# I pit Andrea Yates
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [January 6, 2005, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411 "2005-01-06T16:59:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/1 "2005-01-06T16:59:09Z")
Actually, I don’t know whether to pit Anrea Yates or this putz Dietz for messing up the conviction with his false testimony. I know justice is blind, but why does it also have to be stupid?
> [@](#):
>
> The three-member panel of the Texas 1st Court of Appeals said it reversed the verdicts of a lower court in part because of errors in the testimony from the state’s expert psychiatric witness, Dr. Park Dietz.
[Link](http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20050106/ts_nm/crime_yates_dc)
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### Author:  [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/2 "2005-01-06T17:05:56Z")
So, you don’t think she deserves a new trial?
I do. Because I think the woman belongs in a mental institution, not a prison. We’ve been talking about it in IMHO, so I’m sure several will be along shortly. If you have the time, read through this first.
[http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious\_murders/women/andrea\_yates/](http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/women/andrea_yates/)
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### Author:  [@Rufus\_Xavier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rufus_Xavier)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/3 "2005-01-06T17:05:57Z")
She’s a quintuple child murderer.
He’s a schmuck.
They’re both pitworthy, but I think Yates is the worse of the two.
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### Author:  [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/4 "2005-01-06T17:07:57Z")
What I don’t understand is what the witness was thinking. How could he possibly have thought he could just invent an episode of a show - a very popular show, even- and not be found out? It boggles the mind.
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### Author:  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/5 "2005-01-06T17:18:58Z")
From what I understand, Andrea doesn’t have much to do with it.
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### Author:  [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/6 "2005-01-06T17:21:10Z")
> [@Indygrrl](#):
>
> So, you don’t think she deserves a new trial?
I certainly think she deserves a new trial now. I just wish it wasn’t necessary because of some numbnuts lying on the stand. I wish she was convicted, put away, and long forgotten.
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/7 "2005-01-06T17:24:52Z")
Its the Texas Criminal Justice System. No system, no justice, just criminal. Don’t go there, **Rufus**. Any investigation by a (presumably) sane and rational person will send you screaming down the street with your hair on fire.
Andrea Yates is nuts. Anybody who drowns their kids to keep the Devil from gittin’ em is nuts. I don’t know that an insane asylum can do her any good, but I’m damn sure that a prison cell won’t.
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### Author:  [@GaWd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaWd)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/8 "2005-01-06T17:29:26Z")
Let me get this straight, the prosecution uses an expert who invents his testimony and lies on the stand. The jury brings back a conviction based partly on expert testimony that she is guilty of a capital murder(5), because it was not an invention of her mind, but something she saw on TV. Her attorneys figure out that the expert is lying and appeal to the high courts. The judges concur and overturn the conviction due to a **lying prosecution expert** , and you pit Andrea Yates?
Why are you mad at her for this? She’s a nutjob, she’s fucking whacko. Yes, she killed her kids and yes, she’s a very bad person for doing so, but that does NOT give the prosecution or their experts the fucking latitude to LIE under oath on the stand in order to obtain the conviction.
We’ll see if they can convict her with an expert telling the truth this time.
Sam
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### Author:  [@GaWd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaWd)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/9 "2005-01-06T17:31:45Z")
P.S.- It sounds as if Dr. Deitz has a little Narcissism problem himself. Maybe he ought to seek out medicationa nd therapy for that…I mean really. He invented a Law and Order episode that he co-wrote? A touch grandiose dontcha think?
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### Author:  [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/10 "2005-01-06T17:46:09Z")
I’ve always felt that the punishment for perjury should be directly proportional to the crime being tried when the perjury occurred. Perjury during a capital murder trial? Damn, you’re going away for a long time!
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### Author:  [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/11 "2005-01-06T17:48:48Z")
One of my childhood family heroes was a beautiful, loving and charming woman who adored her children and all of the children in the family. She was an angel and children gravitated to her naturally.
I remember one period of time when her chldren came to stay with their grandparents. I thought nothing of it and loved having them closer to me for their company.
It wasn’t until recent years – about 35 years later – that I learned that the children were removed for their own safety. This sweetest woman had developed a psychosis and had become a danger specifically to them.
She later returned to good health and the children returned home and flourished. The mother’s true personality returned and she remained greatly loved and respected until her death.
Anyone who has seen before and after pictures of Andrea Yates can _see_ her descent into madness. If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone – especially women who have had children. (My understanding is that it has to do with the change in hormones or endocrines or some other body chemistry over which she has no control.)
If I’ve wrong, then yes, she should be in prison. But if she did not do this as a result of a criminal mind, then she needs to be in a mental institution.
Nevertheless, EVERYONE deserves a fair trial.
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### Author:  [@Jaade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaade)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/12 "2005-01-06T18:00:36Z")
Not that I can really make a point better than **GaWd’s** , but the simple fact here is that the prosecution’s witness lied, and we cannot allow that kind of behavior in our courts, no matter what we think of the person that committed the crime. Her lawyer was simply doing his job and if Andrea Yates was convicted in part because of this testimony, she deserves a new trial.
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/13 "2005-01-06T18:01:38Z")
Off topic, but to **Zoe**
Yes! And isn’t it the damndest thing in the world! I also know someone who went batshit crazy…dangerously crazy, psycho, Bates Motel…and stayed that way for months and then one day…gone! (Well, not in one day, but almost as miraculous). I got this suspicion, with no facts or substantiation whatsoever, but…maybe the more suddenly you go nuts, the more likely that you’ll recover?
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### Author:  [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/14 "2005-01-06T18:04:28Z")
To give the woman what very little credit she deserves, it seems pretty obvious that she’s crazier than a shithouse rat. Nuttier than Planter’s can. Off her fucking rocker. Ain’t right in the head. However you want to phrase it. At any rate, while what she did was utterly indefensible, her actions seem to be motivated by a mind that’s sick rather than malicious. It doesn’t lessen the magnitude of what she did, or excuse it in any way, but it does mean that she belongs in a mental health care facility rather than a prison.
This Dietz guy, though…unless he’s mentally ill and genuinely has delusions that he writes tv scripts, he perjured himself to harm someone else coldly, deliberately, and with full understanding of what he was doing. And that’s just fucking evil.
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### Author:  [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/15 "2005-01-06T19:05:11Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#):
>
> This Dietz guy, though…unless he’s mentally ill and genuinely has delusions that he writes tv scripts, he perjured himself to harm someone else coldly, deliberately, and with full understanding of what he was doing. And that’s just fucking evil.
Apparently, the appeals court found otherwise (bolding mine)…
> [@](#):
>
> [http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/06/children.drowned/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/06/children.drowned/index.html)
>
> The appeals court ruling found that \*\*Dietz did not intentionally lie \*\* and the prosecution did not knowingly use false testimony.
How that could possibly be, I have no idea, but there you go.
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### Author:  [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/16 "2005-01-06T19:06:59Z")
If anyone needs to be pitted its her lawyer in the first trial. Can you imagine the gasp in the courtroom if the defense managed to impeach the prosecution expert’s testimony during the trial? It sure would make the defense expert’s testimony a lot more credible and a much higher probability of a more favourable outcome for her.
As it is now, the prosecution has ample time to find several more experts and layout a case without any damaging(for them) incident before the next jury.
This is pure incompetance bordering on negligence, and that lawyer should be held accountable somehow.
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### Author:  [@Elysian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elysian)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/17 "2005-01-06T19:12:07Z")
If you really think that Yates was not crazy, take the time and read the 2004 State’s Brief on this website:
[http://www.yateskids.org/artifacts.php](http://www.yateskids.org/artifacts.php)
Specifically pay attention to the many hospitalizations, the suicide attempts, the drugs she was given, her frequent comatose episodes, the way she scratched at her head until her hair fell out, her halucinations both auditory and visual (she thought children’s cartoons were telling her she was a bad mother), and the inexplicable (to me) release from the mental hospital. There was one point where her psychiatrist came to her house, saw Yates mumbling and unresponsive and “wandering around the house,” and left her there!
Yates’s father had just died, too, and she was depressed about that, and was on very strong drugs that she sometimes didn’t take. This lady was clearly insane.
There’s not that much on this page that blames the husband, but I find it strange that Yates tried to commit suicide and was put in the mental home after her fourth child and then the man wanted another baby even though all the doctors warned them that it would happen again. That’s just not logical.
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### Author:  [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/18 "2005-01-06T19:28:13Z")
> [@grienspace](#):
>
> If anyone needs to be pitted its her lawyer in the first trial. Can you imagine the gasp in the courtroom if the defense managed to impeach the prosecution expert’s testimony during the trial? It sure would make the defense expert’s testimony a lot more credible and a much higher probability of a more favourable outcome for her.
>
> As it is now, the prosecution has ample time to find several more experts and layout a case without any damaging(for them) incident before the next jury.
>
> This is pure incompetance bordering on negligence, and that lawyer should be held accountable somehow.
I hope this comes out the way I intend it.
when I saw your name on this thread, I had a mental image of what I thought would ‘surely’ be your position, given that I don’t recall ever agreeing with you.
I was wrong.
We’ll still, no doubt disagree strongly again in the future. But at least, I won’t automatically assume it next time.
on the OP: one of the things that drove me nutso (but not so nutso as to need inpatient psychiatric services, mind you), was that there was another Texas mother IIRC, who killed her kids (with a rock) was found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. and Andrea’s case was much more documented (prior psychotic behavior).
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/19 "2005-01-06T19:33:25Z")
I don’t see a problem with this. An expert for the prosecution lied on the stand and speculated that Yates could have been influenced by an episode of Law and Order in which a character was found insane after drowning her own children. The witness testified that this is where Yates could have gotten the idea. The trouble is that no such episode ever existed. If the jury weighed this imaginary calculation into their deliberation then it’s definitely significant grounds for vacating the verdict. The prosecution can’t just be allowed to make up whatever evidence it wants without any sanction. The witness should be charged with perjury and the prosecutor should be charged with subornation of perjury.
I always thought it was ridiculous to charge her criminally anyway. If that woman wasn’t insane then nobody is. That’s not to say she shouldn’t be locked up, it’s just a question of where. She should be in a hospital. She’s a victim of disease as much as her kids were.
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### Author:  [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2005, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-andrea-yates/283411/20 "2005-01-06T19:43:59Z")
How the court could have found that he did not intentionally lie is beyond me. His testimony was made up out of whole cloth. I say put him on trial for perjury and let a jury decide.
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