The court system gets it right, for once
Andrea Yates found not guilty by reason of insanity-------------
You know, I've heard some of the most ignorant statements from people since this verdict has come down. I know you've all heard them too.
"What's wrong with our legal system?"
"She's getting off easy."
"How can we let a murderer just walk away?"
The irony of it all is that I think this is the first time I've heard a court award a "not guilty by reason of insanity" verdict CORRECTLY.
If anyone was ever insane, it was this woman. Before this incident, Andrea Yates had been hospitalized several times for mental reasons and had tried to commit suicide twice. She told her psychiatrist that she did not feel her children were maturing properly due to her inability to be a good mother, and reportedly she was haunted by visions that her son would eventually become a gay prostitute. An extremely religious woman, Yates was extremely disturbed by the idea that her parenting skills could (in her mind) ruin her children's lives, and she apparently believed that if she drowned her children at this young age, in their innocence, they would all be sent to heaven.
No sane person calmly fills a bathtub and methodically drowns their five children, one by one. In fact, if I remember the early reports of the incident correctly, I believe she enlisted her oldest son to help her complete the task. How can anyone say she wasn't insane?
If you want my honest opinion, I believe the husband was at least partly responsible for this even happening. No "loving husband" is unaware of his wife's psychosis and doesn't help her through such a hard time. Yates was reportedly suffering from postpartum psychosis, and seeing as how her youngest child was 6 months old, I would think Mr. Russell Yates had plenty of time to recognize his wife's problem.
Aside from all that, in the past five years since this incident occurred, Russell has divorced Andrea and remarried! Hey Rusty, could you have moved any faster? What happened to sticking by your wife during such a difficult time? And I was of the impression that he was a nice Christian man. Didn't Jesus preach against divorce? Maybe this is another one of those cases where we're picking and choosing what parts of the Bible to follow. I love that.
In all honestly, I cannot personally blame Mr. Yates for divorcing his wife, but his decision to do so and then turn around and remarry so quickly proves to me that he was not nearly as devoted to her as he would have us believe. I would go so far as to say that he contributed to her psychosis by the way he treated her during those last few months. From the day this incident occurred, I knew I didn't like that man, and that was before I ever dreamed I would one day be referred to as a "feminazi".
But in regards to Andrea Yate, I finally have to commend our legal system for doing the right thing. She is not getting off easy, nor are we letting her walk. She needs to be in treatment, and I doubt that she will ever recover from her disease and what she did. If revenge is what you're looking for, you're looking for it in the wrong place. I don't think this woman even truly understands what she did; how can you expect her to pay for it?
To say that she really wasn't insane is to completely disregard the physical, mental, and emotional ordeal a woman goes through during and after pregnancy. The feeling of emptiness and unfitness right after birth, and the realization that these children's lives are in ones hands is just too much for some woman. And more woman go through these issues that you can even imagine; not all of them kill their children, but in some cases their disease can drive them to do so.
Kudos to the jury for having the ability to look at this case in terms of understand, not just black and white issues like the first jury. And while I don't think Yates will ever fully recover, I hope she is at least better off where she is now then where she was 5 years ago.
posted by Melissa @ 7:59 AM
3 Comments:
Not guilty by reason of insanity basically states that the person technically DID it, but cannot be held accountable for their actions. Insane people lack the ability to differentiate between right and wrong. The person would be guilty, but if said person is insane, he is "not guilty", because they don't know the difference between right and wrong.
But then again, if it became apparent that a person did NOT commit a certain crime, they would not be found "not guilty by reason of insanity" regardless of their level of insanity. This verdict admits that the person DID do it, but they cannot be expected to truly understand their crime.
She had a history of mental instability. She was on numerous medications, although she had to stop taking them when she became pregnant with her youngest daughter.
Which, ironically, her husband URGED her to have, even though he knew it meant she couldn't take her medication. Just another reason he deserves to be put away, I think.
Many murders are heinous enough in construction and detail so as to be labeled an "insane" crime. Why, then, do we not excuse them as insanity?
Is that person in a mental state where they can recognize right and wrong? It seems insanely simple to me. Maybe I'm just crazy. PUN CRAZY.
But really Phil, do you think so lowly of the field of psychiatry that you believe a doctor trained specifically for the purpose would not be able to tell if someone was pretending?
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