Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary

Luke, Paul, John, and Noah Yates, murdered June 20, 2001


Mary Yates, murdered June 20, 2001




The medicalization of society continues.

We've evolved. We're more sophisticated now, more compassionate. It's possible to murder five children -- GUILT-FREE.

Wrongdoing and evil has moved from being a sin, to being a crime, to being an illness.

HOUSTON (AP) -- Andrea P. Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity Wednesday in the second murder trial over the drowning deaths of her five children.

Ms. Yates, 42, will be committed to a state mental hospital and held until she is no longer deemed a threat.

Ms. Yates stared wide-eyed as the verdict was read, then bowed her head and wept quietly. Her relatives also shed tears, including her ex-husband, Rusty Yates, who muttered, “Wow!” as he, too, cried.

In 2002, another jury convicted Ms. Yates of murder, rejecting claims that she was so psychotic that she thought she was saving the souls of her children by killing them. An appeals court overturned the convictions because of erroneous testimony from a prosecution witness.

Ms. Yates’s lead lawyer, George Parnham, called Wednesday’s verdict a “watershed for mental illness and the criminal justice system.”

Ms. Yates’s first conviction prompted debate over whether Texas’ legal standard for mental illness was too rigid, whether the courts treated postpartum depression seriously enough and whether a mother who kills could ever find sympathy and understanding in a tough-on-crime state like Texas.

...A prosecutor, Kaylynn Williford, said she was very disappointed in the verdict. “For five years, we’ve tried to seek justice for these children,” Ms. Williford said.

I agree with Parnham that the Yates verdict is a watershed. However, he sees it as a positive thing. I don't.

The only explanation that I can come up with for the sympathy that is being showered on Andrea Yates is that her crime is so horrific, systematically murdering her five children, that people can't comprehend it.

Mothers don't drown their children. So, she must be insane.

But, mothers do drown their kids.


Michael and Alex Smith

Susan Smith killed her two little boys in 1995. She was sentenced to life in prison, eligible for parole in thirty years.

Gee, Smith has less than twenty years to go before she has a chance of being released.

I wonder what Michael and Alex would be like now if their mother hadn't killed them. What would they be dreaming of being when they grow up?

I think the public didn't cut Smith slack because they felt personally betrayed by her TV appeals for the safe return of her babies. They had become emotionally invested in the case. As a result, people weren't willing to buy into a mental illness excuse for Smith.

I wonder if Smith is following the Yates case from her prison cell.

I can just hear Smith screaming, "Hey, I'm crazy, too. You have to be crazy to drown your children. Don't hate me because I murdered my kids."

I'm not denying the existence of mental illness, nor am I denying the need to show compassion to the afflicted.

But insanity, a complete breakdown in one's ability to discern what's real and what isn't, what's right and what's wrong, is unusual.

I'm not denying that Andrea Yates is mentally ill. Anyway you look at it, the Yates case is a tragedy for everyone involved.

I am uncomfortable with the jury deciding that Yates was legally INSANE when she held her five children underwater in the bathrub until they were dead.

The question: Did she know that what she was doing was wrong?

From the Associated Press:

[Y]ates, who believed Satan wanted her to drown her five children in the bathtub, knew that her actions were wrong and therefore is not legally insane, Dr. Park Dietz said.

That opinion about Yates also is based on her statements that she knew her thoughts were bad and that killing the children was a sin, said Dietz, who evaluated Yates more than four months after the June 20, 2001, drownings.

While Dietz acknowledges that Yates was/is ill, he believes that she knew murdering her children was wrong.

The jury didn't see it that way. It bought into the mental illness excuse.

Mental health advocates are claiming victory.

President of the National Mental Health Association David Shern said:

[The] verdict affirms that individuals with severe mental illnesses cannot be held to the same standards of criminal responsibility as other Americans. It demonstrates we as a nation are rightfully reassessing our treatment of people with mental illnesses in the justice system.

That bothers me. This is such a gray area -- deciding whether or not people with severe mental illnesses know the difference between right and wrong.

If they don't know the difference, should their caretakers be held responsible for allowing an ill person to go on a killing spree?

Who is responsible for the deaths of the five Yates children?

No one?

It seems that it's getting easier to claim victim status and get away with crimes.

There always seems to be an excuse, from being raised in poverty, to having inattentive or abusive parents, to poor instruction and supervision in public schools.

Reacting to the Yates verdict, defense attorney Wendell Odom said:

Five years makes a big difference. Five years ago, there were a lot of people that couldn't get past the anger of what happened. And there has been a whole lot of education the last five years.

So now people are past the anger. Now a jury was ready to accept insanity and give Andrea Yates a break. They could believe that she had no control whatsoever over her actions when she committed murder five times. She's sick.

Does this insanity verdict really stem from increased education on mental illness or a relaxing of standards of personal responsibility?

Has the public been brainwashed into believing that the perpetrators of crimes are also victims?

I agree with Dianne Clements, a victims-rights activist and president of Justice For All.

Clements commented:

"Why can people accept with such enthusiasm the idea of the devil speaking to her and telling her to do things and not even entertain the idea that Andrea Yates could not cope with her responsibilities and saw no way out except for murdering her children? Which I think is exactly what happened. ... She knew what she wanted to do, what she was planning to do, and she did it."

I have no doubt that Andrea Yates' mental illness played a part in the murders, but there's a difference between citing a reason for something and deeming it to be an excuse.

I suppose it's comforting to neatly tie up this case with an insanity verdict. I think Yates benefited from the assumption that mothers love their children and murdering them is proof of insanity.

That's easier than confronting the reality that people, including mothers, commit horrible crimes.

Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 people, kept body parts in his refrigerator, and ate one of his victim's flesh, with A.1. Sauce. He, of course, was sane. Does that make sense?

Who knows? Maybe Dahmer would have benefited from that "whole lot of education" that Wendell Odom says helped Andrea Yates out.

With all the talk of the troubled Andrea Yates' state of mind, I think people have forgetten the real victims -- Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary.

They're dead because their mother killed them.

She took away their lives, but the verdict is that it wasn't her fault.

Frankly, that's insane.