DEFENSELESS

"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. ... Better for someone else to tie a millstone around their neck and cast them in a river than stumble. They were going to perish."

"I was so stupid! Couldn't I have killed just one to fulfill the prophecy? Couldn't I have offered Mary?"

Why?

The prosecution could not find a single person to testify that Andrea Yates was anything but a warm, loving and tirelessly devoted mother. What possible motive was there for her to drown her own children?

The jurors ran out of the jury room after a few hours of agreeing that the drowning of five innocent children was a horrible event. They determined that Andrea Yates was mentally ill, but that “she knew it was wrong, or she would not have called the police."

In their ignorance, they concluded that if she were psychotic, she would also have to be stupid.

But again, there were no adverse witnesses, no testimony about hastily arranged insurance policies and not one single piece of physical evidence to suggest that Andrea Yates was anything other than a very sick, but very loving mother.

Perhaps if the jury had spent a little more time contemplating the lack of any malice on Yates' part – instead of the malice they felt toward her, they wouldn't have come to the same paranoid, schizophrenic conclusion that Medea did:

"I know, indeed, the evil of that I purpose;
but my inclination gets the better of my judgment."

"They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them they could never be saved. Better for someone else to tie a millstone around their neck and cast them in a river, than stumble. They were going to perish."

-- Andrea Yates

The Politics of Gender

Imagine the outrage if the jury in the Thomas Junta "Hockey Dad" trial had concluded that in fact, Junta had merely acted in self-defense, but that he was nonetheless guilty of manslaughter, since victim, Michael Costin's death was so horrific.

The judge would have overturned the verdict as unreasonable.

In the Andrea Yates trial, as in the Junta case, the jury was not asked to punish the defendant. They were asked whether or not the defense proved their case. Juror, "Melissa" was quick to admit that the defense met their burden of proof, rather flatly stating "I think there's no doubt in any one of us's minds that she was mentally ill."

If that is true, then to continue speculating about exactly when and to what degree she was psychotic is beyond the juror's scope. The medical experts on both sides agreed Yates was a very sick woman with a long documented history of mental illness.

Even if the jury distrusted the doctors, they had the testimony of Debra Holmes who witnessed her friend's tragic decline into murder and madness:

"I couldn't believe how much weight she had lost. She looked like a cancer patient. Her shoulders were hunched, she walked with slow steps holding her arms, and her face was expressionless."

Holmes said she asked Russell Yates that fateful weekend whether his wife had an appointment to see a psychiatrist. He told Holmes his wife had an appointment for the following Tuesday. Debra Holmes responded: "Rusty, she's not going to make it through the weekend."

Dr. Melissa Ferguson, the medical director of psychiatric services at the Harris County Jail testified that, "In all the patients I've treated for major depression with psychotic features, she is one of the sickest I've ever seen," noting that she had treated 6,000 patients when she stopped counting several years ago.

The blood thirsty yahoos who tried this case didn't care if every doctor in Texas told them Andrea Yates was mentally ill, they wanted vengeance for the drowning of those five children.

In seeking to bring this tragic case to trial by jury, the wretched state of Texas gathered like vultures around five children who the state didn't give a damn about, until they were killed by the known psychotic that was home-schooling them.

I hope the good Christians of Harris County, Texas are happy with themselves. They have spent well over a million dollars to insure that Andrea Yates will continue to be denied the proper medical treatment she was denied prior to the drownings.




"She was convinced that the children were going to be tormented for the rest of their lives and that they were going to perish in the fires of hell."
-- testimony of Dr. Ferguson, medical director of psychiatric services at the Harris County Jail

Yates believed television cartoon characters spoke to her and her children, Ferguson said. The messages to the children were "Don't eat too much candy" and "Your mother's feeding you too much cereal."

Yates was convinced that there was a camera watching her from the cell's light fixture and asked Dr. Ferguson how long she had been under surveillance. She also believed the media had put cameras in her house years ago to monitor her behavior as a mother.

Ferguson said Yates was immediately put on anti-psychotic and anti-depressant drugs and that she continues to take multiple doses of four medications.

John Bayliss, a jail nurse who has observed Yates since her arrest, followed Ferguson to the stand said Yates requested her hair be cut in the shape of a crown the day after the deaths.

Bayliss said Yates appeared to be "internally occupied'' and thought she may have been hearing voices in the weeks after she was jailed. "She was a person who wasn't connected with reality at all,'' he said.

Death Penalty
Capital of the U.S.A.

Since 1975, the people of Harris County
have sent 250 men and three women to
death row -- more than any other jurisdiction
in the nation.

"Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned."
-- Charlotte Brontë

Harris County judges are elected by popular
vote, rather than being appointed to the bench.
The judges have complete control over
appointing and supervising attorneys in
death penalty cases.

Russell Yates

"I struggled with it all last night. I couldn't sleep last night. I was like, was there anything I could have done?"

"To me, she fully recovered from the first depression. She had a recurrence after the second child. Really, the same symptoms, the same timing, both about peaking about 3 months after giving … after having the baby. Our fourth son Luke. Also Mary, our little girl. And to say they are related … the symptoms were the same. I think she was predisposed to getting this depression, and I think that that is, you know, they are related in that sense."

"We home schooled them. Primarily Andrea during the day, during the morning time, for a few hours. We had normal curriculums we followed. I thought it was going pretty well. I'm not saying it's not stressful, but it was manageable. It's just she, she couldn't do it while she was depressed. But ordinarily she enjoyed it. We had a unit study program for the children that was really good, you know. She could teach them all kind of together, even the ones who weren't school age, they would participate. And we had a couple little workbooks they did for math, and she taught them phonics and my oldest two knew how to read. Noah and John."

"I helped in the evenings, but you know, she did the bulk of the work. That was like how she perceived her job. That's what she wanted to do."

"I left the house for work about 5 or 10 [minutes] till 9:00 … it took me 10 or 15 minutes to get to work."

"In less than hour I got a call from my wife and she said, you need to come home. And I said, what's going on? And she said, you need to come home. I just, you know, just hung up. I was afraid of her tone. You know, her tone was very serious."

At the time of the murders, Russell Yates held a surprise news conference on his lawn and said, "It took me 10 or 15 minutes to get to work -- In less than hour I got a call from my wife and she said, you need to come home… And I said, what's going on? And she said, you need to come home. I just -- you know -- just hung up. I was afraid of her tone… You know, her tone was very serious."

Apparently Andrea gave no details, but only indicated that there was an emergency.

But that's not what Rusty told Sgt. David Svahn, who said Mr. Yates came running up to the house: "He was screaming and hollering. He was saying, `What did she do to my kids? What did she do to my kids?' He said his wife had called him at work and told him it was time to come home. His wife told him she had hurt all five of the kids and that she finally did it."

I believe Mr. Yates was doing a bit of dramatic acting on his porch that day; unfortunately he was performing a scene before he was properly cued.

The officer said it was only then that he informed Mr. Yates that his children were dead. "At that point he fell to the ground and began hitting his hand on the ground." Svahn said he then picked up a plastic chair from the yard and threw it.







Conceived in Liberty


Following two suicide attempts and several bouts of postpartum depression, a doctor cautioned Mrs. Yates and her husband, Russell, not to have further children following the birth of their fourth child.

A “no-scalpel” Vasectomy is inexpensive, very safe, easy to perform and has reported annual pregnancy rates of less than 1 percent.

Russell Yates said he could tell his wife was depressed, but thought medication would help her to snap out of it -- so he and his son Noah posted a list of ways for Andrea to deal with her stress on a board. The list hung on a wall inside the family's filthy one-story, brick home.

I wonder if the word Vasectomy appeared on that list.

Andrea “She was always trying to be such a good girl,” Andrea's mother, Jutta Kennedy said. “She was the most compassionate of my children. Always thinking of other people, never herself. She was always trying to care for everybody.” Kennedy recalled how every day, for eight years, Andrea would come to her parents' house to take care of her father, Andrew Kennedy, who suffered from Alzheimer's. “Andrea was his baby. She was named for him. And she would do everything for him. She would change his clothes and wash him and help feed him.” At the same time, Andrea was often pregnant and caring for her own growing family, her mother recalled. Andrea had always been the perfect child, eager to please. She was valedictorian of her high-school class and filled her home with swimming trophies. She married another perfect child, Rusty Yates, who at DuPont Senior High had been voted “Mr. DuPont,” the class favorite and football star. Rusty Jim Jackson, a classmate recalled the crowd chanting “Rusty! Rusty!” at pep rallies “for, like, 10 minutes straight.” There can be no doubt about Andrea Yates' deteriorating mental condition. At one point the woman was treated not only with the antidepressants, Effexor and Wellbutrin, but also with Haldol, a very strong anti-psychotic medication. “She never responded that well,” said Mr. Yates. “She got to about, maybe, 65 percent, and sort of stayed there.” She became “robotic,” he said, and showed “nervous habits ... particular to her.” In an interview with Newsweek, Andrea's other brother, Brian, was asked if his family supported Rusty Yates. Brian Kennedy paused for a moment and said, “You should ask our lawyer that question. I'd like to say some things, but the truth will eventually come out.”

Effexor, Remeron,
Wellbutrin, and Haldol

On April 2, three months prior to the killings, the program director at Andrea Yates' mental hospital had requested a judge order Yates committed to the Austin State Hospital .

The next day, Dr. Saeed sent a letter to the same judge saying Yates (whose first name he wrote was Amanda), had signed in voluntarily and that the hospital would like to discontinue the court proceedings .

Dr. Saeed then prescribed Effexor, Remeron, Wellbutrin, and eventually Haldol to the strangely "catatonic" Andrea Yates.

Andrea cannot be blamed in this matter. She was doing her part! She was screaming out for help. The program director heard those cries, but his rescue was aborted by Dr. Saeed.

This goes beyond a matter of a doctor's negligence, and extends to a doctor's willful, intentional and premeditated actions.

He recklessly drove the Yates and their children down the wrong side of the street and then jumped out of the car just before the family crashed.

Dora Yates, the children's 63-year-old grandmother said: "She appeared almost catatonic, and did not respond in conversation. If I asked her a question, she often whispered a delayed answer or did not answer at all. She would stare into space. Her arm trembled. She would tap her foot and scratch her head until it was bald in spots. She bit her lip. She didn't eat."


Dora Yates said her daughter-in-law seemed somewhat better when she came home from the hospital, but still exhibited strange behavior -- walking in circles for 30 minutes at a time, often holding her infant daughter. She also stared at a cartoon show for a "long time" the day before the killings, but without laughing, Yates testified.

Andrea Yates was admitted to a treatment center on May 4 in a "nearly catatonic" state. Russell Yates brought his wife back to the hospital because her depression was deteriorating and she had not been eating.

The Crime of Doing Nothing


Due to a citizen's constitutionally guaranteed freedom of Religion, under current law, most states recognize parents who try to heal their children solely with prayer by including legal defenses for most degrees of homicide and child abuse.

If children are permanently injured or if they die, and the parents prove to a judge or jury that their faith governed their actions, they are immune from criminal liability.

All parents have a fiduciary responsibility to their children. The parent's failure to protect a child is legally recognized as negligence. Here are some samples of religious parents who've been convicted of -- the crime of doing nothing.

Police say Yates told them she drowned the children on June 20 in the bathtub because she considered herself ”a bad mother.” Prison officials tell said Andrea Yates did not request a television or radio to see or listen to any reports on her children's funerals.

"They were all so well-behaved," said store owner Joanne Juren. "They were just the perfect little children. I told Andrea the last time she was here that if we had a gold star to give for the best children we would give it to hers. Andrea just beamed."

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