Andrea Yates

[Anonymous]

In 1999, Andrea called Rusty at work and told him she needed help.   When he arrived home, he found her shaking and chewing her fingers, so he took her and the children to his parents' home, where she said she felt better.  But then she tried to kill herself with a drug overdose from her father's medication, and with Andrea's mother's help, Rusty finally got her into treatment.  Later she said she had just wanted to "sleep forever."  She was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder.  She admitted to anxiety and having overwhelming thoughts.  Those who observed her and spoke to Rusty, according to several accounts, believed that he was controlling.

Andrea was prescribed Zoloft for depression, but she was resistant to taking medication, ostensibly because she wanted to be able to breast-feed her youngest child.   Many presumed it was because the Woronieckis would judge her harshly for it.  She soon withdrew and began to sleep a lot.  She worried about the hospital bill and would not talk about her home life.  The insurance money ran out.

The ailing mother was discharged and another psychiatrist switched her to Zyprexa, an antipsychotic drug for bipolar disorders and schizophrenia.   Andrea flushed the pills down the toilet.  Then she got worse.

She told her psychiatrist that she was hearing voices and seeing visions again about getting a knife.   She began to scratch at herself, leaving sores on her legs.  Then Rusty found her in the bathroom one day pressing a knife to her throat.  He took it away and got her hospitalized.

Andrea confessed to one doctor that she was afraid she might hurt someone.   She refused medication and withdrew from all efforts to help.  She refused to answer questions.  Finally, she was given a shot of the antipsychotic drug Haldol.  She got a little better, and then worse, so she was given more Haldol.  She improved slightly, but would not eat.  She was afraid of what her visions might mean.

Relatives had pressured Rusty to buy a house for his family, so he did, moving the bus into the yard by the garage at their new Clear Lake home.

Andrea sometimes talked with social workers, but often changed her story.   She'd been suicidal, she had not been suicidal.  She did admit that she got anxious when stressed and she vaguely associated stress with her children.  The doctor anticipated that electroshock therapy might eventually be needed.  It was controversial, but had shown some positive benefits for depressed older women.  Andrea, he wrote, also needed to develop coping strategies for stress.  For two days, she refused her medication.  Then she was discharged with more prescriptions for pills that she would avoid taking.

She continued therapy, which included group therapy, and said she wanted to get off medication so she could get pregnant again.   She seemed anxious, so her outpatient therapist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, switched her to the sedative Ativan.  She worried that Andrea's plan for more children could result in psychosis.  Andrea did not take the Ativan.

At home, Andrea remained secretive and seemingly obsessed with reading the Bible.   Rusty thought that was a positive thing.  Andrea's therapist took her off Haldol, but had her continue with several other antidepressants.  Andrea decided to discontinue them on her own.  Despite doctors' warnings to have no more children, they had a baby girl, Mary, late in 2000.  Rusty believed he would spot the onset of depression and get help if needed.  He was sure any bad effects could be controlled with medication.

To this point, she'd experienced several episodes of psychotic hallucinations, survived two suicide attempts, taken a number of different medications, and been diagnosed in several institutions with major depression.   Now she had five young children to care for, three of whom were still in diapers.

When Andrea's father died a few months later, she stopped functioning.   She wouldn't feed the baby, she became malnourished herself, and she drifted into a private world.  Rusty forced her back into treatment at Devereux Texas Treatment Network in April under yet another doctor, Ellen Albritton, who put her on antidepressants.

Then psychiatrist Mohammed Saeed took over her care.   He received scanty medical records from her previous treatment and no information from her, so he put Andrea on Risperdol, a new drug, rather than Haldol.  He had not heard about hallucinations, and he observed no psychosis himself, so he felt Haldol was unnecessary.  However, Suzy Spencer indicates that the notes kept on Andrea were disorganized and scribbled over someone else's chart.  The descriptions of Andrea's condition, which was near catatonia, were vague.  Saeed discharged Andrea into her husband's care, with a suggestion for partial hospitalization, and gave her a two-week prescription.

Rusty's mother came from Tennessee to help out with the children, but Andrea wound up back in the hospital.  When she started to eat and shower, she was sent home, with the proviso that she continue outpatient therapy.  One day she filled the tub and her mother-in-law asked why.  She responded, "In case I need it."

It seemed a strange statement, and no one knew how to interpret it, so they let it pass.   They did not see the forewarning except in hindsight.  

Yet Rusty was worried, so he took Andrea back to the doctor, telling him that she was not doing well.   According to Roche, Saeed reportedly assured him that Andrea did not need shock treatment or Haldol, but Spencer says that he did suggest shock treatments and did prescribe Haldol.  Andrea was shuffled back and forth, and early in June, Dr. Saeed took her off the antipsychotic medication.

Then on June 18, Rusty was back.   Andrea was having problems.  Saeed supposedly told Andrea to "think positive thoughts," and to see a psychologist for therapy.  However, he says that he did warn Rusty that she should not be left alone.  Rusty told author Suzy Spencer that on that day Saeed had cut Andrea's medication?now it was Effexor--too drastically and he had protested, but the doctor had reassured him it was "fine." Rusty had filled the prescription, still confused as to why the doctor thought that an obviously sick woman was doing okay.  That was two days before the fatal incident.

Andrea sat at home during those days in a near-catatonic state, and to Rusty she seemed nervous.   However, he did not think that she was a danger to the children, so on June 20 he left her alone.  Since his mother was coming, he felt sure everything would be fine.  Andrea was eating cereal out of a box, which was uncharacteristic of her, but her demeanor seemed okay.  He didn't think a few minutes alone would be a problem.

How wrong he was.

On that morning, she had a plan.

[Anonymous]

Legal Maneuvers


On October 30, Parnham and Odom filed nearly three-dozen pre-trial motions, including a rather crucial request that the Court reconsider a procedure in the Texas Criminal Code that prohibited jurors from learning that a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) was not an outright acquittal.   It involved sending the person to a mental institution for treatment and periodic re-evaluation.  Those defendants did not just walk free.  The attorneys believed that such knowledge could play a strong role in how the jury made a decision in this case.

The two attorneys also wanted Yates's confession thrown out because she had not been competent to waive her rights and they asked the Court to declare the insanity plea, as it was stated in Texas law, to be unconstitutional, because it was not in touch with what we now know about the true nature of mental illness.

In November, the prosecution's psychiatrist, Dr. Park Dietz, came to interview Andrea.   A nationally prominent psychiatrist who consulted for the FBI and worked on such cases as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Susan Smith (who also drowned her children), he generally only worked for the prosecution.  He had limited knowledge of postpartum depression.

Dr. Park Dietz testifies in court
Dr. Park Dietz testifies in court
 

The interview was taped, and after the trial it was released to the public.   Andrea told Dietz that at the time of the killings in June, Satan was inside her, giving her directions.  "I was pretty determined," she admitted, "to do what Satan told me to do."  She also indicated that she felt that by killing her children before they went downhill morally, she was ensuring they would get into heaven.  That's the only place where they would be safe.  Dietz asked her several times whether she knew that what she had done was wrong and she answered yes.  She had planned for at least a month to kill them at some point when she was alone with them.  

December was a difficult month.   Andrea's lawyers tried to fight the capital murder charge, and failed.  While they were granted a number of motions, they did not get those they felt were most crucial.  In particular, the jury would not learn that in the event of an NGRI verdict, Andrea would go into treatment.

Both Rusty and the police officers who had gone to the scene testified at a hearing.   The judge ruled that Andrea's 911 call and her confession would be admissible.  Rusty had spoken out in September, violating the gag order, and his 60 Minutes interview was broadcast on December 9.  A special independent prosecutor was appointed to probe the violation by both Rusty and DA Rosenthal, but the talk was that he would delay it until after the trial, which was fast approaching.  By the end of the trial, the issue would be moot.

Jury selection began on January 7, 2002.   It took a week, and in the end, eight women and four men were seated.  Seven had children and two had degrees in psychology.  They were "death qualified."  The trial date was set for February.

Andrea would have to prove that on the morning when she had drowned her children she'd had a mental disease or defect that prohibited her from understanding that what she had done was wrong.   Since she was claiming that she did indeed know that it was wrong, the attorneys needed experts who could prove that her manner of processing this information was in itself rooted in psychosis.  Not only did they have to meet one of the most restrictive standards in the country for insanity, they had to educate the jury in ideas about mental illness that were rife among the public with stereotypes and misperception and to help them get beyond the literal interpretation of "right" and "wrong."  A mock trial that the defense had tried had already shown them that a jury in their area might have a difficult time accepting that someone can confess to such a crime and not understand what she had done.

They had to present a very strong case.

[Anonymous]

http://www.courttv.com/trials/yates/index.html

[Anonymous]

The Case Against Her


Andrea Yates was being tried on two counts of capital murder?one for the two older boys and one for Mary.   Because it had caught the nation's attention and because it was so controversial, her case was to become a high-profile arena for the battle of medical experts.

Opening statements began on February 18.   The prosecution claimed that Andrea Yates had drowned her five children and had known it was illegal and wrong.  There would be plenty of signs supporting that.  For example, she waited until her husband had gone to work so he would not stop her, she prepared for it, she was methodical, and she called the police afterward.  Owmby and Williford wanted to keep the jury focused on whether she knew right from wrong at the time of the offense.  Her mental illness, they would insist, was not relevant to that.

Prosecutor Joseph Owmby
Prosecutor Joseph Owmby
 

The defense said that she did not know what she was doing because she had been legally insane.   She'd been suffering from postpartum depression with psychotic features and her delusions had driven her to kill her children.  Her illness, said Parnham, "was so severe, so longstanding that Andrea Yates' ability to think in abstract terms, to give narrative responses, to be able to connect the dots was impaired."  He explained that it was important that they not give the impression to the jury that they were claiming a "devil made me do it" defense.  They were trying to indicate the disordered nature of Andrea's thinking.

In other words, the primary question in this case was whether Yates had killed the children while in a state of disabling psychosis or had knowingly done it to escape a life she hated or to punish her husband.

The real problem for the defense was that medication had stabilized Andrea over the eight months since the crimes had occurred and in court she appeared to be normal---a far cry from her initial prison interview on the day of the crime.   Yet they ethically could not have withheld medication for demonstration purposes.  It was a dilemma.

The prosecution laid out its case first, with the 911 call, the testimony of police officers who responded to the scene, Andrea's prison confession, and with autopsy reports from medical examiners.   Jurors heard about how one child had strands of his mother's hair clamped in his little fist.  They showed photos and home videos of the children, while Andrea cried.

Andrea's mother-in-law then took the stand and discussed her observations of "her precious daughter-in-law" during the time she had been helping with the children.   Mrs. Yates described Andrea as nearly catatonic, staring into space, and did not think she was aware of what she was doing when she killed the children.  She was a better witness for the defense, it seemed.

The prosecutors entered the children's pajamas into evidence, over Parnham's insistent protest, to "show" how much smaller these children were than their mother.   Parnham believed it was merely to inflame the jury, but Judge Hill sided with Owmby.  He then worked hard at proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Andrea Pia Yates had knowingly murdered her children.

After three days, the prosecution rested and the defense called its first witness.

[Anonymous]

Andrea's Defense

During the defense's presentation of proof of Andrea's insanity, Parnham and Odom used prison psychiatrist Melissa Ferguson to testify to Andrea's state of mind soon after her arrest.   After being placed on medications that allowed her to process questions and to talk, she admitted to her fears about Satan:  He had spoken to her and the children through cartoons they were watching on television.  They were bad because they were eating too much candy.  He demanded that she kill the children, and to be rid of him, she believed she had to get the death penalty.  Her children, she said, could never be saved, because she had not raised them right.  She had decided on drowning because stabbing was too bloody.

Rusty also took the stand and described his wife's manner with the children.   He admitted that he had not grasped the full extent of his wife's illness and often just did not know what to do.  Andrea did not tell him about the hallucinations or voices and he had assumed that the doctors   he took her to had done whatever could be done.  He admitted being frustrated with Dr. Saeed's refusal to use Haldol or keep her hospitalized.

Saeed had written in her records that she had no symptoms of psychosis.   He went on the stand during the start of the third week of trial.  He had diagnosed her with depression with psychotic features but did not have evidence that she was psychotic two days before the fatal incident.  Parnham accused him of doctoring his notes to protect himself, based on his perception that the handwriting about the lack of psychotic features was smaller than other writing on the report.  Saeed vehemently stated that he had written the notes on the same day.

Then Andrea's mother took the stand to talk for ten minutes about Andrea being a wonderful mother.   There was no cross-examination.

Now it was time for the big guns.   Odom and Parnham called on psychiatrists Phillip Resnick from Case Western University in Ohio, Steve Rosenblatt, and Lucy Puryear to explain that Andrea suffered from schizophrenic delusions and had believed that killing her children was the right thing to do.

The defense psychiatrists tried hard to show the jury that Andrea was incapable of knowing what she had done within a normal context of interpretation.  

"It's not like she could come up with a list of options," Puryear said.   "She was psychotic at the time and driven by delusions that [the children] were going to Hell and she must save them."

Rosenblatt, who interviewed her five days after the killings said that he observed that she was in a deep state of psychosis, and it would have taken her weeks to get that sick.   He concluded that she had been in that hallucinatory state at the time of the incident.  He could not say why she had stopped taking her medication.

They described Andrea's suicide attempts and her hallucinations after her first child was born.   Puryear talked about her shame over such ideations and her need for secrecy.  She also educated the jury in the difference between postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, and indicated that Andrea was suspicious that Satan may have influenced her doctors.

Dr. Phillip Resnick

Dr. Resnick, a specialist in parents who kill their children, described the killings as "altruistic."   He admitted that Andrea did know that what she was doing was illegal but believed her decision to kill her children was nevertheless right, for the protection of their eternal souls.  He believed, after seeing her in her cell on two different occasions, that she suffered from schizophrenia and depression.  While he contradicted the other doctors, he said each had his own interpretation of the data.

[Anonymous]

Stressed Women More Likely to
Miscarry in Early Pregnancy
United Press International - February 22, 2006

University of Michigan scientists say women showing signs of stress are three times more likely to miscarry during the first three weeks of pregnancy.

Pablo Nepomnaschy and colleagues measured the levels of cortisol -- a stress-induced hormone -- in urine samples taken three times weekly for a year from 61 women in a rural Guatemalan community.

Nepomnaschy conducted the field work while a doctoral student at UM, both in the anthropology department and the school of natural resources and environment.

The Guatemalan study is believed the first known to link increases in cortisol levels to very early-stage pregnancy loss.

Most previous studies began when women noticed they were pregnant, about six weeks after conception. However, most miscarriages are known to occur during the first three weeks of pregnancy.

The only way to capture the first three weeks of pregnancy is to begin collecting (the female participant?s) urine from before they become pregnant. That is extremely labor intensive and expensive, Nepomnaschy said.

He is now a post-doctoral fellow at the epidemiology branch of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

[Anonymous]

http://www.ABC13.com

Bombshell dropped in Andrea Yates case

Teacher's email cited in motion to bar retrial
KTRK By Deborah Wrigley

(2/22/06 - KTRK/HOUSTON) - There was a bombshell from Andrea Yates' defense team on Wednesday. In a court document obtained by Eyewitness News, they claim the state's star expert witness in Yates' first trial not only made a major mistake. They say prosecutors gave him the idea.


It was one of about thirty motions recently filed by Yates' attorney, George Parnham. This one was a motion to bar Yates' retrial. It's based on the notion of double jeopardy, meaning she can't be tried twice for the same crime because of what the defense says was prosecutorial misconduct.

Yates was arrested in June of 2001 for the drowning deaths of her five children. One week later, a Tomball teacher emailed the Harris County DA's office. The email reads in part,

      "A few day before the Yates children were killed, A&E had an episode of LA Law, where a young woman killed her child using a postpartum psychosis defense and was found not guilty. I just thought it was odd and thought your office should know."

The state's star witness, Dr. Park Dietz, according to the writ on file, was told about the email. He testified instead at the trial that he consulted on a Law and Order episode dealing with postpartum psychosis, but no episode ever existed.

A second email was sent to prosecutors by the Tomball teacher, saying it was LA Law, not Law and Order.

The DA's office concedes there may have been confusion.

"Somebody confused LA Law for Law and Order," said Alan Curry with the Harris County DA's office. "We don't know for sure. I don't know if we'll ever know for sure, but whatever happened, there was no prosecutorial misconduct."

That's the key. Did prosecutors mishandle the case on purpose? That could create double jeopardy, but it's hard to prove, experts say.

"It's going to be a stretch because they have to prove in this particular case that the state intentionally kept the information from the defense," said ABC13 legal expert Joel Androphy.

A judge will rule on the motion on Friday. The teacher from Tomball is expected to attend.

Yates was released earlier this month after posting a $200,000 bond. She was taken directly from the Harris County Jail to the state psychiatric hospital in Rusk. Her second capital murder trial is scheduled to begin next month.

(Copyright © 2006, KTRK-TV)

[Anonymous]

Associated Press
Inmate Says Andrea Yates Said to Copy Her
By PAM EASTON , 02.23.2006, 10:01 PM
   
Andrea Yates once advised a fellow inmate that she could escape prosecution by pretending to be mentally ill and persuading a psychiatrist she suffered from serious disorders, according to court documents filed Thursday by prosecutors.

Felicia Doe, who spent four days in a jail block with Yates in 2002, told prosecutors last year that Yates instructed her not to eat, not to speak properly and not to be friendly or open in front of people if she wanted to "beat her case."

Yates, who is awaiting a new trial in the drowning of her young children, allegedly said "if you could get the jail psychiatrist on your side, they could testify to your mental health, and they couldn't prosecute you if you were sick," according to the documents, which describe interviews with witnesses who could be called during Yates' trial.

"According to the witness, the defendant basically told her, 'Do what I'm doing,'" prosecutor Kaylynn Williford wrote.

Yates' defense attorney, George Parham, called the account "sad and ludicrous."

"That is absolutely so bogus, it doesn't even deserve a response," he said. "That discounts the medications that this woman was on, the mental illness she suffers from."

Yates, 41, has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

During her 2002 trial, psychiatrists testified Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression, but expert witnesses disagreed over the severity of her illness and whether it prevented her from knowing right from wrong.

A jury rejected Yates' original insanity defense and sentenced her to life in prison for the drowning of three of her five children ages 7, 5 and 6 months. Evidence was presented about the drowning of two others, ages 3 and 2, but Yates was not charged in their deaths.

Her convictions were overturned last year based on false testimony by an expert witness.

Doe, who could not be reached for comment by the AP, also told prosecutors that Yates disclosed details of the slayings, explaining that she locked a door so her oldest son, 7-year-old Noah, could not escape the house and describing him as crying so hard he vomited.

"She hit his head against the bathtub several times in an effort to incapacitate him," Doe told prosecutors.

Another inmate, Lynnette Licantino, told prosecutors Yates said her children "were just too much" and that her husband at the time, Russell Yates, would not let her put them in day care, according to the documents.

A phone listing for Licantino could not be found Thursday.

Judge Belinda Hill is scheduled to hold a hearing Friday to consider pretrial requests from both sides. The trial is set to begin March 20.



Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

[Anonymous]

Lawyer: Retrying Yates is double jeopardy

HOUSTON, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- An attorney representing Andrea Yates says retrying the Houston woman accused of killing her children would amount to double jeopardy.

Yates pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the drowning deaths of her five children.

The Houston Chronicle reports attorney George Pamham filed papers this week arguing testimony about an episode of the television show "Law and Order" during her first trial amounted to prosecutorial misconduct.

Psychiatrist Park Dietz testified the series had run a show portraying a woman who drowned her children but no such episode ever was run. Yates was a fan of the show.

Yates, 41, is set to be retried March 20. Her initial conviction for capital murder was overturned because of Dietz's testimony.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc.

[Anonymous]

I hope some big crazy bitch on the inside kills that fucking child killer. Im so sick of hearing and reading all the bullshit with this Killer. We all know what she has done, she knows what shes done. Come on why prolong this any longer, .Fuck the trial, 5 counts of murder thats cause for DEATH. What the hell are they waiting for? This world is full of bleeding hearts. :flame:  :flame:  :flame:  :flame:  :flame:  :flame:  :flame:  :flame:

[Anonymous]

On 2006-02-24 14:08:00, Anonymous wrote:

"I hope some big crazy bitch on the inside kills that fucking child killer. Im so sick of hearing and reading all the bullshit with this Killer. We all know what she has done, she knows what shes done. Come on why prolong this any longer, .Fuck the trial, 5 counts of murder thats cause for DEATH. What the hell are they waiting for? This world is full of bleeding hearts. :flame:  :flame:  :flame:  :flame:  :flame:  :flame:  :flame:  :flame: "

Yup, it is always mom's fault ...

[Anonymous]

Rebuttal


Dr. Park Dietz, in from TAG, his threat assessment firm in California, was a rebuttal witness after the defense presented its case.   Much was made in the media about the fact the Resnick and Dietz were once again head to head.  They had been on opposite sides of several other high-profile cases and Dietz usually won the day.  His forte was to make complicated psychological issues simple for juries, and in the Yates case he used a Power Point presentation to do so.  While he admitted that Andrea was seriously ill, possibly even schizophrenic, he also insisted that she had nevertheless known that what she was doing was wrong.

He pointed out that she had not acted like a mother who believed she was saving her children from Satan, and she had kept her long-festering plan a secret from others.   Thus, while she knew she was having delusions about harming others, she had done nothing to protect them.  She even admitted she knew that what she had done was wrong?it was a sin---and by Texas law, these facts were sufficient for the jury to convict Yates of first-degree murder.  She knew she deserved the death penalty and that it was a punishment for doing something wrong.  She also believed that God would judge her act as bad, and Dietz interpreted her covering of the bodies with a sheet as evidence of guilt.  The fact that she had not comforted and reassured them in death indicated that she had not killed them as an act of love and protection.

"Ordinarily when someone keeps a criminal plan secret," Dietz said, "they do it because it's wrong."

He tended to blame others, notably Rusty.   He described the note from Dr. Saeed in her medical records that she was not to be left alone.  That implied that she was severely impaired and was not safe to leave with children.  He pointed out that she did not follow the advice of her various doctors and made decisions based on her belief that she knew what was best for herself.  She had been living in unhealthy conditions during her illness and not gotten good continuous care.  In her cell when Dietz interviewed her, Andrea had admitted that it had been a bad decision to kill the children, and said, "I shouldn't have done it."  She thought the devil had left after she committed the crime.  "He destroys and then leaves."

To counter much of what the defense's psychiatrists had laid out, Dietz opened up possibilities to the jury when he said that Andrea's psychosis may have worsened the day following the incident, while in jail where psychiatrists first saw her.   "There seemed to be new delusions and disorganized thinking on June 21."  The motive for killing her children, he indicated, appeared to be the same as her suicide: to escape an intolerable, high-stress situation.

Dietz also had learned that Andrea was an avid viewer of the television show, Law and Order, for which he consulted, and he believed that an episode of that show in which a mother drowns her child in a bathtub had inspired Andrea.   His observation gave her actions the quality of premeditation.

Dietz was the final act before both sides summed up their cases for the jury.

[Anonymous]

Feb. 24, 2006, 9:25PM

Attorney wants judge to block new Yates murder trial

By PAM EASTON
Associated Press

Prosecutors and an expert witness from Andrea Yates' original trial testified today they didn't give much thought to a television legal drama a resident pointed out to them as having similarities to Yates' case.

"Even if this show aired, it didn't matter because we couldn't prove she watched the show," prosecutor Kaylynn Williford testified today during a hearing into defense attorney George Parnham's request to bar a retrial of Yates. "It didn't matter to me. There was so much other evidence."

Parnham says prosecutors used a nonexistent episode of Law & Order to imply Yates had a blueprint "to get out of a trapped marriage by murdering her children and escaping prosecution or a conviction by pleading insanity."

He has asked State District Judge Belinda Hill to halt a retrial of Yates on double jeopardy grounds claiming prosecutorial misconduct.

Parnham says prosecutors knew the testimony offered by their expert witness was false. Prosecutors say it was simply a mistake.

Testimony about the Law & Order episode by the state's expert witness, psychiatrist Park Dietz, led to Yates' two capital murder convictions being overturned last year.

In 2003, a grand jury found there was no wrongdoing by Dietz. The First Court of Appeals, which overturned Yates' conviction, found no prosecutorial misconduct.

Yates, 41, faces retrial March 20 on two capital murder charges for drowning deaths of three of her five children. She has again pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

Hill said she would listen to additional testimony Monday before issuing a ruling on Parnham's request to halt the retrial.

Prosecutor Joe Owmby testified today that he asked Dietz to check into an episode of Law & Order based on the e-mail his office received. Owmby said he often has confused L.A. Law with Law & Order.

When Dietz responded to a question on cross-examination from Yates' attorney during her 2002 trial about whether a Law & Order episode existed in which a woman was acquitted of killing her child based on insanity, Owmby said he had no reason to doubt Dietz's response that such a show existed.

"As a factual matter, he never said anything he could not document," Owmby said of Dietz. "When he said that, I was positive he had documentation of it."

Dietz, however, said he had ignored the prosecutor's request because he didn't think it had anything to do with Yates' case.

"This was just noise, hardly more important than the boarding announcements as you walk through the airport," Dietz testified. "I knew quite a bit by then. I knew there was already ample evidence of planning, ample evidence of knowing it was wrong."

Shauna Thornton sent the e-mail to the Harris County District Attorney's office a week after Yates' 2001 arrest for drowning her five children, who ranged in age from 6-months to 7-years.

Thornton said an episode of L.A. Law in which a mother smothered her child and then was found innocent by reason of insanity due to postpartum psychosis aired in the weeks before Yates drowned her children.

"This probably is not important, but I thought it was a weird coincidence," Thornton wrote. "I just thought it was odd and thought your office should know."

Thornton said she received a dismissive e-mail later followed by two calls from the district attorney's office. She said she responded with what she knew about the show and then months later, during Yates' trial, realized prosecutors referred to Law & Order instead of L.A. Law.

She said she sent another e-mail attempting to correct the name of the show.

Owmby said the trial had concluded by the time he received the e-mail.

"I certainly didn't purposely make it up," testified Dietz, who said he immediately took steps to correct his testimony upon learning he was wrong.

Jurors were told of Dietz's false testimony after they rejected Yates' insanity defense but before hearing evidence in trial's sentencing phase. Yates was sentenced to life in prison.

During her 2002 trial, psychiatrists testified Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression, but expert witnesses disagreed over the severity of her illness and whether it prevented her from knowing that drowning her children was wrong.

This article is: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 83410.html

[Anonymous]

Blah,Blah, Blah.He says , she said, they said, its all bullshit! You can type all the court papres you want. The FACT is she KILLED her kids! She did it, not her husband, not her mother, not her father not any of her friends  HER. Nobody broke her arm and told her to Kill her 5 kids, she did it all on her own.Sick fucken bitch, I would love to get my hands on her.And to the rest of you that feel sorry for her, your just as sick as she is and you should think about getting help for yourself.

[Anonymous]

On 2006-02-24 20:46:00, Anonymous wrote:

"

On 2006-02-24 14:08:00, Anonymous wrote:


"I hope some big crazy bitch on the inside kills that fucking child killer. Im so sick of hearing and reading all the bullshit with this Killer. We all know what she has done, she knows what shes done. Come on why prolong this any longer, .Fuck the trial, 5 counts of murder thats cause for DEATH. What the hell are they waiting for? This world is full of bleeding hearts. :wstupid: