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Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal

By Jeralyn, Section Crime in the News
Posted on Mon Feb 27, 2006 at 12:45:48 PM EST
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Andrea Yates will be retried March 10 for the drowning deaths of her five children. Her lawyer said today she turned down a 35 year plea offer. She is now on bond and residing at a mental hospital.

As I opined here, she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. As one doctor put it:

If Andrea Yates had been in any state other than Texas, she would have been found insane," said Dr. Robert Miller, [a forensic psychiatrist and the former chief of psychiatry for the state Department of Corrections] who is now a professor at the University of Colorado medical school and treats patients at Pueblo.

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    Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal | 11 comments (11 topical)
    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Feb 27, 2006 at 04:45:01 PM EST
    "Bt reason of Insanity" is the lamest excuse I can think of, and it's one of the reasons so many people don't like lawyers. I don't care why she killed her kids - in fact, it's impossible to really know why. All we can judge are her acts. Granting her (or anyone) the excuse of insanity is useless. It attempts to read the suspect's mind.

    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#2)
    by squeaky on Mon Feb 27, 2006 at 04:50:10 PM EST
    JR- I guess that you are in favor of putting prison staff in charge of those deemed Insane. Glad that you have such a strong grip, sad that mental ilness is a mere abstraction for you. Lucky often breeds nasty.

    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#3)
    by jondee on Mon Feb 27, 2006 at 04:58:33 PM EST
    jr - Did anyone stop to ask why we were killing kids when we bombed Hamburg? Hell no! Seriously, your "I dont care"(what a shocker that is) pretty much says it all.

    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#4)
    by jondee on Mon Feb 27, 2006 at 04:59:44 PM EST
    btw, I dont give a sh*t that you dont care.

    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#5)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Feb 27, 2006 at 05:24:16 PM EST
    in fact, it's impossible to really know why
    We know why. She wanted to send her children to be with god and save them from the demon inside her. Psychiatry is a much more powerful field than you understand. Not guilty by reason of insanity doesn't get you off the hook. It just gets you more appropriate treatment. Last I heard Andrea responded well to anti-psychotic medication.

    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#6)
    by phat on Mon Feb 27, 2006 at 07:46:30 PM EST
    Did she refuse the plea or did the lawyer tell her to? Or what? She would be facing probably 10 or 12 years total. No way would she see 35 years in prison. Trying to convince a jury in Texas that she was insane at the time of the murder, especially if she is responding to treatment. Odds are the jury will be afraid of letting her get treatment, and if it's successful, well, she's out pretty quickly. If this woman is mentally ill, or was at the time, that's the way to go, but trying to get a jury to agree is going to be very difficult. Death penalty lawyers are a hearty breed. The laws are written so terribly as to almost guarantee an unfair process from the very beginning, especially in Texas. ""Bt reason of Insanity" is the lamest excuse I can think of, and it's one of the reasons so many people don't like lawyers. I don't care why she killed her kids - in fact, it's impossible to really know why. All we can judge are her acts. Granting her (or anyone) the excuse of insanity is useless. It attempts to read the suspect's mind." This shows a distinct lack of understanding concerning mental illness and the idea of legal culpability. Some people are incapable of understanding the difference between right or wrong when they commit a crime, mental illness can do this to a person. This does not make them innocent of the crime, per se, but it should be considered. This is a perfect example of why we should be reforming our sentencing laws when it somes to the mentally ill. The mentally ill should not be facing the death penalty, period. Mental illness should be considered a mitigating factor in any sentencing phase. 1 out of 10 of the people executed in the United States since executions were reinstated have been severely mentally ill. They often had no idea what they were doing at the time of the crime. They often have no idea what's going on during the trial. They often are incapable of helping their lawyer during the trial. Executing the mentally ill should be off the table. phat

    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#7)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon Feb 27, 2006 at 10:00:14 PM EST
    Perhaps the easiest way to understand psychosis is to realize that it is similar to dreaming while awake. What if you were having a nightmare with your eyes wide open walking around in the middle of the day? What if the devil was talking to you in your nightmare, or God? What if you really, really believed that a supreme being was talking to in an overwhelming, powerful and undeniable way as frequently happens to persons with depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Can you say that something is not real in the middle of a dream? Psychosis is that type of insanity, a storm of neuorotransmitters and altered perception. Andrea Yates may need to be hospitalized for the rest of her life, she is clearly a risk to others; she should not be killed or imprisoned for succumbing to her nightmares of her psychosis.

    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 11:03:49 AM EST
    From the standpoint of potential future victims, her (or any suspect trying an insanity defense) is utterly irrelevant. Not to mention that, until someone comes up with telepathy, making a claim of insanity is a matter of faith, not science. We may as well allow killing on the grounds of heresy - it's every bit as grounded in reality.

    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#9)
    by Aaron on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 11:11:30 AM EST
    I disagree that this could only happen in Texas, as the severely mentally ill are in my experience routinely convicted of crimes throughout the nation. The tendency seems to be, when the crime is particularly heinous the jury wants to convict, even if there is little real question but that the defendant was in a florid, delusional state at the time of the offense. Another part of the problem is trying to mix "insanity", a legal concept, with medical and pschological concepts of mental illness. When legislatures are moved to act on questions of mental illness as a defense to criminal culpability, it seems to be in response to a perceived unjust acquittal, with the goal being to limit the availability of "insanity" defenses as opposed to sincere efforts to provide appropriate outcomes for the mentally ill while preventing abuse of the system by others.

    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#10)
    by squeaky on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 11:16:50 AM EST
    Gosh JR you must live in a vacuum. Either you are insane enough to not be able to understand that there is a very real medical condition called mental illness, or your coddled charmed life has made you callous and insensitive enough to speak such ignorant words.

    Re: Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal (none / 0) (#11)
    by Dadler on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 02:22:06 PM EST
    Squeaky, JR is really a pseudonym, obviously, for none other than Mr. Tom Cruise, the wise and powerful slayer of modern psychiatry.

    Andrea Yates Turns Down 35 Year Plea Deal | 11 comments (11 topical)