Hi Guys,
This was terrible, heartbreaking, case. I read the details of the actual murders several years ago, and remember being horrified at the time. Yates systematically drowned her five children one by one, then laid them out on the bed in their bedroom. She had to struggle to drown the older ones, and had to hunt down and fight several of them. She then called her husband at work and told him to come home telling him specifically that she had done something bad to the children, and then she also called the police telling a detective that she called them because that's who you call when you've "done something wrong." Yates also told police that the final decision to drown her children came after several months of deliberation.
Admittedly, this is just my opinion, but I'm saddened by the verdict. I'm particularly saddened because by it, the Yate's children were denied justice in a "this worldly" sense. I'm also disturbed because under this verdict, Yates can be released as soon as she is declared competent and will be free to have more children. It also was simply bad law for a number of reasons.
1) In order to fit the proper criteria of "not guilty by reason of insanity" it needs to be demonstrated that the perpetrator did/does not understand the difference between right and wrong and fundamentally cannot comprehend the consequences of their actions.
Yates, repeatedly demonstrated that she knew murdering her kids was wrong, and had planned the murders long in advance indicating that this was not spontaneous psychotic behavior, but the result of premeditation.
2) Depression has been poignantly described as "a room in hell" by Martha Manning, but as awful as it is, it is not
insanity. I've counseled many people with depression, and my experience has been that it tends to make people more likely to
choose to engage in self-destructive behavior up to and including suicide - but have never seen it be the catalyst for murderous rage. Ultimately also, the depressive personality is still self-aware and quite capable of
volitional choice in the way that psychotics are not. I don't for a moment dispute that Andrea Yates was depressed, but from the case evidence and her own testimony it is clear that she
consciously premeditated the murder of her children and then acted on it.
So in the end I'm just sad that five little lives were
brutally snuffed out by the person they trusted most, and yet the person who did it has gone essentially unpunished.
- SEAGOON
