Thanks to a comment by reader Amber, I’ve learned that Andrea Yates has been found not guilty of murdering the five children she drowned in Texas some five years back:
A Harris County jury has found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity during her second capital murder trial for the drowning deaths of her children in the family’s bathtub in 2001.
The verdict upholding Yates’ insanity defense comes after the jury deliberated more than 12 hours over three days. Yates appeared shocked and sat staring wide-eyed with her lips slightly parted as State District Judge Belinda Hill asked each juror individually shortly after noon today whether they agreed with the verdict.
There’s no question that she did it, of course, but she was clearly nuts and off her meds at the time. This verdict is as much a miscarriage of justice as the guilty verdict in the original trial was. John Cole suggested we need a “guilty but insane” verdict in cases like this, and I suppose that’s right.
I went to the same high school as Yates, where we were both on the swimming team (at different times.) The news article doesn’t mention that she’s a fundamentalist Christian, which probably figured into her mental state in a significant way.
I rather doubt that a father who did something like this would have elicited as much sympathy.
This NGBI verdict still means she will be institutionalized, which is probably the best possible outcome.
It’s too bad that Michael Woroniecki hasn’t been properly brought to task for his involvement in this case–he’s the nutjob cult leader who the Yates were following. I think he should have had some civil liability for his influence on Andrea Yates. He specifically argued that children are better being aborted than being raised by a wicked mother and facing certain eternal damnation, and his standards are so strict that Yates felt she could never live up to them. She reasoned that if she killed her children, they would get to heaven, and otherwise, they would grow up and be doomed to hell. (This is an argument relevant to the abortion debate which must be faced by those who argue that there is an “age of accountability” before which heaven is a certainty.)
I encountered Woroniecki at Arizona State University in 1987, where he was cited for interfering with the activity of a public university by an overzealous student who made a citizen’s arrest. The charge was thrown out in a hearing the following day in Tempe Municipal Court.
Regulating cults is an interesting and thorny legal problem because they hide behind First Amendment protections. In cases like this one, where it’s clear that the cult member has surrendered her or his personal judgment to the cult leader, it seems that we ought to be able to hold the leader responsible for the damage wrought by members acting as instruments of the leader. The Manson prosecution used this angle, but it was very controversial. Manson, as you may recall, wasn’t actually at the scene of the Tate/Polanski murders but he was held accountable by some creative prosecuting.
Perhaps a general law along those lines is the way to go. I’ve discussed anti-cult laws with Jackie Speier, the California legislator who was shot at Jonestown along with her then-boss Congressman Leo Ryan, but she saw no way to move forward.
“[W]here it’s clear that the cult member has surrendered her or his personal judgment to the cult leader” the cult member should be charged with felony negligence. If children are involved, toss in felony child endangerment too.
The search by some of her excuse-makers for some man to blame for actions Andrea Yates chose to commit is, at root, based upon misogynist assumptions that women are weak willed and easily subjected to mind-control by mysterious masculine powers.
Greetings,
Just came across this blog from a simple Google search. I am interested in a few things. (Actually quite a bit more). But in regards to Andrea Yates I see that in your original post you mention something about a “Not Guilty by Insanity” verdict in cases like these? Can you clarify what you mean? I don’t want to read anything into that comment. — I was also wondering what anyone’s feelings are about Dr. Michael Wellner. He is the forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Andrea Yates for dozens of hours for the prosecution and concluded, and holds to this day, that Andrea Yates is not insane and had malice of forethought and intent attached to her psyche prior and during the commission of these homicides. Professionally, I couldn’t disagree with Dr. Wellner’s evaluation any more. He is so off the mark in terms of psychosis, delusional disorder, schizophrenia and post-partum depression, it makes me wonder what he’s teaching up there at NYU? Any thoughts?
I will check back and see if anyone responds. Being my first time on this blog I don’t know how active it is.
See ya.
LjM
I think the doctor who took her off Haldol and told her to think happy thoughts instead should be charged. However I wonder if it wasn’t the smug asshole who interrogated her (Dr. Michael Wellner) who tipped the scales. I was shocked at his attitude on the videotapes as he tried to bully her into saying what he wanted to hear instead of listening to what she was saying. I kept waiting for him to get out a rubber hose at any moment and start beating her.