Just wanted to add to this something I learned last night on Primetime:
Doctors had told the Yateses that Andrea should not be left alone with the five kids. Despite this warning, hubby took off for work that morning, and knowing that his mother would not be arriving at their house for another hour. It was during that hour that Andrea drowned the kids.
I cringe whenever I hear Rusty Yates yammer about how “things could have been done differently.” No shit. Of course, it never occurs to him that he could be responsible for any part of this tragedy.
That’s pretty good. I was going to make a joke about that myself but thought better of it.
I find interesting is you jump to the defense of a confessed murderer but call her husband an asshole. BTW, I’m not sure where you heard it, but it seems you heard it wrong. Andrea had a history of throwing her own pills out:
Please, while the guy may have been an irresponsible jerk, the worst I have heard alleged is that he executed some poor judgment. In hindsight it was real poor judgment, but it in no way compares to purposefully drowning your children.
Actually according to the above link her husband took her too treatment, her psychologist released her. As for the medicine, it was reportedly Andrea that flushed it down the toilet, not metaphorically but literally. Later one of her psychologists took her off her meds. Regarding the impregnation; it takes two to tango and if Rusty was such a jerk she should have left him.
Actually Rusty’s mother came to help with the children. On that fateful day she arrived an hour too late.
I’ll resist the urge to input some smart-alecky comment here.
No one is saying what Andrea did was OK - she is clearly a danger to others and can not be let out into the community again for a long, long time, if ever.
Her husband is stil an asshole. He was instructed to NEVER leave her alone with the kids … and he did. He was told that, for her health, she should NEVER impregnate her again… but he did. To say he is blameless here is ridiculous.
I’d say it was criminal irresponsibility on his part.
Leaving a loaded gun lying around a house with small children in it is a lapse of judgment - one that can get you prosecuted. Leaving your children alone in a house with a woman you have been told NEVER to leave alone with children is, to my mind, a very similar lapse in judgement.
Uh, right - a mentally ill woman with no job skills and a history of psychosis is going to support herself… how? If she runs away, given her history, she’s going to be on the street or in a shelter, and when Rusty comes looking for her, given her history, the authorities aren’t going to believe what the “crazy lady” says and they’re going to given her back into his custody.
Rusty was the sane and responsible one (supposedly). He put his ability to father children above the safety and well-being of another human being. That’s pretty scummy behavior.
Right. Leaving her alone with the children. Something they were never supposed to let happen. Rusty should have stayed home until his mother arrived. So he’d be late to work? So what? Isn’t his family more important than his job?
Broomstick, you had a mighty shopping list of why Rusty was this and that terrible. Now it’s just that he still wanted to have kids and he left his wife and he left her alone for an hour. Shouldn’t you be admitting you were wrong about a whole lot, and be apologizing to me about now?
Do you feel sorry for Susan Smith too? She locked her kids in the car and sent it into the water so it would drown her kids. Do you feel sorry for Michelle Tharp and Douglas Bittinger? They starved Michelle’s seven year-old daughter Tausha Lanham to death, wrapped her twelve pound body in garbage bags and left her like trash.
Killing your own kids is not proof of insanity. It is possible to know that your actions are illegal, that they are wrong, that they would result in going to prison, and do them anyway. That’s what Susan Smith did. That’s what Michelle Tharp and Douglas Bittinger did. That’s what Andrea Yates did.
And I doubt that anybody would feel sorry for her if she was Andrew Yates, who drowned his five kids. Look at this thread. Plenty of people are calling for all kinds of charges to be brought against Rusty Yates who took no active hand in the drownings at all. He might’ve been an asshole, and he might’ve taken her meds away, but he didn’t drown the kids. She did. Which makes her far more guilty than him.
If it were “Andrew Yates” who had attempted suicide twice, and “Andrew Yates” who belonged to a church that said it was better to kill yourself than allow your children to risk falling into sin, and “Andrew Yates” who had lived in a freaking bus with said five children because of their religious beliefs… yeah, actually, I would feel sorry for him. Going by what I know of Michael Woroniecki and his teachings, which Andrea Yates apparently swallowed whole, she probably really honestly thought that she was doing the best thing. She knew that what she was doing was illegal. I just don’t think that she knew it was wrong at that point. YMMV, and all of that.
I hire you as an extra for a movie, one involving the execution of a man in the electric chair. Your job is the guard who throws the switch.
We do a few rehearsals, and then, unbeknownst to you, I actually connect live electricity to the chair in which the actor sits, electricity controlled by the switch you are about to throw.
The director shouts action, the actor delivers his, “You’re executing an innocent man!” line, and you throw the switch, sending 75,000 volts into the actors body and killing him deader than a shitbug.
If some gun-totin’ right-to-lifer goes gunning for an abortion doctor and gets nailed for it, the claim that “Yeah, I knew it was illegal and would be considered ‘murder’, but it was the right thing to do anyhow” isn’t going to get him off the hook. Same with KKK guys conducting a lynching. The moral and (where relevant) political and social perspective of the accused doesn’t otherwise play a part in American jurisprudence, so why here?
The “political and social persepective” of the defendant played no role here either. Her psychosis did. She thought she was saving her children from Satan. There was no calculated political motive here. Your comparisons to racist lynchings or assassinations of abortion doctors are ridiculous.
You are more than welcome to pit me if you want. I still won’t change the fact that you are too small to admit you were wrong and too pig headed to apologize.
You will not badger me into a false apology, or giving an apology where none is warranted. Call me small if you wish - I’ve been short all my life, it makes no difference to me. YOU are the one who is so insecure that you can’t stomach someone having a different opinion than you.
Do not bother to reply to me here - if you feel compelled to do so YOU start the Pit thread. You opinion of me matter so little that I can’t be bothered to.
Of course not. You are … for connecting the real juice. Are you really suggesting that Andrea Yeats didn’t know she was committing a crime? She admitted that at the original trial.
You really could respond to my whole post instead of a few selected words anyway, Bricker. But I guess that would be uncharacteristically fair. I did mention penalty, but in the following way:
“I would, however, accept a verdict of guilty, but insane. This would allow for some mitigation of any penalty, while recognizing that the person is guilty of the act.” (Italics added.)
I wouldn’t be throwing the switch on anybody IRL. While I once argued for the death penalty (you can probably find some old posts of mine defending it), I have come to realize that the standard of proof is too low if a life is to be taken. Am I inconsistent? Sure. I’m alive. Only the dead are completely consistent.
My question had nothing to do with the death penalty.
It had everything to do with your mental state at the moment you threw the switch. You didn’t commit a crime when you threw the switch because you lacked the requisite mental state. My hypothetical was intended to illustrate that, and to contradict what you said:
Guilt or innocence has EVERYTHING to do with mental state. What you believe at the moment you commit the guilty act is key to whther you’re guilty of a crime. If you knew the electricity was on, then you’re a murderer. If you didn’t, you’re an innocent person.
If the electric chair is distracting, we can substitute a blanks-loaded gun that I sneak a real bullet into. Same result.
We don’t generally criminally punish people who genuinely believed that they were doing the right thing.
