(no subject)
Jul. 26th, 2006 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingAndrea Yates found not guilty.
It's not that she *didn't* murder her five children - even her lawyers admit this. It's that she was clinically depressed, psychotic, and her husband demanded that she stop going to the psychiatrist and stop taking her medication because God wanted him to have more children, and she agreed because God says she's supposed to obey her man, and so she was in a deeply, uh, UNDERMEDICATED state when she decided that killing them all was the only way to save their souls from Satan.
She was convicted in her first trial, but it was overturned when it was revealed that the prosecutor's expert witness blatantly perjured himself.
It's not that she *didn't* murder her five children - even her lawyers admit this. It's that she was clinically depressed, psychotic, and her husband demanded that she stop going to the psychiatrist and stop taking her medication because God wanted him to have more children, and she agreed because God says she's supposed to obey her man, and so she was in a deeply, uh, UNDERMEDICATED state when she decided that killing them all was the only way to save their souls from Satan.
She was convicted in her first trial, but it was overturned when it was revealed that the prosecutor's expert witness blatantly perjured himself.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-26 11:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 01:27 am (UTC)When it first happened, I was so angry. The mother of two little kids myself (Erniebutt was only 5 himself, Alex had just turned 9), I was horrified that anyone could take the lives of people so young. I am ashamed to admit that my first thought was "Kill the bitch." (My reaction was also colored by my own childhood abuse.)
I have in the in-between learned compassion. How horrible it must be to live in her head.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 03:35 am (UTC)There's insane, and there's deliberate.
Can you imagine what the case would be if she were black or latino?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 03:36 pm (UTC)My understanding is that they are not mutually exclusive. Otherwise, wouldn't she be not guilty of manslaughter by reason of insanity, rather than not guilty of murder by reason of insanity?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 08:18 pm (UTC)The insanity plea is something I've always had a problem with. She killed her children NOT in a burst of passion, but in a cold and calculated manner. If she thinks she was "insane", then she's free to spend the rest of her prison life wearing a clown suit and big red shoes.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 08:40 pm (UTC)And what does Andrea Yates thinking she's insane have to do with it? It's not like she got to pick her own guilt or innocence in the eyes of the legal system.
Now, if you say "I don't care if *they* think killing her own children while psychotic and believing Satan was inside her was the act of an insane person, she can wear a clown suit etc.", it makes more sense.
(Insert stardard, shopworn, sadly necessary sweet-bleeding-Christ-can-we-*please*-get-past-the-idea-of-insanity-as-a-funny-hat rant here. Goddamnit, I prayed it would never come up outside of dealing with particularly dense LARPers.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 08:47 pm (UTC)I'll end it on this note, torrain...thus agreeing to disagree (and please, NEVER compare to me to LARPer...lol): A friend of mine was shot and killed by another man last year in a barroom parking lot. Shot in the neck, then in the face, and then in the chest to "make sure". The shooter then claimed insanity and received a reduced sentence due to some legal maneuvering from his lawyer who called it an act of passion in self defense (even though the first shot came from behind and witnesses called it a sneak attack). From that point on, it occured to me that my friend was gone, and this asshole was gonna be free in less time than it would have taken my friend to reach his 30th birthday.
So maybe my anger DOES step into my rationalizing...and for that I apologize. Either way, however, that woman killed her children. Drowned them one by one. Slowly, methodically, and then retained the sanity to make a few phone calls soon thereafter. When I heard the possibility of her being "released", it sparked off my little rant.... If only because I've had many friends who have experienced post partum depression WITHOUT the aid of drugs (dozens of ladies...) and have yet to drown a single child. Not a one.
SHE needs to stay behind bars for the rest of her life. And her husband should join in for the fun.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 09:07 pm (UTC)I would like to confirm something, though I promise to let it drop if you're not interested in taking it further: Is it fair to say that you see insanity as something that interferes with a great deal (if not all) of someone's ability to follow mundane cause and effect?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 08:45 pm (UTC)Insanity is defined solely in that the insane person does not consider their actions to be wrong.
Andrea Yates firmly believed that she was killing her children for a GOOD REASON, and that this was not only right but necessary. She was incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, and so she was legally insane.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 08:52 pm (UTC)And that, if anything, displays why the insanity plea is full of shit. And as to what she "firmly believed"...ONLY Andrea Yates knows. Being that there is NO way to confirm that, the plea is groundless.
It would be like mentioning a witness whose testimony proves you didn't commit a crime, only to say "well, I KNOW the witness exists, and I KNOW what he saw is true...take my word for it. Case dismissed! Wheeee!".....
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 08:54 pm (UTC)She was psychotic. Everyone knew it. Her doctor knew it, her shrink knew it, her pastor and her husband knew it. She was on medication, and her husband insisted that she stop taking them, and she got REALLY psychotic. Then he stopped her from going to the doctor any more because the doctor wanted her to keep taking the medication, and then she killed her children.
This was not a sudden or unexpected break with reality. It was already perfectyly clear that the woman was not in her right mind and was incapable of dealing rationally with the world. The only surprise was that she killed her children.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 08:59 pm (UTC)See above: "SHE needs to stay behind bars for the rest of her life. And her husband should join in for the fun."
To that I add anyone who KNEW her condition and yet left her ALONE with those kids.
I've seen cases where a man has killed another for sexually molesting his kids. That kind of temporary "insanity" is one I am open to understanding.
but the kind where kids...nay, human beings...like this die the way they did?
Well...I guess all I can do is apologize for my lack of compassion. Only I'll know, however, if that apology is genuine or not. Sound familiar?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-27 09:14 pm (UTC)Say (I apologize if this is touching on personal grounds, here) you had a child. You find out that your kid's kindergarden teacher raped your kid.
Filled with a (completely understandable) desire to retaliate, you pick up a weapon, go find the teacher, and kill them.
If it were later provable that the person did no such thing and that your belief that your child was raped (and your subsequent murder of an innocent) was the result of a psychotic break, would you prefer that an attempt was made to turn you back into a functional human being or that you be issued a clown suit and jailed?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-28 12:55 am (UTC)If I decided to go and take my "vengeance", I'd be 100% sure the guy did what he was accused of before taking any steps in that direction. And once again, we're dealing with someone accused of a crime whose nature in itself is as evil as it gets. Unless I read the paper incorrectly, none of the children she drowned had such chargs brought against them before she "insanely" drowned them.
*sigh*
This will be my last response to this thread, if only because I think you and weasel are good people, and I'd hate for this to get silly. ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-28 02:13 am (UTC)And so you go kill the guy!
And then the police come to you, make you start taking your pills again, and you realise that *you made it all up* because *you were not sane*. It SEEMED perfectly reasonable, rational, real, and absolutely incontrovertably convincing, because *your brain wasn't working right*.
This woman was protecting her children from Satan. She *had* to kill her children or *the worst of all possible fates* would absolutely, positively, 100% occur to them - a fate far worse than death, a fate so monstrous that NOT killing them was completely unthinkable and, indeed, an act of monstrous evil itself.
And that's why she's insane, and why we think she needs a mental hospital, medication, and help, not a jail cell.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-28 02:38 am (UTC)That someone with that kind of mentality...one so extreme that she COULD become THAT dillusional was allowed to HAVE children, much less FIVE of them...is a wonder in itself.
And was it the magic # 5 that pushed her over? How come she didn't go batshit with the other 4? Did that one cry a bit louder than the others?
sheesh...
What it boils down to is the fact that you've got a WAY bigger heart than mine, Weez. All I can picture is the last thing those kids saw...their mother's hand holding them under...the one child dragged kicking and screaming after he escaped...after he witnessed the deaths of his 4 siblings.
And then I read:
"Yates, 42, will now be committed to a state mental hospital, with periodic hearings before a judge to determine whether she should be released."
RELEASED?
WTF??????
Lock her up in a hospital for the rest of her life? I'm with ya....
But let her run loose?????
As a fecalphiliac would say: FUCK that shit.
And for some reason...this passage is the one that bothers me the most:
"Rusty Yates divorced Andrea Yates after the children's June 2001 deaths and recently remarried. He said they are still "friends" and reminisce about the children."
RUSTY: Ah..remember when little Paul would play in that sandbox, Andrea?
ANDREA: I do. He was so cute.
RUSTY: Those suspenders he wore...
ANDREA. Yep. I think Gramma bought him those...Oh wait...was that before or after I DROWNED him?
*shudders*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-28 01:47 am (UTC)People always assume people under serious emotional stress and crazy suddenly become detached killers, but because the belief you are saving your children from a far worse fate by killing them would freak most people out, even if they erroneously thought it the best course of action.