# Andrea Yates Found Not Guilty
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [July 26, 2006, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109 "2006-07-26T17:06:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/1 "2006-07-26T17:06:29Z")
The Retrial of the mother who drowned her five children was declared a not guilty verdict by reason of mental defect…delusional post-partum depression.
Discuss.
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### Author:  [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/2 "2006-07-26T17:19:12Z")
I am glad for that. She was obviously mentally off at the time. It was a crime that nobody in their remotely right mind would do. There was no need for her to sit there in prison forever given some care. Unfortunately, she still has to live with it the rest of her life. I have lost a child in a way that no one could predict or prevent. She has to live with the knowledge of what happened forever. I wonder what her husband will do?
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### Author:  [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/3 "2006-07-26T17:20:07Z")
Are you sure? All the news reports seem to be saying that a verdict has been reached, but hasn’t been announced yet.
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### Author:  [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/4 "2006-07-26T17:21:12Z")
Never mind, there it is on CNN. Huh.
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### Author:  [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/5 "2006-07-26T17:22:16Z")
No matter. Her life is shit. I doubt she’ll be able to live a “normal” life again and will almost certainly take her own life at some point.
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### Author:  [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/6 "2006-07-26T17:25:52Z")
Very good call. Now, what can we charge the more-worthless-than-a- pile-of-shit father and husband with?
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### Author:  [@Cat\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Jones)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/7 "2006-07-26T17:38:38Z")
I understood she would be “confined to a mental institution for the rest of her life” ?
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### Author:  [@SnakesCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnakesCatLady)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/8 "2006-07-26T17:40:51Z")
I hope she is confined in some way forever. She does not deserve to be free.
Her ex-husband has remarried. In the same church from which his children were buried.
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### Author:  [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/9 "2006-07-26T17:58:25Z")
> [@D\_Odds](#):
>
> Very good call. Now, what can we charge the more-worthless-than-a- pile-of-shit father and husband with?
I forget the details of this case (other than mom drowned her kids). Can you recap for me why dude was a pile of shit?
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/10 "2006-07-26T18:01:33Z")
This is a just verdict. Props to the jury.
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### Author:  [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/11 "2006-07-26T18:11:18Z")
> [@Cat Jones](#):
>
> I understood she would be “confined to a mental institution for the rest of her life” ?
Not by law, but it’s very, very, very unlikely she will ever be released.
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### Author:  [@Velma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velma)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/12 "2006-07-26T18:13:25Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#):
>
> I forget the details of this case (other than mom drowned her kids). Can you recap for me why dude was a pile of shit?
I can’t speak for him but I think the father shares at least some guilt seeing how Andrea was exhibiting glaring warning signs of instability. There is evidence that suggests the father knew she was unstable and continued to leave her alone with the children day after day with little relief or support…
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### Author:  [@diggleblop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/diggleblop)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/13 "2006-07-26T18:16:33Z")
I feel that anyone who kills another person is messed up in the head to begin with. But I have no tolerance for people who harm children, crazy or not. I hope someone drowns her in the mental ward, those places are just as dangerous (if not more dangerous than prisons) I hear.
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### Author:  [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/14 "2006-07-26T18:20:59Z")
> [@Velma](#):
>
> I can’t speak for him but I think the father shares at least some guilt seeing how Andrea was exhibiting glaring warning signs of instability. There is evidence that suggests the father knew she was unstable and continued to leave her alone with the children day after day with little relief or support…
Andrea Yates wasn’t a wife or partner. She was a baby factory for the father, a practioner of one of the fringe lunatic sects of Christianity. Her needs and her condition were ignored…not virtually ignored, totally ignored.
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/15 "2006-07-26T20:02:03Z")
I don’t like it.
• When you say “this person who killed other people will be treated like an unfortunate sick person rather than as a culpable murderer”, while still subjecting other killers to the normal criminal-justice modalities, you’re also saying “there’s nothing sick about going around killing folks, ordinary people in their right minds would do that under some circumstances”… but that the person in question is in some fashion “sicker” than your ordinary average murderer.
• You’re also asserting that we possess the ability to assess individuals and distinguish, meaningfully, between “this person has a depraved indifference to what happens to other people (but is an ordinary person of sound mind and isn’t sick)” and “this person suffers from a sickness of the mind which manifests itself as a depraved indifference to what happens to other people (and therefore is in need of care, not punishment)”.
• The existing field of mental health, or psychiatric medicine, asserts that what _it_ means when it speaks of “mental illness” is a physiological disorder of the brain — be it neurotransmitter chemistry or properties of neural structures causing them to react differently to neurotranmission activity, or what have you. Such a definition, presumably, sets “mental health” apart from historical constructs such as “diseases of the soul”, e.g., lacking empathy for others or lacking a sense of interconnectedness and membership in the community; or “aberrations of thought”, e.g., ascribing to concepts and precepts, both political and moral, which support or recommend behaviors that the rest of us deem dangerous and unacceptable conduct; or “emotional volatility”, e.g, displaying a tendency to act suddenly and without consideration for anything but immediate goals when angry or otherwise under the sway of strong passions. The legal standard for “insanity”, on the other hand, is not identical to a determination that such a brain disorder exists, but rather instead resides on the claim that the perpetrator “did not know right from wrong”.
• Historically, and philosophically as a response to the very existence of “crime”, there have existed many theories, including: “people commit most crimes for _economic_ reasons, that their location within a stratified competitive economic system makes some dangerous, violent, and/or socially ‘labeled’ activities necessary and normal, whereas people at higher levels of the economic strata can separate resources from the hands of other people or attain outcome goals via actions not officially ‘labeled’ as such, and at less risk — meaning that _from their perspective, the behavior is not wrong_ (although they may know that others regard it as wrong)”; and “people commit most crimes for _cultural_ reasons, that the social mllieu of which they are a part does not condemn the activities in question as ‘wrong’ and may in fact celebrate them as achievements — meaning that, _from their perspective, the behavior is not wrong_ (although they may know that other social factions in society regard it as wrong)”; and "people commit crimes as a consequence of their own personal _psychologial_ upbringing, meaning that the sum total of values with which they were raised, skills and education that they were given, and opportunities made available to them have preconditioned them to this behavior, which is quite predictable as an outcome given those preconditions — meaning that, _from their perspective, the behavior is not wrong_ (or, perhaps, that “wrong” itself is not wrong, that there exists no moral imperative to not be “wrong”). Well, for better or worse, our criminal justice system is not designed to care about any of that. A crime is a crime by virtue of it being committed, not by virtue of the mindset of the person committing it. It stays illegal if the perpetrator thinks it shouldn’t ought to be against the law. It stays illegal if the perpetrator was ignorant of the law. It stays illegal if the perpetrator thinks he or she is too important or too cool an individual to be forced to obey such laws. It even stays illegal if the perpetrator believes there exists a God-ordained moral imperative to break the law, such that breaking the law is right, not wrong, and failing to break the law wrong, not right.
• The “insanity defense” is therefore an intruder. Against the backdrop of the _rest_ of how the criminal justice system operates, the insanity defense is the one to point at when someone says “One of these is not like the others”.
• The outcome of a successful “insanity defense” is not only that the perpetrator is not “punished” (at least not by definition) —the perpetrator, now relabeled “patient”, is incarcerated in perpetuity. Other outcomes of being tried and convicted result in finite sentences; actual time served may be _reduced_, but it is generally held as an article of how our system works that the perpetrator is _entitled_ to freedom after having served the sentence. Setting aside for the moment the premise that day to day life in a locked forensic psychiatric ward is more pleasant than day to day life in a maximum security prison, the fact remains that it represents a means of incarcerating someone involuntarily on an indefinite basis, and once again that makes it a misfit that “is not like the others”.
• There is no official goal of criminal justice sanctions: traditional theories about what it exists for include _deterrence_ (other would-be criminals see you getting treated badly and it makes them think twice about committing crimes); _retribution_ (vengeance: you did wrong and we’re gonna make you suffer); _incapacitation_ or _removal_ (let’s put you somewhere where the rest of us will be safe from you); and _rehabilitation_ (let’s fix whatever went awry in your socialization and moral upkeeping so you won’t be inclined to do this any more). In America, by the close of the 20th Century, there was very little lip service, let alone serious program development or political support, associated with rehab. Again, for better or worse, that is in keeping with not caring why you did the crime, it’s a crime, you did it, now you get to suffer (both for our satisfaction of knowing that criminals suffer and as deterrence to other would-be criminals) and we get to sleep easy knowing you’re locked up and can’t do us any more harm for awhile. Where does “insanity defense” fit in? Well, it _pretends_ to rehabilitative concern, a concern with why you did it and a sense that that could be addressed and fixed, but it _acts_ as an especially extended form of incapacitation. Not only do we get to sleep easy knowing you’re locked up, we get to lock you up indefinitely, maybe permanently for the rest of your life. But, given the crimes for which perps generally plead the insanity defense, isn’t it reasonable that they would’ve gotten at least life sentences in prison anyhow? So why ought I to care, mm?
• The insanity defense (when successfully deployed) is not a means of saying “In addition to the evidence about the crime that was committed, let us look at the motivating factors and extenuating factors and come to a holistic, even-handed, and humane decision about what to do about this person”. It’s _not_. It is, instead, a statement that “The evidence about the crime committed is irrelevant, this person is sick in the head and should be locked up _for that reason alone_.” To be sure, people, or their attorneys, don’t generally go around offering up insanity defenses except where it looks like the evidence has got them nailed for a violent and dangerous crime. So the unspoken part of it is “We stipulate that this sick person is dangerous and violent and should be locked up for being sick, dangerous and violent”.
• I am not in love with the general precepts of the criminal justice system. Its rigidity, its stance that the letter of the law and not the spirit that led to the law being written in the first place is what matters, is inimical to my religious beliefs and social philosophy. Nevertheless, within the broad framework of an overall system of obedience-by-coercion — laws that are enforced by force weilded by authority — that rigidity does give protections to the accused, and therefore to the potentially accused, which is all of us. I have huge problems with inserting into the system some pseudo-compassionate rationales for incarcerating people because of their state of mind when that state of mind is measured by the opinion of an authority on the subject. It is a mechanism that could hypothetically be sorely misused in the future: viciously harsh standard CJ penalties could be enacted with the understanding that most accused persons will opt for an “insanity defense” and thereby be subjected to open-ended unrestricted big-brotherly interventions into every aspect of their lives in the name of “necessary therapy for the sick person”.
• I did say “in the future”. I am by no means asserting that such abuses are currently a factor. Where they are and have historically been a factor is outside of the forensic setting, where no crime is charged or inferred: the civil psychiatric commitment process. Abuses in that setting wax and wane from decade to decade and century to century. Currently, the trend is towards increasing the range and scope of the system to deprive people of freedom without clear-cut rules about the circumstances under which you can be so deprived, and the claim that “it’s for their own good, they’re sick” soothes the political conscience of many folks who would otherwise be disturbed by that.
• The whole “insanity defense” thing works against the rights of, and perceptions of, those of us with psychiatric diagnoses. It reinforces the idea that we will not be held liable for our conduct on the same basis as the rest of you — and if the rest of you believe that, why _would_ you consent to give us the same benefit of the doubt that you extend to each other? It is as it goes with children: insofar as they can’t be held responsible, we shall assume them to be irresponsible and treat them accordingly. I’m sorry, Andrea Yates, but in my opinion as a generally law-abiding, voting, civil-participating paranoid schizophrenic with delusiouns of grandeur, if you are oriented to time place and person, know your name, can define the word “murder” and correctly answer whether or not murder is against the law, I think you should be treated as a murderess of sound mind. The criminal justice system is not warm and I think it can be cruel, but your special-case claims are, in my opinion, detrimental to me and other folks diagnosed schizophrenic (and etc), and to the general population as well.
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### Author:  [@KGS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KGS)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/16 "2006-07-26T20:53:17Z")
What difference does it make if she spends the rest of her life in a prison or in a mental hospital? Our tax money pays for her room & board either way. She’s a defective person and should be recycled, with her her organs donated to people who actually have the potential for a useful, law-abiding life.
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### Author:  [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/17 "2006-07-26T21:44:52Z")
> [@KGS](#):
>
> What difference does it make if she spends the rest of her life in a prison or in a mental hospital? Our tax money pays for her room & board either way. She’s a defective person and should be recycled, with her her organs donated to people who actually have the potential for a useful, law-abiding life.
Would you limit this only to people who receive money or benefits from the government, or extend it to people who generally aren’t useful enough?
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### Author:  [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/18 "2006-07-26T22:17:29Z")
> [@KGS](#):
>
> What difference does it make if she spends the rest of her life in a prison or in a mental hospital? Our tax money pays for her room & board either way. She’s a defective person and should be recycled, with her her organs donated to people who actually have the potential for a useful, law-abiding life.
Jeepers, glad you weren’t around when I broke my arm and couldn’t work for a couple of days.
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### Author:  [@percussion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/percussion)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2006, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/19 "2006-07-27T00:24:42Z")
Justice in America is a farce…this makes me sick to my stomach
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### Author:  [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2006, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/andrea-yates-found-not-guilty/366109/20 "2006-07-27T00:32:59Z")
> [@D\_Odds](#):
>
> Andrea Yates wasn’t a wife or partner. She was a baby factory for the father, a practioner of one of the fringe lunatic sects of Christianity. Her needs and her condition were ignored…not virtually ignored, totally ignored.
While I don’t excuse what she did, I agree with the above. From my recollection, he knew very well that she already had severe PPD but insisted on more kids anyway.
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