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Jun 29, 2006 7:49 am US/Central
Defense Prepares To Start In Yates Case
HOUSTON (AP) ―
Now that the state has shown how Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the bathtub, her attorneys will try to convince jurors that a psychotic delusion prevented her from knowing the slayings were wrong.
Defense attorneys were to start presenting their case Thursday in Yates' second capital murder trial, being held because her 2002 conviction was overturned last year by an appeals court citing some erroneous testimony.
Yates, who turns 42 on Sunday, has again pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. She will be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors rested their case Wednesday after calling 12 witnesses in the first part of the trial, in which the state's task was to prove that Yates killed the children.
The defense has never disputed that Yates killed 6-month-old Mary, 2-year-old Luke, 3-year-old Paul, 5-year-old John and 7-year-old Noah in the family's Houston-area home on June 20, 2001.
But defense attorney George Parnham said she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and, in a delusional state, had a "prophecy" in which she thought that killing the youngsters was the only way to save them. She also thought that would somehow kill Satan, Parnham said.
"That underscores how crazy she was on the day she killed her kids," Parnham said Wednesday outside the courthouse.
The trial now moves to the phase in which the defense tries to show Yates meets the state's legal definition of insanity: that because of a severe mental disease or defect, someone did not know at the time of the offense that it was wrong.
Her attorneys said the first witnesses to testify for the defense will be the jail psychiatrist who talked to Yates shortly after her arrest and another psychiatrist who treated her while she was behind bars.
The children's father Rusty Yates, who divorced Andrea last year and married another woman in March, has said he continues to support his ex-wife and is to testify for the defense. State District Judge Belinda Hill admonished Rusty Yates on Wednesday, when court was not in session, for being interviewed by a media agency earlier this week, which is against the judge's orders for sworn witnesses in the case.
(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
