Tweet
Texas Court Clears Way for New Yates Trial
Psychiatrists testified that Andrea Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused Wednesday to reconsider a lower court's decision to overturn Andrea Yates capital murder convictions for drowning her children in a bathtub in 2001.
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Alan Curry said the case would be retried or a plea bargain considered. Jurors rejected Yates insanity defense in 2002 and found her guilty of two capital murder charges for the deaths of three of her five children.
"Andrea Yates knew precisely what she was doing," Curry said. "She knew that it was wrong."
Curry said if the case goes back to trial, he is confident Yates would be convicted again. He said a plea bargain also may be discussed.
Yates' attorney, George Parnham, did not immediately return a phone call to The Associated Press Wednesday.
The First Court of Appeals in Houston overturned Yates' 2002 convictions in January because of false testimony from forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz.
Curry asked the highest criminal court in Texas, based in Austin, to reconsider the lower court's ruling. He said the lower court wrongly applied the law when it overturned the convictions.
Yates, 40, was sentenced to life in prison and is jailed at a psychiatric prison in East Texas. Yates called police and an ambulance to her home within hours of her husband leaving for work on June 20, 2001. She answered the door in wet clothes and told an officer what she had done.
She then led the officer to a back bedroom where the four youngest children's lifeless bodies were laid out on a bed. Police later found the oldest child, Noah, 7, floating face down with his arms outstretched in the tub's murky water.
During her trial, psychiatrists testified that Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression, but defense and prosecution expert witnesses disagreed over the severity of her illness and whether it prevented her from knowing that drowning her children was wrong - the two requirements to be declared legally insane in Texas.
Jurors determined Yates knew it was wrong to kill her children and found her guilty.
Source: AP