HOUSTON (KRT) — Andrea Yates, the suburban mother who methodically drowned her five children last summer, and whose attorneys said she was insane when she did it, was convicted of capital murder Tuesday.
The jury took three hours and 40 minutes to decide that she was guilty of two counts of capital murder for the June 20 drownings of Noah, 7, John, 5, and Mary, 6 months.
The killings of her other two children, Paul, 3, and Luke, 2, figured prominently in the case.
Yates, 37, stared straight ahead as she stood between her two lawyers for the reading of the verdict by state District Judge Belinda Hill. Afterward, she glanced at her two brothers, Brian and Andrew Kennedy, and her mother, Jutta Karin Kennedy, who were seated together on one side of the courtroom.
On Thursday, the same jurors — eight women and four men — will begin considering Yates’ punishment. Defense attorneys will call witnesses who will try to convince jurors that Yates should receive life in prison instead of the death penalty.
“I obviously don’t agree with the verdict, but it’s my job as a lawyer to accept it,” said Wendell Odom, one of Yates’ attorneys. “You catch your breath and start all over.”
The verdict stunned husband Russell “Rusty” Yates and his family. They held hands as the judge read the jury’s finding of guilty. Russell Yates cried softly “Oh, God,” and put his head in his hands. He kept his head there, apparently crying but saying nothing as his wife was lead from the courtroom.
Yates said little to her attorneys as they met with her after the verdict.
“She thanked me,” defense attorney George Parnham said.
Said Odom: “She’s doing all right. She’s prepared for this; she’s doing all right.”
Cyndie Aquilina, a jury consultant who assisted Yates’ defense team in selecting jurors, said she was shocked at the verdict.
“I don’t know how they got there,” Aquilina said. “She was clearly insane.”
In their closing arguments, prosecutors argued that Yates’ lifelong drive for perfection — not her mental illness — forced her to drown her five children as a way out of her overwhelming home life.
“Andrea Yates wanted to be the perfect mother. Just like you heard that she wanted to be the perfect daughter,” prosecutor Joe Owmby said, summing up his capital murder case against the registered nurse. “And she was driven by this throughout her life.”
But defense attorneys argued that Yates was a loving but mentally ill mother whose psychosis was so severe that she drowned her children because she believed they were threatened by Satan. They said Yates was insane at the time of the drownings and should be acquitted.
In Texas, a person can be found not guilty by reason of insanity if a mental illness impairs a defendant’s ability to tell right from wrong.