Andrea Yates

[Anonymous]

Verdict


For closing statements, Kaylynn Williford asked the jury to be silent for three minutes so they could experience the amount of time each child had endured the drowning process before dying.   It was a dramatic maneuver and Parnham could do nothing to prevent it.  He wrapped up his case by emphasizing the points the psychiatrists had made.  It was clear that he cared very much what might happen to the woman in his charge.

The trial had lasted three weeks, but it took the jury less than three hours on March 12, 2002, to return a verdict of guilty.   Rusty buried his face in his hands and moaned.  Andrea looked back at her brother Brian and tried to smile, but instead she began to cry and turned away to walk off with the prison guard.

"The way the case unfolded," said Owmby.   "I was confident that the jury would find her guilty and reject the insanity defense."  Williford, said, "I think the jury focused on the children."

The nation now debated whether Andrea Yates should be sentenced to death.   Many felt the verdict was unfair and hoped the jury would do what they considered the right thing and at least give her only life in prison.  Many others felt that a jury that had been quick to find her guilty might show no such compassion.  Some raised the issue that the jury might have made a different decision had they understood that an NGRI verdict would have kept Andrea institutionalized and would have ensured mental health treatment.  Why weren't they allowed to have that information?

Then the defense attorneys, says Roche, discovered a significant flaw in Park Dietz's testimony.   The television episode that he claimed had inspired Andrea and which prosecutors had used to show premeditation had never aired.  Dietz sent a letter admitting to his error and to the fact that Andrea had never mentioned the show to him.

He also did post-trial interviews in which he said that he disagreed with the way the state of Texas worded the insanity plea.  He believed that people as sick as Andrea Yates should be handled differently than other criminals were.

In light of all this, Parnham and Odom asked for a mistrial.   Judge Hill said no.

During the penalty phase that spring, the same jury quickly returned a sentence of life in prison (in less than forty minutes) rather than death, and Andrea Yates received this news with little emotion.   She would be eligible for parole in 2041, when she was 77.  She was sent   to Mountain View Unit, a state psychiatric prison in eastern Texas.

Rusty announced that his family had been mishandled by the mental health system.   He did not see that he had been adequately warned and he insisted that Andrea had not been adequately treated.  He decided to set up a Web site to inform people about mental illness and to post pictures and facts about his children.

[Anonymous]

I hope they kill her in there. :skull:

[Anonymous]

Monday, Mar. 18, 2002

Andrea Yates: More To The Story
As a judge formally sentences the convicted murderer, TIME's Timothy Roche examines the role of a key prosecution witness

By TIMOTHY ROCHE

It had come down to the final moment. Andrea Yates, wearing a white sweater, sat next to her lawyers at the defense table in the courtroom. Several rows back, her husband, Rusty, could hardly believe their lives had turned out this way. Their five children were dead, drowned by their mother in a case that shocked their family and stunned the world. His wife, charged with capital murder and convicted two days earlier, could be sentenced to death by lethal injection unless the jury of strangers who found her guilty now spared her life. The jurors had been gone for 35 minutes. Behind closed doors, they were weighing the facts and deliberating her future. Did she pose a future threat to society? Or was the killing of her own children a redeemable act?

Until his wife's arrest last summer, Rusty had supported the death penalty. He still remembered the times when he and Andrea would sit in their living room discussing the rights and wrongs of execution. His views on capital punishment, like so many others in his life, had been based upon Scripture. It was from Romans 13 that he'd first read to her how God gave the authority to rulers of the land to uphold their laws, for governments to carry out his will against the evil of murderers. Andrea later marked the passage in her Bible. Now, the word of God could come back to haunt her, like the voice of demons that she claimed drove her to kill her own.

In Texas, the law on insanity defenses is among the most restrictive in the nation. So narrow are the nuances of the state's centuries-old law that it was not enough for Yates' defense lawyers to simply prove that she twice attempted suicide, had been hospitalized four times for psychiatric care and nursed a psychosis before the drownings clearly documented in thousands of pages of medical records. No, Andrea's motives may have been delusional, but if she were able to distinguish right from wrong ? good from evil ? while committing the crime, jurors had little choice but to reject her plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and convict her.

To reach their verdict, jurors seemed to rely heavily on the persuasive testimony of a famous forensic psychiatrist, Park Dietz, who was paid $500 an hour by prosecutors to dispute claims that Andrea Yates was insane under the Texas law. Now, TIME has learned, questions are surfacing about the reliability of the state's key witness who has admitted that he mixed up facts that prosecutors wound up emphasizing to the jury. Dietz also has told TIME that he opposes the very law that he helped prosecutors apply to Yates and jurors used to deny her insanity defense.

Inside the Courtroom

The trial had been long and emotional. At times, the evidence was complex and overwhelming. Jurors listened to a taped confession in which Andrea told a detective that she had to kill her five children, whom she home-schooled, because she had failed them as a mother. Jurrors saw police photographs of the bathtub where she drowned them one by one, and the bed where she had laid them side by side. They heard how one boy's fist still held strands of his mother's hair, which he must have yanked out during their struggle. They watched home videos of laughing children and their parents in happier times. At nearly every turn, prosecutors Joe Owmby and Kaylynn Williford reminded jurors that the victims were young and innocent and their deaths were cold and calculated.

While defense lawyers called several expert witnesses who had different opinions about Andrea's actual diagnosis, each told jurors she obviously had been psychotic and delusional at the time. After her arrest, jail psychiatrist Melissa Ferguson testified, Andrea was put on medications that enabled her to finally talk about the visions and voices that she says guided her actions. It was only after she was placed in a jail cell, naked, on suicide watch that Andrea spoke of the Satan inside her and the only was to be rid of him: She had to be executed. And she had to kill the children, as Satan demanded, to get the death penalty.

Andrea tried to explain. "It was the seventh deadly sin. My children weren't righteous. They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them they could never be saved," she told the jail psychiatrist. "They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell."

Jurors took notes as Rusty testified about his life with Andrea, whom he had met when they were both 25 years old and living in the same apartment complex in Houston. He told them how their family had grown, and how they had moved from a house in suburbia to a camping trailer to a bus converted into a motor home, where Andrea focused on raising the toddlers. After the birth of their fourth child, Luke, in 1999, Andrea tried twice to commit suicide. She was hospitalized both times and was diagnosed with postpartum depression and psychosis.

The couple and their four sons moved from the bus into their house on Beachcomber Lane in a Houston suburb. She recovered while using Haldol, but eventually stopped taking the medication. Against the advice of her psychiatrist, Andrea soon became pregnant again with their fifth child, Mary. Within months, following the death of her ailing father, her psychosis returned. Instead of taking her back to the same doctor who'd treated her before, Rusty told jurors that he and Andrea went to the Devereux-Texas Treatment Network, where Mohammed Saeed became Andrea's psychiatrist. Rusty testified that he never knew that Andrea had visions and voices; he said he never knew she had considered killing the children. Neither did Dr. Saeed, even though the delusions could have been found in medical records from 1999. Andrea would not talk or eat.

After only slight improvement, Andrea was released from Devereux. A month later, she had another episode. Rusty took her back to Devereux. Again, she was released. Dr. Saeed reluctantly prescribed Haldol, the same drug that worked in a drug cocktail for her in 1999. But after a few weeks, he took her off the drug, citing his concerns about side effects. (For more on Saeed's response, see our previous examination of the Yates trial.) Though Andrea's condition seemed to be worsening two days before the drownings, when her husband drove her to Saeed's office, Rusty testified, the doctor refused to try Haldol longer or return her to the hospital. Rusty was frustrated, he told the jury, and he didn't know what else to do.

'Satan destroys and leaves'

As the trial continued, the parade of experts included the celebrated psychiatrist Park Dietz, whom the District Attorney's Office paid $500 an hour to analyze Andrea and explain to the jury why she should be convicted despite the insanity law because, by her own admission, she knew her actions were wrong.

Known for his testimony as a prosecution witness in high-profile crimes, Dietz had worked on the cases of John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan; Susan Smith, who killed her children by driving her car into a pond; and the Unabomber. He also helped proclaim legally sane Jeffrey Dahmer, who kept the heads of his murder victims in his freezer. He had credentials that the Texas prosecutors thought qualified him to review Andrea Yates, though he had limited knowledge of postpartum psychosis.

Dietz's two days of testimony would be riveting and revealing. His polished demeanor captivated the jury; he used a Powerpoint presentation to illustrate how he reached his conclusions and a video to show his interviews with Andrea in the Harris County Jail.

"Before you did it," Dietz asked Andrea during one videotaped session, "did you think it was wrong?"

"No."

Dietz asked, "Why did you not think it wrong?"

Andrea answered without hesitation. "If I didn't do it, they would be tormented by Satan.

"It was a bad choice," she continued. "I shouldn't have done it." She began to sound regretful as the camera recorded the interview. "There was distress, but I still felt I had to do it."

Dietz zeroed in. "As you drowned each one, did you think it was the right thing to be doing?" Andrea nodded yes. Dietz asked, upon drowning the kids, if she thought about heaven.

"I was praying they would go there."

She said she called the police because she knew the murders would be perceived as bad, despite her higher purpose. Now, Andrea also told Dietz, she believed she was psychotic when she thought the devil had guided her. "He left when I committed my crime," she said.

Dietz asked why Satan would leave her after she had obeyed him.

"He destroys and then leaves," Andrea replied.

On the witness stand, Dietz took the jury through what he had dubbed Andrea's "Homicide Phase" and "Post-Homicide Phase." In both, Dietz testified, she knew right from wrong. The reasons: she had contemplated murdering the kids for two years but stopped herself; she called police and wanted to be arrested; she related the death penalty to a punishment; she believed God would judge her actions as bad; and, he said, guilt caused her to cover the bodies on the bed.

That day of the drownings, June 20, Andrea suffered some psychosis, he said. But her symptoms became more severe the next day in jail. In his testimony designed to persuade jurors that she was not legally insane when killing the children, Dietz stressed that her "extreme sickness" and "gross psychosis" occurred only after the deaths. "There seemed to be new delusions and disorganized thinking on June 21st," he said. George Parnham, the bespectacled Houston defense lawyer who represented Andrea with his longtime friend Wendell Odom, pushed the doctor to explain why, then, did she kill the kids on the 20th?

Dietz told jurors he would be inclined to believe Andrea's fears of Satan, except that her actions spoke louder than words as the mother violently held her precious children underwater. "I would expect her to try and comfort the children, telling them they are going to be with Jesus or with God, but she does not offer words of comfort to the children."

He doubted whether Andrea really felt tormented by demons before she was jailed for killing her children because he would have expected her to talk to a friend or minister about her thoughts. But Dietz did not tell the jury that the religious overtones of her delusions ? a mother doomed for the fires of Hell ? could be linked to what religious influences she did have in her life. She and Rusty had their own Bible study in their home because Rusty had not found a church he liked. Besides Rusty, her only other spiritual source was her husband's former spiritual mentor, Michael Woroniecki, a renegade minister whose writings fault women for the woes of their children.

But Dietz did attempt to explain that the simple life that Andrea and Rusty sought by living in the bus and home-schooling the kids left her feeling "controlled" by the circumstances of her life. To show jurors how psychosis manipulates reality, fears and thought process, Dietz used the examples of her two suicide attempts in 1999. "This was her way of escaping an intolerable situation," he testified. "Escape is something she couldn't admit she needed."

Describing her methods as part of a "criminal plan" instead of a psychotic state, Dietz said he found contradictions in her logic: "If it's true that she believed that killing the children would save them, then why would she not want it to happen? She would want to talk about it so it came true and the children would be saved. So, I concluded at that point she's keeping it secret, she knows that other people are going to stop her, that it's wrong, that it's a bad idea. She admits that she knows people will stop her."

Dietz told jurors that Andrea got the idea of drowning the children from a recent episode of Law & Order, the TV crime show for which he happens to be a consultant. He had been told that Andrea frequently watched the program, and he testified that he once worked on an episode in which a woman drowns her child in a bathtub.

The videotaped exchanges between Andrea and Dietz were more dramatic than any TV show. At one point, he told jurors, Andrea recounted how she drowned each child before ending with Noah, the oldest. "I'm sorry," Andrea quoted Noah's last words as he struggled in the tub of water.

Closing arguments

Throughout the trial, Rusty and other witnesses subpoenaed to testify were not allowed inside the courtroom. He would sit in the hallway, often playing Tetris on his Palm Pilot. Sometimes he paced. He would talk to reporters sent to cover the sensational murder trial, and even allowed ABC-TV researchers to shadow him for a few days until one of them reportedly made a remark that insulted him.

Last week Rusty found a seat in the courtroom to hear closing arguments. He and his family stayed together on one side of the courtroom while Andrea's mother, Karin Kennedy, and her brothers sat on the other. Not even for the sake of a unified front for Andrea's trial could Rusty and his in-laws fake a truce in a relationship that has seemed strained since Rusty and Andrea married. Some in the Kennedy family still criticized Rusty for doing too little to get treatment for her ? and at least for failing to hire a nanny or housekeeper. On June 20, Rusty spent the night in a motel with his relatives but did not go see Andrea's elderly mother. The distance between Rusty and her became more evident when Mrs. Kennedy, who had come alone one day, sobbed sadly outside the courtroom. With no other relatives there, a reporter comforted her.

A hush fell over the courtroom when Assistant District Attorney Kaylynn Williford, trying the first capital murder case of her career, began to explain why the state of Texas would prosecute a mother with a history of mental illness. Williford aroused the emotions of the jurors and reminded them that the victims were helpless as Andrea forced them into the water. Noah, she recalled graphically, had died in water containing vomit and feces from the others who died before him. "Is this the act of a loving mother?" She asked. Then, she asked them to take three minutes of silence while they were back in the jury room. That's how long it takes for a child to lose consciousness, she told them. She used Andrea's own words against her, telling jurors to think back to her confession: "I killed my kids," she told both the detective and the first officer on the scene. Andrea did not say, "I saved my kids."

In the end, jurors had to weigh the disputed testimony of the experts ? do they believe Dr. Dietz or the array of defense experts who could not agree on Andrea's condition? When the jury finally was escorted to the conference room where they deliberated, nobody could predict whether they would be gone for hours or days or whether they would even be able to reach a decision.

It turned out to be two hours. Jurors sounded a buzzer on the door and walked in quietly. A court clerk announced their verdict: guilty as charged. The conviction was not unexpected under the limitations of Texas' insanity law, yet it seemed unbelievable. Rusty buried his head in his large hands and moaned, "Oh God."

If jurors could reject her insanity plea and convict her, then they could very well vote to execute her since Texas requires jurors to determine the punishment. Family and friends looked for a glimmer of hope. Maybe the jurors cut a deal with themselves ? convict her, but don't send her to death row. After all, the law prevented them from knowing that she would be hospitalized if she were found not guilty by insanity. Maybe they had convicted her because they did not want her to just walk free. Maybe the conviction was a compromise. In two days, the jury would return for the penalty phase of the trial.

A question about testimony

But first, the pair of defense lawyers had discovered a flaw in the testimony of Park Dietz, the psychiatrist who had told jurors "as a matter of fact" that the Law & Order episode that inspired Andrea to drown the kids in the bathtub aired shortly before the fatal day. Prosecutors also had emphasized it as proof of premeditation in closing arguments.

As it turns out, the defense lawyers learned, the episode as he described it had never aired and the plot line was different than he recalled. When they prepared to call the show's producers as witnesses to persuade the judge to declare a mistrial, Dietz sent a letter to prosecutors acknowledging his error.

"My memory about the content of the show was incorrect. I was confounding the facts of three filicide cases I worked on ? Susan Smith, Amy Grossberg, and Melissa Drexler ? and two episodes of Law & Order that were based in part on those cases" Dietz wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by TIME. Additionally, he had been wrong about being told directly that Andrea watched the TV series. In fact, he only had read another doctor's report in which Rusty once said his wife liked to watch every episode of the show. "I also wish to clarify that Mrs. Yates said nothing to me about either episode or about the Law & Order series," he wrote.

Further, Dietz told TIME in an interview at his California office, that while he agreed with the jury's verdict, he disagreed with the law. "I believe we should recognize our sick parents in several ways and handle them differently both during hospitalization and when they commit crimes," he said. For example, British doctors will keep depressed mothers and their newborns together in hospitals to monitor them over a period of weeks or months.

The penalty

Back in Houston, after a one-day, the trial of Andrea Yates resumed for the penalty phase without jurors who convicted her knowing that Dietz, personally, was unsure about the fairness of the law used to reject her insanity defense. Andrea's lawyers, who questioned whether he misled the jury, asked for a mistrial based on his mistaken testimony about the influence of the TV show, a request denied by Judge Belinda Hill.

On Thursday, the jurors began to hear about the softer soft of Andrea. Before deciding whether she should live or die, they heard pleas to spare her life from witnesses who described Andrea as the devoted mom who wanted her children to be curious and bright, the helpful daughter who cared for her ailing father until his death, the remarkable young woman who loved being a nurse and swimming before she got married and had as many children as God would give her before the Devil stole them away.

During the closing statements, prosecutor Joe Owmby stopped shy of telling jurors specifically why the case met the criteria for the death penalty. But Kaylynn Williford, the other prosecutor, did. She pointed to photos of the children, asking jurors to take the pictures with them into the deliberation room. "Everyone is trying to make this a woman's issue or a political issue," she told jurors, "but the issue to me is five dead children."

When defense lawyer George Parnham and Wendell Odom took their turns, they choked back tears as they talked about Andrea and the life of suffering ahead of her, knowing what she has done to her children, to her husband and to herself. Hadn't she been punished enough?

As the four men and eight women returned to the courtroom one last time and took their seats in the jury box, Andrea stared straight ahead, void of emotion. None of the jurors would look at her. Four sheriff's deputies guarded the doors of the courtroom filled with friends, relatives, legal secretaries, reporters and others who came to see the outcome of four weeks of heart-wrenching testimony. Judge Hill warned against outbursts. If you can't control yourself, she said, leave now.

Everyone stayed. Andrea and her lawyers stood as Judge Hill reviewed the jury's paperwork, which was read aloud by a court clerk. At least 10 of the 12 jurors opted for life in prison, not death by lethal injection.

Sitting in a middle row and nodding his head, Rusty showed no other reaction. Neither did Andrea. She did not understand the decision until she saw the reaction of her lawyers. As the deputies ordered everyone to leave the courtroom, she did not glance back at Rusty. The husband who had supported her even though she killed their children walked outside in the afternoon drizzle, standing behind a cluster of microphones and a mob of reporters and cameramen. He had something to say; and he knew the world was watching.

First, he told the crowd, his family had been let down by the mental health system. And even though Andrea would not be executed, the murder conviction alone meant that his family also was let down by the criminal justice system, too. "We were offended that she was even prosecuted," he said. He initially wanted Dr. Saeed charged with a crime for giving his wife inadequate treatment, but he has told TIME that prosecutors laughed, saying, "Fat chance."

Outside the courthouse, Rusty had waited for months to stand before the cameras and talk so publicly about his family's ordeal. But a judge's gag order prevented him and others in the case from talking. Liberated by the verdict against his wife, Rusty answered questions about why he did not find another doctor for her and why he risked the safety of his children by leaving her alone the morning of June 20. "We didn't see her as a danger," he said. "The real question to me is: How could she have been so ill and the medical community not diagnose her, not treat her, and obviously not protect our family from her."

Standing there, Rusty appeared to have no regrets about any of the choices he and Andrea had made in their life together. No regrets about moving into the trailer, then the bus. About having a fifth child, who had been "a blessing." About his own inability to recognize his wife's needs. About his own part in their lack of communication in which she apparently suffered scary visions for years but never told him. About not researching postpartum depression and psychosis in the two years before his wife killed their kids.

Moving on

Rusty still has thousands of dollars donated after the drownings to help pay for the funerals and others costs, and he has used part of the leftover funds to buy a cemetery memorial and start a website dedicated to his children. He hasn't decided what to do with the rest of it. He says he and Mrs. Kennedy are sharing his wife's legal fees.

Rusty has come a long way since the morning of the deaths, when he collapsed in a fetal position and cried as a police officer questioned him in the yard of their house on Beachcomber Lane. He told the officer that he never wanted to see his wife's face; she had killed their babies. He watched as officers led Andrea in handcuffs to a police car and drove away. But later the same afternoon, as crime scene technicians photographed the home and carried away evidence, Rusty stood outside and kept asking himself, "How could she do this? How could she do this?" Then it hit him. "It wasn't Andrea. It was the illness." He vowed to support her.

Alone in their empty house where he still lives, Rusty has thought about the future of their marriage. He worries about how they will ever be able to look at each other. Will the other person be a constant reminder of their loss? For a while, Rusty told TIME, he had hoped that she might someday return to Beachcomber Lane and they could resume their life together. But he has talked to psychiatrists who say it would be too traumatic for her to come back to the house where the kids died.

After the deaths, it might have been difficult for Rusty to imagine life without her or the kids. He did not doubt that his devotion would remain strong. As the weeks turned into months, however, his perspective changed. Perhaps he will get a divorce. Maybe someday he will have kids again. He will always support her, he says. But he has begun to question what will become of their relationship. And he has begun to wonder what will become of Andrea without him.

"I can't carry her through life," Rusty told TIME. "That's too great a burden to bear. I need her to walk on her own. I can hold her hand, but I can't carry her."

But it is unlikely that Rusty will ever hold her hand again.

Andrea will move from the Harris County Jail in Houston to a state prison known as Mountain View Unit in the scrubby rolling hills of Central Texas. There, she will be kept in protective custody because of her ongoing mental problems and possible threats from other inmates. She will be allowed no visitors.

Unless she needs intensive psychiatric care, the mother who only last year baked chocolate chip cookies and took her sons to ball games in the park will eventually mingle with the general population at the prison known for housing some of the toughest, meanest women in Texas. While inmates can greet and say goodbye to 10 visitors with a kiss and an embrace, prison officials doubt that Andrea will get those privileges when Rusty goes to see her. And, they say, conjugal visits will be strictly forbidden.

? With reporting by Deborah Fowler/Houston, Hilary Hylton/Austin and Anne Berryman/Atlanta

Copyright © 2006 Time Inc.

[Anonymous]

On 2006-02-26 21:39:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Monday, Mar. 18, 2002



Andrea Yates: More To The Story
snip
The trial had been long and emotional. At times, the evidence was complex and overwhelming. Jurors listened to a taped confession in which Andrea told a detective that she had to kill her five children, whom she home-schooled, because she had failed them as a mother. Jurrors saw police photographs of the bathtub where she drowned them one by one, and the bed where she had laid them side by side. They heard how one boy's fist still held strands of his mother's hair, which he must have yanked out during their struggle. They watched home videos of laughing children and their parents in happier times. At nearly every turn, prosecutors Joe Owmby and Kaylynn Williford reminded jurors that the victims were young and innocent and their deaths were cold and calculated.
snip

I think the problem with our criminal justice system is in cases like this, it is a penalty outcome only. There is no looking at it from a what do we do here. Why did she change so much, from valedictorian, rn, mom, home schooler to psychotic murderer.

All that counts is she murdered, and she should be wharehoused, killed, put in a jail hospital.

Ok, she is done for, as far as her life goes, but ...

There are 180 kids killed by their moms in the US ... every year.

Prisons, detention, grounding, criticism, knowing right from wrong is not stopping it.

Should we as a society do something, hot lines, mom relief teams, time out centers

Something, or nothing.

Apparently if one multiplies 180 kids a year times any amount of years picked, that is a of kids being killed by moms.

They have all been punished by the law.

None where stopped by the law.

This is a news year, right, 2006.

Every two days, another child is murdered by their moms.

We seem to do nothing about this phenominon except get
some kind of "debt to society" by penal system punishment.

In two days the next kid will be killed.

Two more days, the next kid ...

To continue as we are will not change anything, we learn nothing, and two more days, another dead child.

[Anonymous]

::bangin::

[Anonymous]

On 2006-02-27 12:42:00, Anonymous wrote:

" ::bangin:: "

OK, make room for 180 moms every year is prison.

That is some nice creative problem solving!

Are you in the prison industry?

[Anonymous]

Postpartum Psychosis: A Tough Sell


    * On October 21, 2002 in Kansas City, Mary Bass, 32, was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of her two male children.  She claimed that another personality named "Sharon" that she could not control had abused them to the point of death.  She had locked them in a room and starved them, burning their legs and feet in scalding water to punish them.  Psychologists said that she suffered from depression, posttraumatic stress syndrome, schizophrenia, and multiple personality disorder.  She was also suicidal.  She told police, "I killed my baby.  I should go to jail."  Social workers had seen the abuse but did nothing to remove the children.
    * In Wisconsin, Kristin Scott, 22, pleaded not guilty by reason of mental deficiency on July 18, 2003, to charges that in January she let her newborn infant daughter die and hid the remains in a plastic tub.   She had also similarly hidden the remains of a child she claimed had been stillborn in April 2001.  Scott's parents discovered the remains of the most recent baby when Scott moved to Texas in June, leaving the tub behind in their home.  She said that she had secretly given birth in January and because she was afraid of what people would say, the baby had to die.  If convicted of reckless homicide and hiding a corpse, she faces seventy-five years in prison.

Naomi Gaines, mugshot
Naomi Gaines, mugshot
 

    * Naomi Gaines, 24, had suffered for a long    history of postpartum depression and mania.  On July 6, 2003, she took her fourteen-month-old twins, Supreme Knowledge Allah and Sincere Understanding Allah, to the Mississippi River near St. Paul and dropped them both from a bridge 75 feet over the water.  Then she jumped in after them, yelling "Freedom!"  She and one boy survived when rescued in time, but the other infant drowned and his body was recovered several miles downriver near an island.  She is charged with second-degree murder.
    * Also in Minnesota, Khoua Her, 24, strangled her six children, ages 5 to 11, because she was depressed over her responsibilities.   The police had been to her home fifteen times in a year and a half, responding to domestic violence calls, but social workers had not noticed any apparent danger to the children.  The mother, who called 911 after the slaughter and spoke of suicide, was transported to the hospital with an extension cord still loosely tied around her neck.  The children were found throughout the house.  In a plea deal, she received a sentence of fifty years in prison.
    * Evonne Rodriguez killed her 4-month-old baby in 1997 in Houston, Texas, because she believed he was possessed by demons.    She had tried to "pull them out," her mother claimed, but ended up killing the child.  Evonne insisted that she had heard screeching voices, "just like Hell," so she beat at her child with her hand and then choked him with a rosary.  She wrapped him in plastic and threw him into water, but she concocted a story for police that he had been kidnapped?an indication that she knew what she had done was wrong.  Her defense was that she was distraught over a bad relationship with her son's father that had created a state of temporary insanity.  Her mother testified that she had suffered from bouts of depression.  The jury acquitted her and she was sent for treatment.

In America, there are no clear standards in court for dealing with mentally ill mothers?not even in the same city.   Andrea Yates killed five children to save them from hell and got life in prison.  Evonne Rodriguez killed one because of demons and was acquitted.  Andrea probably had a better case; Evonne got the better deal.

On a CNN broadcast, David Williams addressed the issue of    how difficult it is to get juries to understand the kind of depression that can follow giving birth.  The primary reason juries may not understand is because   such depression is temporary and treatable.  Such sufferers may have been psychotic and deeply disturbed during a violent episode some time after the birth, but by the time they go to trial, they've usually been restored to better mental health.  That makes it difficult for juries who see them in their improved condition to believe these mothers were really suffering that badly.

It's also difficult in a country that views motherhood as sacred and asks women to see birth as cause for celebration to admit to postpartum depression.   There's little compassion to be found for the 10 to 20 percent of mothers who really do suffer.  

Twenty-nine other countries recognize postpartum depression as a legal defense, writes Williams, including Canada, Britain, and Australia.   If a woman who has murdered a child under a certain age---usually one year---can prove that her mental processes were disturbed, the maximum charge is manslaughter.  They receive probation and counseling.  They do not have to prove they were insane at the time of the crime.

Yet clearly    some women kill their infants for other reasons and might exploit this defense.  American emphasis on free choice and personal responsibility, makes it likely that juries will continue to give mental illness issues uneven recognition.

[Anonymous]

"

On 2006-02-26 21:39:00, Anonymous wrote:

Should we as a society do something, hot lines, mom relief teams, time out centers

In addition to hotlines and other parental support:
Legalize abortion.
Adjust the economy so families aren't streached beyond their means and stressed out.
Every teen, as a requirement of graduation, works in a daycare center; preferably with infants and/or two year olds.
Teens are given accurate information regarding birth control and has easy access to it.
That would be a start in the right direction.

[Anonymous]

Aftermath


Andrea went to prison, but many people believed that she was not the only one who was culpable in this tragedy.   Rusty had been warned not to leave her alone with the children and a doctor had taken her off medication while apparently believing that she could be a danger to herself or others.  Many people believed that they shared in the blame.

Andrea Yates, mug shot
Andrea Yates, mug shot
 

About a week after the Yates cases concluded, Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal looked into the issue.   Numerous emails had come into his office insisting that Rusty be investigated, and it did seem important to try to understand why Rusty had disregarded the doctor's instructions.  He had said repeatedly that since it would be only a short time between his departure that day and his mother's arrival, he had believed his wife would be fine alone with the children.  His attorney, Edward Mallett, insisted that Rusty was innocent of any wrongdoing.

"It's a tragedy that Rusty now has to defend himself after standing by his wife," Mallett said to the press.

Rusty Yates in court
Rusty Yates in court
 

It was Rusty's contention that those who were most responsible are the doctors and hospitals that did not treat Andrea properly, and he talked about a lawsuit against them.

In the end, there was no investigation.

[Anonymous]

Insanity Issues


The film A Beautiful Mind   details the peculiar twist of mental illness in the case of John Nash, a brilliant economist who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia much of his life. It revealed   that a person can appear to function normally to everyone around him even while trapped in delusions where imaginary people play roles and hold conversations with him.  Yet his illness finally became apparent, though it took much longer to be so for him.  To his mind, this was the real world.

Doctors testifying for Yates made that claim. "She did what she thought was right in the world she perceived through her psychotic eyes at the time," said psychiatrist Phillip Resnick.     In other words, even if she seemed to understand the difference between right and wrong, she did not know what she was doing.

The prosecutors claimed she knew her actions were wrong,.

How these two sides lined up on different poles of interpretation illustrates the great divide between the concepts of mental illness and legal insanity in the U.S.   This case made it clear that it's time for courts to better address the gap.

Yates' defense team proved her history of delusional depression, use of anti-psychotic drugs, and suicide attempts, and there's documentation that postpartum mood swings can sometimes evoke psychosis.   Yet no matter how many doctors testified to Yates' mental decline, the legal issue hinged on only her mental state at the time of the offense.  As Yates drowned her children one by one, even chasing down seven-year-old Noah to drag him to the tub, did she really have any awareness that what she was doing was wrong?  If so, then awareness implies the ability to choose.

Past juries have been convinced that even the delusional can see the moral implication of their behavior.     Jeffrey Dahmer, the Wisconsin man who in 1991 confessed to killing 17 men, is one case in point. He admitted he'd drilled holes into the heads of some of his victims to create living zombies.  He'd also envisioned building a shrine from their skulls.

Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer
 

Yet Dr. Park Dietz pointed out Dahmer's rational acts: When confronted by the police with one of his intended victims, he invented a misleading story and then took the young man home to kill him.   He was mentally ill, yes, but he also knew that what he was doing would land him in prison and he obviously exercised some control.  Thus, he was legally sane.

Kendra Webdale, victim & Andrew Goldstein
Kendra Webdale, victim & Andrew Goldstein
 

Andrea Yates knew that, too.   In fact, she believed that the state's punishment for what she had done would finally defeat Satan.  She fully expected to be jailed and even to be executed.  Her case is similar to that of Andrew Goldstein, who in 1998 pushed Kendra Webdale in front of a Manhattan subway train, killing her instantly.  He then leaned against a wall and said, "It was her turn."  Like Yates, he'd felt compelled and also like Yates, he had stopped taking medication prescribed to alleviate the symptoms of schizophrenia.  Despite seeing evidence of his psychosis in a video-taped confession, the jury convicted him of second-degree murder.

This gap between legal insanity and our evolving knowledge about mental illness has roots in a court decision in 1843.   In England, Daniel M'Naghten felt persecuted by imaginary spies so he shot the Prime Minister's secretary.  He did intend to kill, but his cognitive impairment was such that the court used his case to formulate a test of insanity: the defendant must not know the nature of his act or understand that it's wrong.

American courts eventually    adopted this standard.  Despite reforms, the court's confidence in free will yields little room for behavior driven by distorted perceptions.  In Texas, Yates was presumed sane unless her team could show that she did not know that what she did was wrong.  This is partly due to the shift in their standards in 1983, after John Hinkley's assassination attempt on President Reagan ended up in NGRI.  Public outrage prompted many states, including Texas, rethink NGRI.  They enacted the more restrictive terms of mere knowledge of right and wrong.  If you know, then you aren't insane.  That's that.  

Andrea Yates waited that morning for her husband to leave, knew murder was a sin, expected to be punished, and called 911, so it appears that she could control her behavior. Yet that argument depends on a simplistic idea about the relationship between awareness and choice.  It may be time to legally recognize that even someone who knows the law can still be seriously impaired regarding how they conform to that law.

Mental Health Weekly published an article   that the Yates case has made lawmakers and mental health officials in Texas take another look at the issues, in particular with regard to more funding for the state's mental health system.  State representative Garnet Coleman, a mental health advocate, indicated that he intended to introduce legislation to revise and refine the insanity defense laws.  Legislators will be considering whether to return to a former Texas standard of acknowledging a person's inability to conform their behavior to what they know about right and wrong.  It will be interesting to see what results.

[Anonymous]

http://www.postpartum.net/

Have you recently given birth? Are you feeling exhausted, anxious, depressed, or just not yourself? If you are?you are not alone. Many women are not prepared for the wide range of emotions they may experience after the birth of a child. They often feel sadness, anger, anxiety, or a sense of inadequacy.

These feelings may vary in frequency and intensity, but are collectively known as postpartum mood disorders. Help and support is an important part of getting back to feeling like yourself again.

The important thing to remember is that the symptoms are temporary and treatable with skilled professional care and social support. Whether you think you are depressed or just want more information, Postpartum Support International (PSI) is here to help.

http://www.postpartum.net/brief.html

Beyond The Blues?A Guide to Understanding and
Treating Prenatal and Postpartum Depression

by Shoshana S. Bennett, Ph.D. and Pec Indman, Ed.D., MFT
Moodswings Press, 2003


Pregnancy and Postpartum Psychiatric Illness

Perinatal (during pregnancy and postpartum) mood disorders are caused primarily by hormonal changes which then affect the neurotransmitters (brain chemicals). Life stressors, such as moving, illness, poor partner support, financial problems, and social isolation are certainly also important and will negatively affect the woman?s mental state. Conversely, strong emotional, social, and physical support will greatly facilitate her recovery.

Any of the five postpartum mood disorders discussed in this chapter can also occur during pregnancy. These perinatal mood disorders behave quite differently from other mood disorders because the hormones are fluctuating. A woman with a perinatal mood disorder often feels as if she?s ?losing it,? since she can never predict how she will feel at any given moment. For instance, at 8:00 A.M., she may be gripped with anxiety, at 10:00 A.M. feel almost normal, and at 10:30 A.M. become depressed and lethargic.

Our clients who have had personal histories of depression tell us that postpartum depression feels very different (and usually much worse) than depressions at other times in their lives. One of Shoshana?s postpartum clients is a survivor of breast cancer. At a support group, she eloquently explained:

When I had cancer, I thought that was the worst experience I could ever have. I was wrong ? this is. With cancer, I allowed myself to ask for and receive help, and expected to be depressed. My friends and family rallied around me, bringing me meals, cleaning my house, and giving me lots of emotional support. Now, during postpartum depression, I feel guilty asking for help and ashamed of my depression. Everyone expects me to feel happy and doesn?t accept that this illness is just as real as cancer.

Women who experience these symptoms need to speak up and be persistent in getting proper care. In the past, these illnesses have been trivialized and even dismissed. Research has shown how important it is to treat perinatal mood disorders for the health and well-being of the mother, baby, and entire family.

The Psychiatric Issues of Pregnancy

Contrary to popular mythology, pregnancy is not always a happy, glowing experience! Approximately 15-20 percent of pregnant women experience depression. Of these, about 15 percent are so severely depressed that they attempt suicide.

It can be confusing that normal pregnancy experiences such as fatigue, appetite changes, and poor sleep are similar to symptoms of mood disorders. It is easy to make a blanket dismissal of these symptoms as just part of pregnancy. However, for that 10 percent, it is essential that the proper questions are asked and intervention is given when symptoms Pregnancy and Postpartum Psychiatric Illness 31 are outside the normal realm.

When symptoms of depression or other mood disorders cause limitations in the client?s ability to function on a day-today basis, intervention is necessary. This may include traditional (counseling and medication) or nontraditional modalities (such as Yoga or acupressure), or any combination thereof. The goal is to use whatever the individual woman needs in order to feel like herself again.

Depression during pregnancy has been associated with low birth weight (less than 2,500 grams) and preterm delivery (less than 37 weeks). Severe anxiety during pregnancy may cause harm to a growing fetus due to constriction of the placental blood vessels and higher cortisol levels.

Some women become pregnant while taking psychotropic medications for depression, anxiety, and other mood problems. Many of these medications are considered acceptable during pregnancy. A practitioner who is familiar with the current research about the safety of taking medications during pregnancy should be consulted. Often it is safer to continue a medication than risk a relapse.

The rate of relapse for a major depressive disorder (MDD) in women who discontinue their medication before conception is between 50-75 percent. The rate of relapse for MDD in those who discontinue medications at conception or in early pregnancy is 75 percent, with up to 60 percent relapsing in the first trimester. In one study, 42 percent of women who discontinued medications at conception resumed medications at some time during their pregnancy. Resources listed in the back of this manual provide helpful guidelines regarding the use of medications.

Mood Disorders

There are five postpartum mood disorders. This list details each of the principal disorders, some of their most common symptoms, and risk factors. It is important to note that symptoms and their severity can change over the course of an illness.

?Baby Blues? ? Not Considered a Disorder

This is not considered a disorder since the majority of mothers experience it.

? Occurs in about 80 percent of mothers
? Usual onset within first week postpartum
? Symptoms may persist up to three weeks

Symptoms

? Mood instability
? Weepiness
? Sadness
? Anxiety
? Lack of concentration
? Feelings of dependency

Etiology

? Rapid hormonal changes
? Physical and emotional stress of birthing
? Physical discomforts
? Emotional letdown after pregnancy and birth
? Awareness and anxiety about increased responsibility
? Fatigue and sleep deprivation
? Disappointments including the birth, spousal support, nursing, and the baby

Deborah?s story:

For about a week and a half after my baby was born I would cry for no reason at all. Sometimes I would feel overwhelmed, especially when I was up at night with my son. Once I even thought that I had made a big mistake having a child. I felt resentment toward my husband since his life stayed pretty much the same and mine was turned upside down. When I started going to the mother?s club at two weeks, I felt so relieved that all these other moms felt the same way.

Deborah?s treatment:

Since Deborah was experiencing normal postpartum adjustment, she did not require any formal treatment. Her hormones were balancing out by themselves. All she needed in order to enjoy her new life was a combination of socializing with other moms, taking time to care for herself, and working out a plan of sharing child and household responsibilities with her husband.

Depression and/or Anxiety

? Occurs in 15 to 20 percent of mothers
? Onset is usually gradual, but it can be rapid and begin any time in the first year
? Excessive worry or anxiety
? Irritability or short temper
? Feeling overwhelmed, difficulty making decisions
? Sad mood, feelings of guilt, phobias
? Hopelessness
? Sleep problems (often the woman cannot sleep or sleeps too much), fatigue
? Physical symptoms or complaints without apparent physical cause
? Discomfort around the baby or a lack of feeling toward the baby
? Loss of focus and concentration (may miss appointments, for example)
? Loss of interest or pleasure, decreased libido
? Changes in appetite; significant weight loss or gain

Risk factors

? 50 to 80 percent risk if previous postpartum depression
? Depression or anxiety during pregnancy
? Personal or family history of depression/anxiety
? Abrupt weaning
? Social isolation or poor support
? History of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) or premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD)
? Mood changes while taking birth control pill or fertility medication, such as Clomid
? Thyroid dysfunction

Lori?s story:

I was so excited about having our baby girl. My pregnancy had gone smoothly. I had been warned about the ?Blues,? but I just couldn?t shake the tears and sadness that seemed to get deeper and darker every day. My appetite was non-existent, although I forced myself to eat because I was nursing. I lost about 30 pounds the first month. At night I was having trouble sleeping. My husband and baby would be asleep but I would have one worry after another going through my head. I was exhausted. I felt like my brain had been kidnapped. I couldn?t make decisions, couldn?t focus, and didn?t want to be left alone with the baby.

I wanted to run away. I withdrew from friends and felt guilty about not returning phone calls. I couldn?t understand why I felt so bad; I had the greatest, most supportive husband, a house I loved, and the beautiful baby I had always wanted. At times I felt close to her, but at other times I felt like I was just going through the motions ? she could have been someone else?s child. I thought I was the worst mother and wife on the face of the earth.

Lori?s treatment:

Lori began psychotherapy and also saw a psychiatrist for medication. She was started on an antidepressant and the dosage was gradually increased. Initially she took medication to help her sleep as well. She began taking regular breaks to take care of herself. She also started attending a postpartum depression support group and met other moms with similar stories. After several months she felt like herself.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

? 3 to 5 percent of new mothers develop obsessive symptoms

Symptoms

? Intrusive, repetitive, and persistent thoughts or mental pictures
? Thoughts often are about hurting or killing the baby
? Tremendous sense of horror and disgust about these thoughts (ego-alien)
? Thoughts may be accompanied by behaviors to reduce the anxiety (for example, hiding knives)
? Counting, checking, cleaning or other repetitive behaviors

Risk factors

? Personal or family history of obsessive-compulsive disorder

Tanya?s story:

Each time I went near the balcony I would clutch my baby tightly until I was in a room with the door closed. Only then did I know he was safe one more time from me dropping him over. The bloody scenes I would envision horrified me. Passing the steak knives in the kitchen triggered images of my stabbing the baby, so I asked my husband to hide the knives. I never bathed my baby alone since I was afraid I might drown him.

Although I didn?t think I would ever really hurt by baby son, I never trusted myself alone with him. I was terrified I would ?snap? and actually carry out one of these scary thoughts. If my baby got sick it would be all my fault, so I would clean and clean to make sure there were no germs. Although I had always been more careful than other people, now I would check the locks on the windows and doors many times a day.

Tanya?s treatment:

After meeting with Tanya twice individually, her therapist suggested that her husband join her in the next session. Tanya needed reassurance that her husband knew she wasn?t ?crazy? and would never really harm the baby. She did not want to tell him the specific graphic thoughts, so she referred to them generally as ?scary thoughts.? After being educated, her husband?s aggravation with her being ?nervous all the time? subsided.

Tanya started taking an antidepressant and within two weeks the scary thoughts were occurring far less frequently. Her therapist suggested that she wait another few weeks to join a support group since she was still too vulnerable to hear about the anxieties of others. In the meantime, she was given the names and numbers of a few women to connect with who had survived this disorder.

Panic Disorder

? Occurs in about 10 percent of postpartum women

Symptoms

? Episodes of extreme anxiety
? Shortness of breath, chest pain, sensations of choking or smothering, dizziness
? Hot or cold flashes, trembling, palpitations, numbness or tingling sensations
? Restlessness, agitation, or irritability
? During attack the woman may fear she is going crazy, dying, or losing control
? Panic attack may wake her up
? Often no identifiable trigger for panic
? Excessive worry or fears (including fear of more panic attacks)

Risk factors

? Personal or family history of anxiety or panic disorder
? Thyroid dysfunction

Chris?s story:

At about three weeks postpartum I stopped leaving my house at all except for pediatrician appointments. I was afraid I might have a panic attack in the store and not be able to take care of my baby. I never knew when that wave would begin washing over me and I would ?lose it.? The windows had to be open all the time or else I thought I would suffocate if I had an attack.

The first time I had a panic attack I thought I was having a major heart attack. A friend drove me to the emergency room and the doctor on call told me it was only stress. He gave me some medicine but I was too afraid to take it. I went home feeling stupid, like I had made a big deal out of nothing.

Everyone told me that breastfeeding would relax me, but it did just the opposite. I never knew how much milk my baby was getting and that really worried me. Sometimes when my milk would let down I would get a panic attack. The first therapist I saw told me I must have had issues bonding with my own mother, but I knew that wasn?t true and I didn?t see that therapist again. On many nights I woke up in a sweat, with my heart beating so fast and hard. My head was racing with anxious thoughts about who would take care of the baby when I die. I thought I was going crazy. I was so scared.

Chris?s treatment:

Chris had her first therapy appointment over the telephone since she felt she could not go outside. Her therapist talked her through taking a bit of the medication her MD prescribed, so Chris would know she had something that would help in an emergency.

Driving was too scary for her, especially in tunnels and over bridges. Her husband drove her to her next session, following a route that avoided those obstacles. Chris needed to sit near the door during the appointment just in case she felt the need to run outside for some air. Her therapist urged her to sleep for at least half the night, every night. Chris?s husband began taking care of his baby for the first half of the night on a regular basis. Chris noticed immediately how sleep lowered her stress level. She attended a stress management class which also helped. P

Psychosis

? Occurs in one to two per thousand
? Onset usually two to three days postpartum
? This disorder has a 5 percent suicide and 4 percent infanticide rate

Symptoms

? Visual or auditory hallucinations
? Delusional thinking (for example, about infant?s death, denial of birth, or need to kill baby)
? Delirium and/or mania

Risk factors

? Personal or family history of psychosis, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia
? Previous postpartum psychotic or bipolar episode

Mike?s story:

My wife, Gloria, had a great pregnancy and a long labor. We were thrilled to have our first child, a son. But within days of his birth my wife began to withdraw into her own world. She became less and less communicative and she became more and more confused and suspicious. I almost had to carry her into the therapist?s office; by that time she could hardly speak or answer questions, nor write her name on the forms her therapist gave us. I was told to take her to the hospital immediately.

When we arrived at the hospital, she became fearful and then violent. She ended up in restraints. Fortunately, she responded pretty quickly to the anti-psychotic medication, and was able to come home after about a week. She continued to improve, and when she was back to herself again, she slowly weaned off all the medications.

We had always wanted two kids, so we consulted with our therapist and psychiatrist. With careful planning, we now have our second child with a very different story to tell.

Gloria?s treatment:

After being released from the hospital, Gloria continued therapy and saw the psychiatrist, who carefully monitored her medication. She worked to understand and process what had happened to her. Eventually she joined a postpartum support group which was quite helpful. Since there were no other moms present in the group who had experienced a postpartum psychosis, the group leader gave her the names and numbers of women who had ?been there? and who wanted to help.

Postpartum Psychiatric Illness Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

? There is no available data regarding the prevalence or onset

Symptoms

? Recurrent nightmares
? Extreme anxiety
? Reliving past traumatic events (for example, sexual, physical, emotional, and childbirth)

Risk factors

? Past traumatic events

Jennifer?s story:

During the delivery it all came flooding back. I felt terrorized and vulnerable. I thought I had already dealt with the abuse in my childhood. It seemed that all the years of therapy were a waste of time and money. I was so embarrassed for losing control during labor. I was angry that what happened to me as a kid was still affecting me after all this time.

My therapist told me the nightmares and flashbacks would go away but I just didn?t know. It was so real ? like the abuse was happening again over and over. I couldn?t even leave my poor husband alone with my baby. I got the sick feeling that I couldn?t even trust him. I was so messed up. I thought maybe I?d never be a normal mother.

Jennifer?s treatment:

Jennifer hired a postpartum doula who took care of her and the baby for two months. Having this trusted female companion with her almost everywhere she went gave Jennifer comfort. She began weekly therapy sessions and eventually joined a support group. She and her therapist agreed that she did not need medication at this point.

Consequences of Untreated Mood Disorders

Maternal depression was placed at the top of the list entitled, ?Most significant mental health issues impeding children?s readiness for school? (Mental Health Policy Panel, Department of Health Services, 2002). There is a tremendous amount of data regarding the profoundly negative impact of untreated maternal depression on infants, toddlers, preschoolers, school age children and adolescents. There is an increased incidence of childhood psychiatric disturbance, behavior problems, poor social functioning, and impaired cognitive and language development. When a depressed mother goes untreated, every member of the family and all the relationships within the family are affected. The quicker the mother is treated, the better the prognosis for the entire family.

Perinatal Loss

No matter how a pregnancy is terminated, whether by nature or by choice, depression and anxiety commonly follow. Not only should grief be addressed through counseling, but medications may also be useful in reducing symptoms due to loss and hormonal changes. When a stillbirth or neonatal death occurs, depression is, of course, to be expected. Counseling for the couple will be helpful, and medications may be needed to treat anxiety and depression. These women need to be monitored carefully for emotional symptoms in subsequent pregnancies and the postpartum period.


Need Help? Access the PSI Social Support Network


Take a Postpartum Self-Assessment Test


Contact The PSI President

[Anonymous]

What we forgot to add is that exclusive breastfeeding has throughout human history defended against this recent phenomenon called "post partum depression".   Oxytocin and prolactin (two incredibly powerful hormones)
are secreted during lactation.  The amount that is secreted through the maternal bloodstream depends on frequency, intensity, and duration of
nursing. If breastfeeding is hindered by supplemental formula feeding, pacifiers, scheduled feedings etc... the amount of oxytocin and prolactin is significantly lowered in the maternal bloodstream.   In culture that practice evolutionary breastfeeding ( child has constant access to the maternal breast both day and night, no formula, no pumping, no pacifiers etc......) this syndrome is non -existent. It is important to remember our mammalian heritage.
Dr. Stolzer

[Anonymous]

Great points you bring up about Breast feeding!

I just finished the Time article, and now I
have more questions, instead of less.

[Anonymous]

An Honest Mistake?


On January 6, 2005, nearly three years after jurors sentenced Andrea Yates to life in prison, an appeals court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial. While Yates' attorneys had appealed on nineteen separate legal grounds, including the claim that the Texas insanity standard is unconstitutional, the item that got the court's attention involved the testimony of Dr. Park Dietz, a prosecution psychiatrist. He apparently made a false statement, which figured into the way the case was presented to the jury. Who was actually to blame for this testimony is still a bit of a mystery, but the end result is that the three-judge panel of the First Appeals Court in Houston decided that the erroneous statements may have precipitated a miscarriage of justice.

Dr. Park Dietz
Dr. Park Dietz
Essentially, it appears that the prosecution was attempting to show that Andrea Yates had seen an episode of the popular crime show, Law and Order, in which a woman had drowned her children, and this had given her the idea that she could kill her own children and feign mental illness. That character had supposedly been found not guilty by reason of insanity, and the episode was said to have aired not long before Yates drowned her children. Evidence was offered that Yates was a regular viewer and it was surmised that she may have seen the story and related it to her own situation: She was a beleaguered mother seeking a way out. And that's how the prosecution presented it.

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Logo for Law and Order

But no such episode ever aired. Yates never saw a woman kill her children and thus could not have devised a copy-cat killing with a plan to fake an illness. (In fact, her years of coping with mental illness were well-documented and attested to by numerous mental health experts.) So the case presented by the prosecution was based on an idea with no factual basis. With a defendant's very life at stake, how did it happen? The stories are mixed.

KWTX.com indicated that after the appeals court decision, when Dietz was asked about his testimony, he called it an "honest mistake." He apparently indicated, according to this report, that he got the information about the episode from a conversation with the prosecution. Yet in the same article, Yates prosecutor Joe Owmby said that he asked Dietz whether the show had ever dealt with such a case and then dropped the subject until Yates' attorneys asked about it later. He did not believe that his request had caused the false testimony. Still, the story grew.

Logo for L.A. Law
Logo for L.A. Law

According to the Houston Chronicle, before the trial a local woman had sent the Harris County district attorney's office an e-mail indicating that reruns of a show called L. A. Law had featured an episode with this plot. It seems that the prosecution team might have confused the two shows while discussing the case with Dietz, but a writer attending the trial who heard Dietz's statement called the producers of Law and Order and told defense attorney George Parnham that Dietz was in error. Dietz said that he, too, attempted to correct the error by consulting with producers. He stated that he immediately researched the matter and sent an e-mail to the prosecutors, offering to return at his own expense. The letter was dated March 14, 2002, indicating that Dietz had confused an episode based on Susan Smith and an episode inspired by prom mom Melissa Drexler and the case involving Amy Grossberg. However, his letter did not get into evidence.

Jurors were told about the confusion before sentencing, but the appeals court still considered the original testimony legally problematic, especially since it was mentioned in the closing argument. While it's not clear who is to blame for allowing the incorrect testimony to become part of the trial record and jury deliberations, appeals courts are set up for just such occurrences. According to the Associated Press, the appeals court ruled thus: "We conclude that there is reasonable likelihood that Dr. Dietz's false testimony could have affected the judgment of the jury. We further conclude that Dr. Dietz's false testimony affected the substantial rights of appellant."

Prosecutors insisted that the state did not knowingly rely on incorrect testimony, while also pointing out before the panel that Dietz's testimony, even if wrong, was not material to the case, as they had other ways of showing that Yates had planned to kill her children. The appeals court agreed, but since the prosecution had referred to the testimony in making its case, including mentioning it during the closing argument, it may well have influenced the jury's perception.

[Anonymous]

http://www.yateskids.org/