Andrea Yates

Andrea Yates: The Drowning

In June 2001, Andrea Yates drowned all five of her children in a tub full of water one by one. First, she drowned her three sons, Paul, age 3; Luke, age 2; and John, age 5. She put them in the water face down and held them. As they died, she placed them faced up on a bed and then covered them with a sheet. She then drowned the youngest child six-month old Mary, who was sitting in her bassinet crying as she drowned her brothers in the bathroom. After drowning Mary, she left her floating in the tub and she call her oldest son Noah into the bathroom. When Noah got to the bathroom door he saw Mary floating and ask his mother what was wrong with her. Once he figured out what his mother was doing, he ran and Andrea chased him down and pulled him into the bathroom and drowned him next to his sister. She said that Noah struggled the most and he sometimes he came up for a breath of air, but she pushed him back under. After drowning the kids, Andrea called the police and her husband. When police arrived on the scene they questioned Andrea and she seemed very focus when she answered the question the officers ask her. She told the officers that she was a bad mother and that the children were "not developing correctly" and she needed to be punished. Yates trial lasted three weeks. The jury found Andrea guilty of capital murder, but rather then recommending the death penalty, they sentenced Yates life in prison.

In January 2005, the case was at its highpoint, the appeals court overturned Yates conviction. "A panel of three judges found that the Harris County jury may have been prejudiced by the false testimony of a prosecution expert" (CBS).Yates lawyer's disputed that:

"Psychiatrist Park Dietz was wrong when he said he consulted on an episode of the TV show "Law & Order" involving a woman found innocent by reason of insanity for drowning her children. After jurors found Yates guilty, attorneys in the case and jurors learned no such episode existed. Park Dietz was the prosecution expert who came into court and told jurors that Andrea Yates was not legally insane at the time of the killings; that she didn't just snap and drown her kids," says CBSNews.com Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen. "His testimony was vital to the prosecution's case." "We conclude that there is a reasonable likelihood that Dr. Dietz's false testimony could have affected the judgment of the jury," the court ruled.