the lawyer said Yates believed, was to kill them.
Prosecutors said Yates was sane enough to know that drowning her children was wrong, because she called police to her home and confessed. “I believe in the insanity defense,†prosecutor Kaylynn Williford said. “I do not see that in this case based on the evidence.â€
Yates, sitting at the defense table, appeared pensive and attentive throughout the day. She occasionally conferred with one of her lawyers, looking her in the eye and nodding. It was a marked contrast to Yates’ first trial, when she appeared detached and heavily medicated. Her lawyer has said she is taking a lighter dosage.
As in her first trial, Yates has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. If convicted of murder, Yates will be sentenced to life in prison. The first jury rejected the death penalty, and prosecutors cannot seek death again because they did not find new evidence.
If the new jury finds Yates not guilty, she could be committed to a state hospital.
To prove Yates was insane when she killed her children, her lawyers must show she was unable to distinguish right from wrong. Under the Texas standard, even if Yates believed she was protecting her children from Satan, Yates was sane if she knew it was wrong to kill them.
Lawyers for both sides plan to present much of the same evidence as in 2002. Parnham might offer new evidence of the mental breakdowns he says Yates has endured since her first trial. Prosecutors might introduce evidence of conversations with inmates in which Yates reportedly talked about how to feign mental illness.
On Monday, as two Houston police officers testified about the crime scene, Yates kept her eyes on the defense table. Officer David Knapp said Yates came to the door “wide-eyed†and dripping wet. A trail of watery footprints that appeared to be from an adult and a child led from the bathroom to the kitchen and back to the bathroom, he said. There, Yates’ 7-year-old son, Noah was found floating face-down in the tub.
Williford said the footprints suggested that Noah had tried to run away. She added that autopsies showed that all the children -- Noah; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, 6 months -- struggled.
On cross-examination, Knapp agreed with Parnham’s description of Yates as unemotional when she told him, “I just killed my kids.â€
After finding Yates’ four other children dead under a sheet on a bed, Officer Frank Stumpo said, he returned to the living room where Yates sat quietly. Stumpo said he asked her if she realized what she had done. “Yes, I do,†Stumpo said Yates replied.
Yates’ ex-husband, Rusty, was in the courtroom. He divorced Andrea Yates in March 2005 and remarried a year later.
This report includes information from the Associated Press.
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