Prosecutor: New trial for Andrea Yates
Defense attorney says Yates needs treatment, not prison
Wednesday, November 9, 2005; Posted: 12:53 p.m. EST (17:53 GMT)
Andrea Yates will receive a new trial, but her lawyer says he hopes she can be sent to a mental health facility.
(CNN) -- Andrea Yates, the Texas woman convicted of drowning her children in a bathtub, will receive a new trial on capital murder charges after an appeals court refused to reinstate her murder convictions.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday left intact a 1st Court of Appeals decision that overturned the 2002 convictions earlier this year.
"It's a good day," defense attorney George Parnham said. "The whole issue of mental health, specifically women's mental health, has been championed in this decision." (See video about Yates' new trial -- 3:05)
Parnham said a new trial is a mixed blessing, because Yates will have to relive the horror of her children's deaths, but added, "She needs to be found not guilty by reason of insanity."
Parnham told CNN he would try to strike a plea agreement that would send Yates to a mental health facility rather than prison.
"She has been told that she will be retried." She is not looking forward to a retrial, he said.
"She would gladly forgo this process," he said, "but you know, the right thing needs to be done here, and we're going to do it."
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Alan Curry told The Associated Press he would seek a new trial. He said he would consider a plea bargain.
Curry told the AP he is confident a jury would again convict Yates. "Andrea Yates knew precisely what she was doing," Curry said. "She knew that it was wrong."
In January, the lower appeals court found that an expert prosecution witness, Dr. Park Dietz, presented false testimony. Dietz told jurors Yates may have been influenced by a "Law & Order" epidsode, but the episode did not exist.
Yates' attorneys did not seek her release from the prison psychiatric ward after the ruling because, Parnham said, she is receiving medical treatment for severe postpartum depression.
Yates was convicted of capital murder in March 2002 and sentenced to life in prison for the June 2001 deaths of three of her five children. She was not charged in the deaths of the other two children.
She had a well-documented history of postpartum depression and her attorneys argued that she suffered from postpartum psychosis.
A Houston jury rejected her defense that she was not guilty by reason of insanity.
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Those are rather pathetic grounds for a retrial. The defense is scraping the bucket...she will be convicted.