Reuters Grandmother Takes Stand in Texas Drowning Trial HOUSTON (Reuters) -- Andrea Yates' elderly mother choked back tears on
Tuesday while defending her daughter as a wonderful parent, and testified
that her ``baby daughter'' was not the same woman who drowned her five
children. Jutta Kennedy took the stand in her daughter's defense for a very brief
time, providing emotional punctuation to days of testimony from
psychiatric experts in Yates' capital murder trial. Earlier in the day, a noted psychiatrist testified for the defense that
Yates knew drowning the children was illegal, but said Yates thought it
was the right thing to do because it was the only way to save them from
the fires of hell. Yates, a 37-year-old former nurse and high school valedictorian, cited
a long history of mental problems in pleading not guilty by reason of
insanity. Yates, who could face the death penalty if convicted, has
confessed to drowning her children methodically in the bathtub of their
Houston home on June 20, 2001. Kennedy has come to all of her daughter's court dates, but this was the
first time she testified. ``She's my baby daughter,'' Kennedy said, her voice catching as tears
streamed down her face, when asked by defense lawyer George Parnham to
describe her relationship with the defendant. ``She was a wonderful mother, a wonderful daughter,'' Kennedy answered,
locking eyes with her child. Kennedy choked back tears and dabbed her eyes throughout her 10 minutes
on the witness stand, while her daughter sat motionless, as she has
throughout much of the trial. Parnham also asked Kennedy about the death of her husband last year,
which the defense has suggested triggered Yates' downward mental
spiral. ``She was very attached to her father,'' she said. ``It hit her pretty
hard.'' Parnham asked Kennedy her reaction when she learned what her daughter
had done. ``I didn't believe it,'' she said. ``Was this the Andrea you knew to be a loving mother?'' Parnham
asked. ``No,'' she replied. Prosecutors declined to ask her any questions. KNEW IT WAS WRONG Prosecutors agree Yates was not mentally fit, but believe she was sane
under Texas law, which requires only that severely mentally ill defendants
know their crime was wrong at the time they committed it. ``She believed they were permanently and irreparably harmed and the
only thing she could do to save them from eternal damnation was to take
their lives,'' forensic psychiatrist Phillip Resnick, who has testified in
a number of prominent U.S. trials, testified. ``But she knew it was legally wrong?'' asked prosecutor Joe Owmby. ``That's correct. ... I agree,'' Resnick replied. Police found four of the drowned children -- John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2,
and Mary, 6 months -- lying in bed as if they were asleep. Noah, 7, was
still floating face down in the bathtub. Yates told police and mental health experts she believed Satan was
tormenting her children so she killed them to keep them from his
grasp. If the jury finds she was not sane, Yates would go to a state mental
hospital for an undetermined amount of time. A conviction for capital
murder would bring life in prison or death by lethal injection. Texas leads the nation in executions, while Houston leads Texas in
sending people to death row. Copyright © 2002. Reuters. All rights reserved. saved from url: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-crime-mother.html
March 6, 2002
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
