Reuters Lawyers for Texas Mom Seek Competency Hearing By C. Bryson Hull HOUSTON (Reuters) -- Attorneys for a Texas mother who admitted drowning
her five children formally indicated on Tuesday they would mount an
insanity defense, filing a motion challenging their client's mental
fitness to stand trial.
Attorneys George Parnham and Wendell Odom, in a motion filed an hour
before court offices closed for the U.S. Independence Day holiday, asked a
Texas judge to hold a hearing to determine if Andrea Yates is mentally
competent to stand trial. Their motion came just hours after Yates'
medical records were released to them.
The Houston mother drowned her five children, aged 6 months to 7 years,
on June 20, calling police and her husband moments later to admit what she
had done.
Her husband, NASA computer engineer Russell Yates, publicly supports his wife and
has blamed her action on a rabid form of postpartum depression that
started after the birth of their fourth child and returned in much worse
form after the fifth.
The 37-year-old former nurse and housewife has been locked up in the
psychiatric wing of the Harris County Jail since the killings, facing a
charge of capital murder and a possible death sentence.
All the while, her attorneys say, Yates has been in a psychotic state
that prevents her from aiding her own defense, communicating fully with
her lawyers and understanding the gravity of her situation.
``Medical personnel who have seen the defendant have informed me that
Mrs. Yates is presently in a psychotic state and as such would not be
competent presently to stand trial,'' Odom wrote in court papers.
Odom also wrote that Yates' previous history of mental illness,
including two hospitalizations, previous diagnoses of depression and
postpartum psychosis and at least two suicide attempts, was proof enough
that Yates deserved a hearing on her mental fitness.
``It is my firm belief that the defendant, with her history of mental
illness and the bizarre nature of the offense with which she is charged
has already raised the issue of incompetency for purposes of a hearing,''
Odom wrote.
AWAITS JUDGE'S DECISION
State District Judge Belinda Hill, who laid down a strict gag order
preventing attorneys from talking about the case with reporters, can
either reject the motion or schedule a hearing.
Prosecutors have previously stated that Yates does not meet the Texas
legal standard for insanity, which defines insanity as severe mental
disease or defect that keeps a person from telling right from wrong at the
time they committed the crime.
Prosecutors, who still have not decided whether to seek the death
penalty, have said the fact Yates called police speaks to her sanity and
ability to distinguish right from wrong.
One Houston attorney who successfully defended a mentally ill mother
who killed her child told Reuters that Yates' long history of mental
illness will work against prosecutors.
``The prosecution is not going to be able to do what they usually do,
which is to pooh-pooh a mental issue. They're going to have to come to the
reality that she had serious mental issues,'' said Houston defense
attorney George ``Mac'' Secrest.
Three years ago, Secrest successfully engineered an insanity defense
for 21-year-old Evonne Rodriguez, who choked her infant boy with rosary
beads and then threw his body into Buffalo Bayou because she believed he
was possessed by the devil.
A jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity after Secrest proved
she had suffered severe postpartum depression in the four months that
followed the baby boy's birth. She was sent to a state mental hospital,
where she later became pregnant. Copyright © 2001. Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. saved from url: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010703/ts/crime_children_dc_1.html
July 3, 2001
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