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Jury selection set to begin in capital case of mother accused of drowning her children

By Pam Easton, Associated Press, 1/6/2002 13:40

HOUSTON (AP) Andrea Yates breathed heavily as she called an emergency dispatcher, requesting that a police officer and an ambulance come to her southeast Houston home.

''Are you having a disturbance? Are you ill?'' 911 operator Sylvia Morris asked the mother of five.

''Yes, I am ill,'' Yates replied.

Wet clothes clinging to her, Yates greeted officers at the door with these words: ''I killed my kids,'' Officer David Knapp testified at a pretrial hearing. In a back bedroom, the officers found four dead children under a sheet on a bed. A fifth body was face down in a half-full bathtub.

Jury selection was scheduled to begin Monday in the capital murder trial of Yates, who faces a possible death sentence if convicted of the June 20 drownings of three of her children Noah, 7, John, 5, and Mary, 6 months. Charges are pending for the drownings of Paul, 3, and Luke, 2.

Yates has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

In September, a different set of jurors determined Yates, 37, was competent to stand trial, meaning she understands the charges against her and can assist with her defense. The new panel still could decide she was insane the morning of June 20 and find her innocent.

''I want to hold her accountable for the death of those children,'' Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said.

Testimony is not expected to begin until February as prosecutors and defense attorneys must question dozens of potential jurors individually.

Once testimony begins, jurors will hear the tape of Yates' call to Morris and an audiotaped confession Yates gave officers the day of the drownings. They will view extensive medical records detailing Yates' bouts with depression and suicide attempts, and a doctor's caution that the couple reconsider having more children after their fourth was born in 1999.

Yates' attorneys say she suffers from a severe form of postpartum depression. If found innocent, they say she will be placed in a mental hospital to get the help she needs.

Jurors will hear from the first officers to arrive at the scene, Yates' family members and doctors who treated her.

Defense attorneys plan to present Yates' previous diagnosis of postpartum depression with psychosis, including two suicide attempts after Luke's birth; a family history of mental disease; and a doctor's decision to take her off anti-psychotic medication in the weeks preceding the drownings.

Both sides have submitted long lists of expert witnesses to testify about Yates' illness and her mental status before and at the time of the drownings.

Whether her illness meets the legal definition of insanity will be a key issue, University of Texas law professor George Dix said.

''Mrs. Yates primary impairment is one of depression,'' Dix said. ''Often depression doesn't affect somebody's ability to reason. In theory, her perception has to have been so distorted she did not understand her action was wrong.''

Yates' 911 call might suggest she knew she had done something wrong, said South Texas School of Law Prof. Neil McCabe.

''The prosecution obviously has what they think is slam dunk evidence the dead children and a mother who said she did it,'' McCabe said.

In 1993, Yates' attorney, George Parnham, won an acquittal for a defendant with a history of manic depression charged with wounding two police officers by showing that his client was insane at the time of the shootings.

Yates' case could be another where Parnham wins the jury's sympathy through medical records and expert testimony, McCabe said.

''This case is somewhat unusual in that there is some chance of a not-guilty verdict,'' McCabe said. ''If they follow the law, the likely outcome is guilt.''

-- Anonymous, January 06, 2002