I believe that he is innocent of the deaths of his children, legally and morally. However, I’m totally in favor of him getting a vasectomy. Something this tragic involving one’s children would be likely to permanently and severely disrupt one’s future parenting skills.
I don’t know about that, the ex-husband of Susan Smith has been on Larry King a couple times in the past year (because of the Yates case) and he seems to be a reasonably well adjusted guy, considering what he’s been through.* He admitted that he’s over-protective of his daughter, but it doesn’t sound like he’s totally lost his mind or anything.
- Apparantly a lot of people blamed him for what happened to his kids as well, which sounds pretty ridiculous from what I’ve heard about the case.
How did I turn into Guinastasia? 
As for how well Mr. Yates would adjust, I’m just going on a total guess about possible parenting skills after such a disaster. If anyone has found out any statistics on parenting skills after such a disaster, I’d love to see them!
i am thoroughly disgusted. If anyone, ever, in the history of the world, represented a textbook case of temporary insanity, it was Andrea Yates. As I mentioned in the GD thread, I think her conviction was a travesty that sprang from a deeply held misconception that “temporary” equals “momentary”, and as a result this poor woman is going to have to go through even more hell.
In the end, though, what does it matter? Can you imagine that she would ever really recover from this? Can the state really torment her any more than her own mind, memories, and heart will torment her for the rest of her life, however long that is?
And the husband is a pig.
stoid
Why can’t you use this argument for any crime? Isn’t a murderer going to be tormented with the enormity of their crime all their life? Weren’t Nazi war criminals tormented with the enormity of their crimes once they saw it laid out in the trials?
Isn’t any rapist or pedophile going to be tormented in their own mind over the enormity of their crime, far more than the State could do so by giving them life without parole? They don’t need punishment - they need ‘help’, and a nice halfway house somewhere…yeah.
And one trotting out the argument of “anyone who commits an atrocity must be insane” is really sad, and more worthy of an Oprah episode than actual constructive discourse. One can by extension say that anyone who commits a heinous crime is therefore insane, and thus should be “helped”, not punished.
This argument is the same one used by capital punishment opponents again and again. Welcome to Liberal America, where no one need be punished, because you can always punish yourself. In your mind.
Bullshit. As a member of the same society in which Yates was once a member, I demand punishment, and I want vengeance.
I don’t want her to “recover from this”, nor care if she claims to be "healed by the Power of Jesus[sup]TM[/sup] whilst in prison. She is a person who dehumanized herself by her own actions. She is no longer worthy of being in society in any context whatsoever. The “poor woman” is going through more Hell, huh? Oh yeah…she’s the victim here. Society, her husband, Satan, too much sugar, TV, video games, etc. - they are all the murderers, not her.
I also fail to see how the husband is “guilty”, but I expected to see this espoused as well.
This case was not Scopes Monkey Trial for fuck’s sake. It was pretty cut and dried.
Have you ever tried to keep someone on meds who doesn’t want to take them? Short of institutionalization (which I don’t believe the husband and psychologist(s?) could have successfully managed) you can’t force someone to keep taking drugs or medication.
And still, no-one has explained what horrible thing Mr. Yates forced his wife to do that’s generated such bile. He’s not the one who slowly and methodlically drowned his five children. He’s not the one who made up the “Devil made me do it” story the day after she was arrested. So what did he actually do? (And anyone who says “He didn’t force his wife to take her medication, and he did force her to have kids” is gonna get laughed at, unless they show how he forced her.)
Fenris
She wasn’t schizophrenic. She was suffering from postpartum psychosis.
She had a previous diagnosis of this after her 3rd or 4th child. They say that these things get worse and worse with each subsequent pregnancy.
I don’t think it’s temporary insanity-I think it’s just plain ol’ insanity, period.
Russell Yates knew what state his wife was in. No, maybe he didn’t force her to do anything. HOWEVER…if he had left his children in the house, alone with a woman diagnosed with PPP, after being told that his wife was unstable, that he isn’t at least guilty of neglect?
Now, they couldn’t have gotten someone to help poor Andrea out? A friend, or a relative? My god, the woman was suicidal at the least! He even said he didn’t understand why she didn’t just “snap out of it”, that other women did it, and were able to be perfect mothers-why couldn’t she?
This was a woman, who only had three hours out of each week to be alone to herself. The rest of the time, she was in the house, alone, with five children. That would be enough to drive someone who is perfectly sane to drink-at least according to my own mother! 
I’m NOT saying Andrea isn’t responsible for her own actions, however, her husband is at least partly to blame because he was told repeatedly that she wasn’t stable, and he left those children in her care. For crissakes, why not let Charles Manson babysit for you! (at least, prior to his murders, he was pretty nutty).
Why do I suddenly hear Rush lyrics?
“Is any killer worth more than his crime?”
The woman is guilty, just ask her kids. I never believe the concept of “temporary insanity,” because the majority of the time, a person commits an act out of high emotional stress, which means you’re not necessarily thinking straight. It’s called “loosing it,” not insanity. And anyone who could methodically drowned five kids in such a way shows some level of premedition to me. She claims Satan told her to do it, huh? He apparently also told her to stab her son earlier, but she refused. Why was it so easy to say no to Satan before when he asked her to kill one kid, but not five? As a “faithful Christian,” shouldn’t he belief in Jesus have helped?
The woman suffered from post pardom depression, so the concept of having more kids could have been a way of handling it. While she was pregnant, she was fine. Unfortunately, after the births, the problem arises. It’s a problem many people suffer, but they don’t murder their children as a solution. And besides, she was also diagnosed just a few days prior to the event by a psychiatrist who said she was fine. Sure, she could still be suffering from ppd, but like I said, it’s a common event. She may not have been perfect, but she wasn’t psychotic or “insane” at the time. The woman’s a nut job and should NOT be set free because she was “temporarily insane.”
If that’s a viable defense, then that woman who left the guy to die in her windshield would be able to just say “I was drunk and high when it happened, and in the aftermath, I didn’t know what to do. I was under so much stress from the situation, I went insane for those two days.” You think she should get off with a defense like that? If so, get your head our your ass. I don’t know anyone that’s given her a single ounce of compassion, and deservingly so. No matter how much she cries at her trial, no one cares about her, they think of the victim. Why is this? Because she knew what she was doing was wrong. So did Andrea Yates. Saying she knew it was wrong but “it was the only way to save her children” is shit. Christianity is founded on the concept of community, all branches of it acknowledge that, so why didn’t she seek help there? She wasn’t alone, and there were other ways. It’s the same way with suicide. Legally, it is illegal, yet so many people comit suicide because they feel it is “the only way out.” We put people on suicide watch and if it comes to it, a police officer will shoot a person before letting them kill themselves. So, “it was the only way I could think of to save them even though I knew it was wrong” is a useless excuse in the eyes of the law.
Why is it here the victims are taking a back seat to all this other shit? Andrea Yates hasn’t lost her composure once throughout the trial. Her husband took the verdict harder than she did. I admit, he was a dumbass. He’s quoted as saying “I knew she wasn’t doing well, so we went for a walk in the park. That didn’t help.” She’d been to counciling, instatutionalized, and he thought a walk in the park would work? He’s a retard. But he’s not responsible for what she did. And don’t go saying he should be sterilized and all that shit, because aside from leaving them with a woman who killed them, nothing has come out to say he was a bad father. If he can find a woman who’s not nutso and start over, I believe he should have the right. How he managed to stay faithful to her in all of this and stay by her side, that’s what I find crazy.
But overall, yes, she got the right verdict. The woman is guilty as can be, and I hope she gets the worse penalty she can.
Thank you, Doctor Elvis. :rolleyes:
As for the father’s guilt, this is the way I look at it–
Let’s say that I, as a mother, left my child in the care of a neighbor. This neighbor is mentally ill, off her medications, and acting pretty odd a lot of the time. I am completely aware of all of this, yet I leave my child with her anyway. While my son is in her care, she kills him. Now, IANAL, but I can’t help but feel that the cops and prosecutors would lock me up just as quick as could be. What’s more, I feel like if I actually did do something so stupid, I would deserve to be locked up. Notice that most of the people tearing into daddy are women, and mothers. We’re held to a higher standard when it comes to protecting our children, it seems, and that strikes me as illogical and unfair. YMMV
bella
Belladonna, women are held at higher reguard when it comes to nurturing, but it’s still the father’s duty to provide and protect the family, including the children. He left his children with his wife most likely because he felt that it would help her situation. She suffered from a sense of being abandoned, so you think it would be better to send them away? What would that have done to her? Yes, in hindsite, it was a stupid idea, but prior to this, how had she dealt with the kids. The eldest son was seven years old. For seven years, nothing like this had happened, so you have to believe he felt the children were safe. Now, if she had divuldged to him prior to this about Satan wanting her to stab Noah, then yes, he definitely should have done something, but that knowledge is unknown. Why is it everyone thinks the worste of him? When she murdered the children, he was supporting her. He stood by her and still does. It is quite possible that the motivation behind leaving the kids behind to be homeschooled was to prevent her from getting worse. Or maybe it was because due to his beliefes, he felt sending his kids to school would fill them with unwholesome ideals and that his wife needed to just suck up her problems for the sake of the kids. I don’t know if he was selfish in his decision or if he was trying to be compassionate, but seven years of her being sad yet not once making a violent act towards the children still gives a sense of trust. How can he be blamed for trusting his wife not to kill his kids. I hope all you out there who feel animosity towards him don’t fear your own spouses constantly, because that’s an unhealthy relationship as well.
As for if you left your child with a nieghbor who was someone insane and killed your child, I seriously doubt you would be blamed by the authorities and locked up. Especially if the person was always kind to children and never showed the possibility of acting violent towards them. Sure, people would say “What were you thinking, you knew they had problems,” but anyone who would blame you for that is a fool.
I think the point many people are missing is that the question is not if she was insane, it’s if she was legally insane. That is, did she know right from wrong at the time of the crime. This is a much tougher thing to prove. I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer was not found to be legally insane.
I think it is telling that the jury (who heard and saw much more evidence than we did) took only a couple hours to decide. I’m also extremely skeptical of the fact that all this Satan and hearing voices crap only came out after she was on trial for her life.
The husband might be a chauvinist (though she seems not to have minded) and a control freak, but at the end of the day, he’s not the one who held his kids under the water while they kicked and screamed and pulled hair out from their mother’s head.
Noah, 7.
John, 5.
Paul, 3.
Luke, 2.
Mary, 6 months.
How many of you knew their names?
Further discussion can be found in MPSIMS.
I’m sorry, but this is really starting to annoy the living shit out of me:
It was post-partum PSYCHOSIS!!! NOT post-partum DEPRESSION!
We’re trying to fight ignorance here! There is a world of difference between the two of them, dammit!!!
I don’t understand, what do the people who are against the ruling think should have happened? You think she should go free because she was “temporarily insane”?
Nobody said that. I for one think she belongs in an institution for the criminally insane.
:o
I have no idea. I’d like to blame the new board software but I’d imagine that it’s entirely my fault.
My apologies to you and to Guinastasia.