Author Topic: Andrea Yates  (Read 38542 times)

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Offline Carmel

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« Reply #150 on: May 10, 2006, 05:02:00 PM »
Oh, and PS-

Who GIVES A FLYING ASS MONKEY what Mrs. Yates wants?  A psychiatric facility? She should be so lucky.  She relinquished her humanity when she stopped behaving like one.
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #151 on: May 10, 2006, 08:35:00 PM »
I don't know what should be done.  I do believe though that there is a difference between Yates and the likes of Downs or Susan Smith.  The latter two killed their kids because they didn't want the responsibility of being a mom.  They both wanted to be with men who expressly stated that they did not want to be fathers.  Yates, to me, seems to be one of the rare people that are truly mentally ill.  Whether it was organic or environmental or a combination, there is a difference between mental illness and being flat out selfish and cruel. Not that the consequences aren't just as tragic but I think there is a difference.  In my humble opinion
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #152 on: May 10, 2006, 09:44:00 PM »
Well let me think about this ...

A husband's wife changes dramatically.

She starts talking strange and acting
stranger.

Next she is a psychiatric hospital
diagnosed with Schizophrenia and
Post Partum Depression.

The doctor advises him to get her
help at home, and not to have any
more kids.

He brings her back home and continues
to isolate her with the 4 kids. Then
has another baby.

She goes in and out of psychosis, and
he still doesn't bring in any help
with now five home schooled children
at home.

Nope Carmel you are right, Rusty is
an angel, too bad some other chick
married him before you found out where
he lives!
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #153 on: May 10, 2006, 09:47:00 PM »
Treat Depression in Mothers

(From USA Today)

Successfully treating a mother's depression can alleviate or even prevent psychiatric problems in her children, a study reports today.

But a mother's continued depression increases her child's risk of such problems, the study shows. Researchers said it is the first published study to show that a child will benefit if the mother's depression is treated effectively.

Researchers studied 151 mother-child pairs. The mothers were taking medication as part of a larger study about treating depression in the general population. The children's ages were 7 to 17, and the average age was 12.
At the beginning of the study, about a third of the children had a psychiatric disorder, including depression, anxiety and disruptive behavior.

By the end of three months, about a third of the mothers saw their depression go into remission. Among their children, there was an 11% drop in rates of psychiatric diagnoses. Among children of mothers who were still depressed, there was an 8% rise in diagnoses.

The relationship between mothers' depression and children's diagnoses at the end of three months was similar whether or not the children had a diagnosis at the beginning of the study, the researchers write in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

"We know that depression and other disorders are brought on by strong environmental stresses," says lead author Myrna Weissman, a psychologist at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. "Having a parent with an illness is a big environmental stress."

Weissman and her colleagues speculate that the mothers' remission initiated a "virtuous cycle" in which the mothers and children positively influenced each other. Researchers are continuing to assess the mothers' depression and children's diagnoses every three months for a total of two years.

William Beardslee, academic chair of psychiatry at Children's Hospital Boston, called Weissman's data "very encouraging."

"In our view, depression in parents is a family calamity, but it is one that can be overcome."
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Offline Anonymous

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #154 on: May 10, 2006, 10:04:00 PM »
"I brought you into this world and
I can take you out of this world"
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #155 on: May 10, 2006, 11:22:00 PM »
Charles Manson never murdered anyone. Why is he in Jail. More of the American blame game! Free Charlie!
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Offline Carmel

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« Reply #156 on: May 11, 2006, 08:15:00 AM »
Quote
On 2006-05-10 17:35:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I don't know what should be done.  I do believe though that there is a difference between Yates and the likes of Downs or Susan Smith.  The latter two killed their kids because they didn't want the responsibility of being a mom.  They both wanted to be with men who expressly stated that they did not want to be fathers.  Yates, to me, seems to be one of the rare people that are truly mentally ill.  Whether it was organic or environmental or a combination, there is a difference between mental illness and being flat out selfish and cruel. Not that the consequences aren't just as tragic but I think there is a difference.  In my humble opinion"


So would you concede that that level of selfishness and cruelty is not the product of mental illness?  what would that kind of thing be then?  Wheres the articles and endless rhetoric on "mean and cruel"?  Where are the 'nasty temperment" medications?

Would you then concede that that level of mental illness could not be considered selfish and cruel?  

You dont think they may be one in the same?  

Trying to fit Yates into a nice little USA today diagnosis of depresion and psychosis is a cop out.  I never said her husband was an angel, but blaming him for "triggering" her murderous acts is weak and futile and the territory of small minds who refuse to look at the reality.  

The whole thing is a contradiction....you think there is a difference betweeen these women? The others were just "hateful and evil"?  How clinical of you.  This isnt about true understanding, its championing a cause thats safe because its all tidied up with a nice medical diagnosis and history of medication and domestic abuse.  Something the simple folk can wrap their minds around.  We must love the beautiful crazy person because no one else will.  Its crap, in my humble opinion.

Lets take a good honest look at what we really are, animals.  We are subject to the laws of nature and biology, and we WILL behave according to them no matter how many times we find jesus or run a marathon for breast cancer or sell Mary Kay.  THIS is why atrocities happen and people are killed and children die and so forth......and why they always will.  That may sound pessimistic, but its the truth and the the sooner people can come to accept it, I think the sooner people may be able to effect REAL change.  But it willl never go away.  Its like telling a lion to become a vegetarian.
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...hands went up and people hit the floor, he wasted two kids that ran for the door....."
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Offline Anonymous

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #157 on: May 11, 2006, 08:21:00 AM »
Well Carmel you're lumping me in with the other anons, understandable but sorry.....I ain't signing in.

I didn't post the USA Today article, don't really put much stock in it.  All I said was that there, IMO, is a marked difference between Yates and Downs or Smith.  That's all.  You either agree or don't.  No biggie.

I don't completely blame any ONE person.  It was a combination of things, not the least of which was a serious and severe phychosis which from everything I've read was pretty obvious to those close to her.  Of course Andrea bears responsibility for this!!  I just don't think it's completely her and I think it's a very different situation than with Downs and Smith.
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #158 on: May 11, 2006, 10:54:00 AM »
Quote
On 2006-05-11 05:15:00, Carmel wrote:

"
Quote
...and the the sooner people can come to accept it, I think the sooner people may be able to effect REAL change.
...



"


What is the real change that you are talking about?
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Offline Carmel

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #159 on: May 11, 2006, 10:59:00 AM »
Sorry to get you confused, but in a debate like this I guess you run the risk without defining whos who.

You are entitled to your thoughts, no contest there.  

I still stand behind my posting to the other Anon who thinks the media and policy is the best way to define mental illness.  This is what I mean by NO EXPERIENCE.  You dont truly comprehend it, so you read off the list hoping to covver all the angles, meanwhile, back at the halls of justice....you can say you did your duty without ever having to walk a mile in anyone shoes over it.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
...hands went up and people hit the floor, he wasted two kids that ran for the door....."
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Offline Anonymous

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #160 on: May 11, 2006, 11:07:00 AM »
Looks like someone simply doesn't believe
in mental illness, nor any influence on
human action except free will.

A logical example would be the Nazi's who
went to work everyday running the concentration camps,killing the mentally ill first, then
the Jews. After work they went home to their
families.

They had no excuse, they are guilty too.
Just because they where under the influence of Hitler's reign means nothing.

They chose to go along with his orders, rather
than being killed themselves for insubordination.
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #161 on: May 11, 2006, 11:14:00 AM »
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PRESS RELEASE


AI Index: AMR 51/018/2006 (Public)
News Service No: 022

Embargo Date: 31 January 2006 00:01 GMT

USA: Too slow to help, too eager to kill
Systemic failure and the execution of severely mentally ill offenders

Published


Hundreds of severely mentally ill offenders in the US, are mired within a healthcare system that is too slow to help and a justice system that is too quick to pass death sentences, said Amnesty International today as it launched a major report on the use of the death penalty against mentally ill offenders in the US.

The report focuses on the systemic problems confronting the mentally ill and chronicles the cases of 100 severely mentally ill offenders who have been executed since 1977 -- 1 in 10 of the total number of executions carried out since then.

Citing pervasive systemic failures in both the healthcare and criminal justice systems, the report also highlights the grim situation of the mentally ill currently on death row, which according to the US National Association of Mental Health is 5 to 10 per cent of the US?s total death row population of approximately 3,400.

"The execution of those suffering from severe mental illnesses is a cruel and inhumane practice, which has been overlooked for far too long. Prejudice and ignorance give rise to fear and for many people it is easier to sentence a mentally ill offender to death rather than to find genuine treatment solutions," said Susan Lee, Amnesty International Americas Programme Director.

An illustrative case is Scott Panetti, who was sentenced to death in Texas in 1995 for killing his parents-in-law in 1992. He has a long-documented history of hospitalization for his mental illness, including schizophrenia ? which caused him visual and auditory hallucinations.

During his trial, Scott ? who acted as his own lawyer dressed as a cowboy ? said that demons had been laughing at him as he left the scene of the crime.

One of the doctors who was at the trial said: "? Scott was completely unaware of the effect of his words and actions. Members of the jury had hostile stares and looked at Scott in disbelief while he rambled and made no sense?"

Scott is still on death row.

In June 2002 the US Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for people with mental retardation (the term mental retardation, rather than learning disability, is used in the USA) on the ground that mental retardation diminishes personal culpability and because of the difficulty to justify the deterrent argument.

"Mental retardation and mental illness are not the same but the symptoms can have similar consequences -- a mentally ill person?s delusional beliefs may cause them to engage in illogical reasoning and to act on impulse. There is a profound inconsistency in exempting people with mental retardation from the death penalty while those with serious mental illness remain exposed to it," said Susan Lee.

"Capital punishment is a highly politicized punishment. For far too long, politicians have generally failed to offer the electorate any measurable evidence that judicial killing, let alone of offenders with mental illness, offers a constructive solution to violent crime."

According to Amnesty International?s report, the case of Scott Panetti is representative of the circumstances in which people with severe mental illnesses are given death sentences and executed.

In many cases, those with severe mental illness don?t understand the charges against them or the seriousness of the crime they committed. In others, the defendant is heavily medicated for the trial, and perceived by the jury as remorseless. Lack of remorse is a highly aggravating factor that weighs heavily in a jury?s decision to impose the death penalty.

Some defendants have even been forcibly medicated in order to make them "competent" to be executed.

Amnesty International calls on all US authorities to immediately ban the use of the death penalty against mentally ill offenders and to put an end to the broken capital punishment system once and for all. Additionally, public officials at all levels must ensure that pleas for help by those suffering from mental illness do not go unanswered and that adequate medical treatment is given to those who need it the most.

For a copy of the 189-page report: "USA: The execution of mentally ill offenders", please see:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/indexAMR510032006

For a copy of the 43-page summary report: "USA: The execution of mentally ill offenders", please see: http://web.amnesty.org/library/indexAMR510022006

For more information and updates on AI?s campaign against the death penalty, please see: http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-index-eng
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #162 on: May 11, 2006, 10:58:00 PM »
Help for low-income women with postpartum depression

Thursday, May 11, 2006

By Nancy Holland / 11 News

Next month Andrea Yates will go on trial again for the drowning death of her five children.

Because of that horrific event there has been much discussion of postpartum depression.

The Mental Health Association?s latest efforts hope to turn one family tragedy into help for thousands.

People think the city?s WIC, or Women, Infants, Children clinics, are just places to come for formula.

Sammye Malone said she?s always tried to dig deeper into what women are feeling.

For the first time, WIC screeners have been given specific questions to help identify postpartum depression.

?Women tend to keep their fears, their anxiety, their concern to themselves because if they share it there must be something wrong with them,? Malone said.

In fact, one in 10 women will have postpartum depression, two in 10 if they?re low income.

Roshonda Patterson admits she has been down.

?Now, yeah. Lately because it?s a different environment,? Patterson said. ?I?m from New Orleans.?

The new program that may direct her to a counselor has its roots in the death of Andrea Yates? five children.

The first result of a fund named for them was a brochure on postpartum depression.

It is of course impossible to measure a negative, but the Mental Health Association people believe they have already helped thousands of people.

The next phase, the screening is aimed at tens of thousands.

?Doing this and getting those moms in treatment will have a profound impact on the children,? Betsy Schwartz with the Mental Health Association said. ?There?s a lot of research that documents that a depressed mother is not available emotionally and often physically to take care of her children.?

To get help they say women must have a way to speak up when they are down.

Online at: http://www.khou.com/news/local/stories/ ... 9832a.html
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #163 on: May 14, 2006, 09:51:00 PM »
Quote
On 2006-05-10 20:22:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Charles Manson never murdered anyone. Why is he in Jail. More of the American blame game! Free Charlie!"
:scared:  :scared:  :scared:  :scared:  :scared:  :scared:  :scared:
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #164 on: May 15, 2006, 07:40:00 PM »
Mother's Murder Conviction Turns Insanity Defense Suspect

Michael Grinfeld

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/article ... =175801752

Psychiatric Times June 2002 Vol. XIX Issue 6

In certain respects, what happened after Andrea Yates killed her five children last June was no different from what happens in any other murder case. Once her husband left for work, according to her confession taped by police, she methodically drowned her four sons and one daughter, ranging in age from 6 months to 7 years, by placing them one-by-one into the filled bathtub in her home in a Houston suburb. Those acts were followed by the predictable tragic aftermath of sorrow, pain, confusion and bewilderment, and then by the legal system stepping in to bring justice and, finally, retribution.

What it did not do, like every other similar mass murder that came before it, was resolve the seemingly age-old conundrum of criminal responsibility for acts committed while insane. Once again, media pundits raised troubling questions: Was the insanity defense implemented either too harshly or too leniently? Was mental illness treated too aggressively with myriad medications of limited value, or too haphazardly with a startling lack of collaboration among physicians?

The Yates murder case also raised gender issues. Feminist groups rallied around Andrea and her misunderstood postpartum depression, while men's rights groups railed against critics of her husband, Rusty, who was accused of a lackadaisical response to his wife's illness.

Although not in time for the Yates case, these issues may be resolved soon. The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (AAPL) is scheduled to release its practice guidelines this summer, a first-ever effort to bring some consistency to forensic evaluations of mentally ill individuals accused of crimes. Two years in the making, the Practice Guidelines for Forensic Psychiatric Evaluation of Defendants Raising the Insanity Defense will catalogue accepted methods for handling such cases, Howard V. Zonana, M.D., told Psychiatric Times. Zonana is AAPL's medical director and professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine.

"People have argued for hundreds of years about what the appropriate test for insanity is, and there's always a great deal of distress there," Zonana said. "There are a lot of myths about the insanity defense, [such as] how frequently it's used."

That passage of time, even though it has seen major advances in the understanding and treatment of mental illness, still has not resulted in forensic psychiatrists knowing any more about what makes people respond to the symptoms of their disease in certain ways.

"There are a lot of people who hear command hallucinations, but not everybody listens to the commands," Zonana told PT. "You can't just say because someone has command hallucinations that they had to follow those commands. But we don't have any test to know which people do, can or can't follow those things. We are still left to sort of dealing with a certain degree of approximations in those answers." He continued, "Most schizophrenics stop at red lights. Just the fact that you have a disorder doesn't get you over the hump."

Variation in the insanity defense among the 50 states and the federal court reflects the breadth of public attitudes about mental illness and the degree to which it should exonerate criminal behavior, Zonana said. On one end of the spectrum, some jurisdictions allow consideration of volitional aspects of brain diseases. They consider whether mentally ill individuals not only appreciated the difference between right and wrong but also whether they were able to conform their conduct to the requirements of law. Others have, in effect, abolished the insanity defense.

The practice guidelines, Zonana said, will at least help assure some consistency in the way that forensic experts handle cases when criminal defendants assert the insanity defense. At the same time, Zonana said that he hoped the guidelines would also help still some of the misperceptions -- at times advanced by the media -- that arise during high profile cases.

"I think psychiatry takes a beating in the press all the time. All you need is one bad testimony and that's what people remember and think about psychiatry," Zonana said. "Even though the statistics show that most people who get insanity defenses are really very ill and psychotic, [the public] tends to focus on people getting away with something. So I hope [the practice guidelines] will upgrade more the quality of evaluations and testimony and give some sense that these are hard issues but that there are reasonable ways to do these evaluations."

The Yates case had its moment of what the defense will claim on appeal was "bad" testimony. During the trial, for example, Park Dietz, M.D., a forensic psychiatrist from Newport Beach, Calif., who is nationally recognized for his participation in many high profile cases, testified that Yates' conduct bore a resemblance to an episode of the television show Law and Order. In that episode, a woman who killed her children was exonerated by the insanity defense. The prosecution used Dietz's testimony to subsequently argue that Yates followed the model created by the show.

The trouble was that no such episode ever aired, a fact disclosed only after the jury rendered its guilty verdict. No one has accused Dietz, who has acted as a consultant during the show's production, of lying to jurors, and the trial judge refused to declare a mistrial, but an appeal based on the error is likely.

"I would give him the benefit of the doubt and see it as an honest error," said Phillip J. Resnick, M.D., professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland and a past president of AAPL who testified as a defense expert in the Yates case. Resnick further told PT, "I certainly don't see it as malicious. I think it was just a simple error. It turns out since it was used in closing argument it may be problematic with respect to an appeal."

Resnick said that he read Dietz's "103-page, single-spaced report" and didn't recall seeing any reference to the Law and Order episode, adding that he would have asked Yates about it had he known. Dietz was unavailable for comment.

Resnick told PT that in two discussions with psychiatric professional audiences regarding the verdict of the Yates case, sentiments ran three-to-one in favor of Mrs. Yates, with attendees tending to be "disturbed by the outcome." Nevertheless, it is doubtful that this opinion will result in any changes to the standards used in the insanity defense. "The general public is a bit more mixed, with some people feeling that a mother who killed her children is the ultimate betrayal, but psychiatric audiences tend to be sympathetic to her," Resnick said.

Ultimately, legislators who must consider any reforms are swayed more by the political implications than the medical ones, Resnick said. Legislators perceive their chances of election are greater if they present a tough stand on law and order, and efforts to broaden the insanity defense are most often viewed as soft on crime.

"When a high profile insanity defense is successfulåthere tends to be a backlash against the insanity defense and a political demand to either narrow or abolish the defense," Resnick told PT. "When a high profile insanity case like Yates' is unsuccessful there will be a few voices saying that the insanity defense is too narrow, but rarely will it be of sufficient political clout to make a difference."

With two nationally recognized forensic psychiatrists pitted against one another in the Yates case, it was not surprising that questions would again arise as to whether the expert testimony is really something jurors listen to anyway. Legal commentators and others have criticized the prosecutor from Harris County, Texas, who brought Yates to trial, claiming his decision to seek the death penalty was merely a ruse to seat a more conservative jury who would more likely convict rather than exonerate based on an insanity plea.

"It's not really a battle of the experts," said prosecutor Joseph S. Owmby, during a post-trial press conference. "The question of sanity is a question of common senseåand the experts are there to help them frame, help present the evidence from the medical side. The jurors can't say that this is a severe mental disease or defect, but lay people can tell you whether they believe a person knew right from wrong at the time."

But it's not that simple, said Saul J. Faerstein, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine and forensic expert who has consulted in high profile cases, including working for the defense in the O.J. Simpson case. He told PT that he is not convinced that any reform in the procedures by which insanity defenses are governed will ever actually bring any consistency to these emotionally laden cases.

"What's interesting is that the two experts involved [in the Yates case] are two very well-respected, highly credentialed, effective witnesses. I mean Phillip Resnick and Park Dietz are the cream of the crop, so you're not dealing with people who don't know what they're talking about," Faerstein said. "One would have to raise the question, if two people are so smart, and know the history of the insanity defense and know the standards of the insanity defense so well, how could they interpret it in polar opposite ways if they're both using the same data, the same facts, the same reasoning, the same history and the same legal basis for interpreting what the insanity defense was? How could one say black and the other one say white? That's a very troubling concept for me."

The problem with psychiatric defense is who should try them, Faerstein continued. Everyone -- including judges, lawyers, juries and even psychiatrists -- brings their own biases to the process, and nothing will eliminate them. Reflecting on the Yates case, he added, "I don't think that it's ever possible to have totally objective trier of fact on a case of that nature. People will listen to the facts and listen to the law, but their own prejudices will be superimposed on that substrate, and they'll decide whether a person is sane or insane based on their attitudes toward this woman, their attitudes toward fundamental Christianity, their attitudes toward Rusty Yates and how he treated his wife, their attitudes about lots of things that have nothing to do with what [Texas's insanity defense] test says."

Larry H. Strasburger, M.D., assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and AAPL's president, agreed that cases like Yates' do not make understanding the issue easier.

"My sense is that in some ways we've gone backward with verdicts like this," he said in an interview with PT. In addition, he is not convinced that the public is interested in any "improvements" in the statutes, citing an opposite trend that results in the enactment of more restrictive standards, such as guilty but mentally ill or eradication of the insanity defense altogether.

For George Parnham, the Houston lawyer who defended Yates, Texas' insanity defense yielded a harsh result for his client that failed to reflect the reality of her illness. He also criticized the lack of integration among health care providers who failed to provide the level of care that may have averted the tragedy. But even he concedes that, ultimately, jurors decide cases such as these in a way that sometimes ignores the expert testimony.

"What compelled the jury was the pictures of those children in those pajamas," Parnham said in an interview with PT. "We can talk all day long about mental health, medications, delusions and psychosis, but by golly when you take a picture of a 7-year-old boy who is lying face down in the tub, rigor mortis has set in, and you flip him over and you see the agony on his poor face, that's a toughie."
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