Woman Sentenced to Life in Prison for being Sick
So Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five children in a psychotic episode, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. It took the jury just four and a half hours to convict her and less than an hour to sentence her. It had taken a grand jury over eight hours to decide that she was even competent to stand trial.
The whole case makes me mad at the system. Yates' insanity plea is pretty much impossible to prove in Texas, and especially not in Harris County, the capital of capital punishment. I don't think I know anyone with delusional psychosis so I can't speak from personal experience. But if Andrea in her illness perceived her delusions as realistically as did John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, then I fail to see how the jury could hold her culpable (there is a difference between responsibility and culpability).
While the guilty verdict was disappointing, I wasn't surprised about the sentencing. The jury had to unanimously answer YES to two questions in order to convict Yates to death. A) that Yates was a future danger and B) that there were no mitigating circumstances against executing her. They answered no to the first one (and thus didn't have to address the second one).
What really blows my mind, though, is that the prosecutor, Kaylyn Williford said she thought they could answer the two questions posed to them in a way that would result in death by injection. How can she really believe this? Even if you think that Yates was a future danger, how could you not consider her mental illness a mitigating circumstance?
Do we pay prosecutors based on their conviction rate - with a nice fat bonus when they manage to score a death sentence? Or now that Oklahoma has overtaken us, is Texas trying to get back to being number one in execution? Someone please explain this to me.
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If we don't hold culpable those who are "ill" then they should not be allowed to walk the street. Can you imagine a world where the so-called "sick" people are locked up just because they might harm someone. If you are living in society you must retain some culpability. Part of that is going to prison because you drowned five children. I don't care how depressed you are. This whole case is very sad, that is the one thing we can all agree on. While I think Andrea Yates' case is tragic, I think it would be more tragic to condone that sort of "acting out". When you really think about it, who really kills or murders or harms someone without being a little bit sick? I am so tired of this "it's not my fault" society.
I could imagine that, and it's scary, but that's not the world we live in unless someone involuntarily commit you to an institution. We do live in a world, however, where sick people who have harmed someone are removed from society until they are deemed well.
I agree, if living in a society, you are supposed to be responsible for your actions. Psychosis is so far beyond "depression" that it's barely in the same league at all--there is a huge difference. She was not "acting out"--she was living in a different universe than the rest of us. What the jury missed is that she was aware that others would perceive her actions to be wrong, but that DOESN'T mean that she thought they were wrong--she thought everybody else would have been wrong.
I think lots of people kill/murder/harm others and are fully in their right mind. Some don't care, and some enjoy doing those things, and some need to do those things to feel in control of their world.
Agreed--this society is usually too far on the "it's not my fault" swing of the pendulum, but I don't agree that this is one of those cases.
Meredith, I'm not sure if you've been following the Andrea Yates case. Just like you, I'm sick of people shirking personal responsiblity and blaming their actions on parents/society/whatever.
But Elizabeth is right. This is not a case of someone "acting out" and trying to get out of the consequences (I remember a case a couple of years ago, where a mother killed her child because it interfered with her dating). Andrea Yates was sick and probably should not have been "allowed to walk the street". She definitely should not have been allowed to be unsupervised with her children considering the history of her mental illnes.
I'm not sure who is culpable in this case. IMO, part of the responsibility (and yes, culpability) lies with her husband, Russel Yates. Making her continue churn out babies as part of his idea of a "traditional family" although he saw and was told by her doctors that this was contributing to her problems (what's "traditional" about moving your family to a cramped trailer to live the "simpler" live?) Large part also lies with her health provider, who refused to continue her medication a few weeks before she killed her children, despite Russel Yates pleading with them to keep her on the drugs that seemed to improve her condition.
Stepan, just because I have a different opinion than you doesn't mean I don't know enough facts. IMO she knew what she did was wrong and she did it anyway...most likely because she was ill I will grant you. While I think Russel Yates is partially responsible for the debacle I don't believe he was legally responsible.