Yates to move from prison to state mental hospital

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

(12/20/05 - HOUSTON) -- Andrea Yates, the Houston mother who drowned her five children in the family's bathtub, will soon move from an East Texas prison to a state mental hospital as she awaits a new capital murder trial.

Yates' two murder convictions were overturned by an appeals court earlier this year because of false expert testimony at her 2002 trial. Yates' case was returned to a Harris County court last week, and a judge Monday set an initial hearing for Jan. 9.

Prosecutor Joe Owmby said Monday that Yates will be moved to the Rusk State Hospital, less than a half-mile away from the Skyview prison, a psychiatric unit where she's been jailed for nearly three years.

The Harris County Sheriff's Department, which is responsible for transporting Yates to the hospital and to future court appearances, is awaiting court documents before transferring Yates, spokesman Lt. John Martin. He said security concerns prohibited him from saying when Yates would be moved.

Yates' attorney, George Parnham, who has worked for months to get Yates into a state mental hospital, said he visited Yates twice last week to help prepare her for the move. While he wouldn't provide details on those discussions, Parnham said Yates is scared about the transition.

"All parties agree that she was and is mentally ill, and she needs the expert assistance," Parnham said.

Owmby said his office didn't contest the plans to move Yates.

"It's not like they are transferring her to some civilian, private care facility," Owmby said. "That is not what is going on. This is a place we send prisoners."

The 275-bed hospital treats adult patients who cannot be released without a psychiatrist's approval, superintendent Ted Debbs said. The hospital currently treats about 10 patients found innocent of crimes due to insanity, he said.

"Even though we are not a prison, we are a locked facility," Debbs said.

Yates' convictions were overturned based on testimony from Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who testified in the high-profile trials of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr.

Dietz, an expert hired by prosecutors, incorrectly testified that before Yates killed her children in 2001, an episode of the television show "Law & Order" aired about a woman with postpartum depression who drowned her children and was found innocent by reason of insanity. It was later learned that no such episode of the show ever aired.

Jurors rejected Yates' insanity defense and found her guilty of capital murder for the deaths of 7-year-old Noah and 5-year-old John, and capital murder for the death of 6-month-old Mary. Yates was not charged in the deaths of Paul, 3, and Luke, 2, although evidence regarding their drownings was presented at trial.

To prove insanity in Texas, Yates must show she suffered from a severe mental disease or defect and did not know her actions were wrong.

Psychiatrists testified at her trial that Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression, but defense and prosecution expert witnesses disagreed over the severity of her illness and whether it prevented her from knowing drowning the children was wrong.

Yates called police and an ambulance to her home within hours of her husband leaving for work on June 20, 2001. She answered the door in wet clothes and told an officer that she had drowned the children. She then led the officer to a back bedroom where the bodies of the four youngest children were laid out on a bed. Police later found Noah floating in the tub face down with his arms outstretched.

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