Andrea Yates' second trial put on hold until June

Monday, March 20, 2006

(3/20/06 - HOUSTON) -- A judge on Monday delayed Andrea Yates' capital murder retrial until June because key defense witnesses weren't available to testify if the trial began this week as planned.

Jury selection in her retrial for the 2001 bathtub drowning deaths of her children had been scheduled to begin Monday.

But late last week, Yates' attorneys asked State District Judge Belinda Hill to reschedule the trial because two of their defense experts had scheduling conflicts. Hill on Monday set jury selection for June 22, with testimony scheduled to begin June 26.

The new trial date comes just two days after what will be the fifth anniversary of the killings, and Yates' attorney, George Parnham, said he usually worries about Yates' mental state around that time of year.

"I am always concerned because each year when that anniversary comes around she decompensates to a degree," Parnham said. "Sometimes it is good. Sometimes it is not so good."

Prosecutor Alan Curry said the state could also use the time to better prepare its case.

Parnham and co-counsel Wendell Odom asked Hill to consider the importance of the testimony offered by psychiatrists Dr. George Ringholz and Dr. Lucy Puryear in Yates' original 2002 trial.

Parnham said the two experts are extremely important to Yates' defense and to try her without them would "deny her a fair trial."

Before Monday's brief hearing, Yates, wearing a purple skirt and top with her hair in a braided bun, left the defense table, leaned over the railing to talk with her mother, Karin Kennedy, when Parnham called her name and motioned for her to take her seat.

"I'm holding up," Yates told Betsy Schwartz, the executive director of the Mental Health Association of Greater Houston, who approached Yates as she sat at the defense table. "It is good to see you."

Yates' former husband, Rusty Yates, over the weekend married Laura Arnold, a woman he met at church. He and Andrea Yates divorced in 2005.

"I'm sure it was difficult for her," Parnham said of Rusty Yates' weekend nuptials.

Hill had earlier denied a request by Parnham to delay the trial. In that initial request, Parnham cited an intense focus on plea negotiations, which broke down earlier this year, and a double jeopardy appeal.

An appeals court last week cleared the way for Yates' retrial, which Parnham argued should be halted because he said prosecutorial misconduct in her 2002 trial would result in double jeopardy if she were tried again. He also requested that the appeals court delay the trial.

The appeals court upheld Hill's ruling that there was no prosecutorial misconduct and therefore no double jeopardy, and denied Parnham's emergency request for a delay.

Last year, the First Court of Appeals overturned Yates' two capital murder convictions based on testimony from forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz about an episode of the television drama "Law & Order."

Dietz said his testimony about a nonexistent episode of "Law & Order," which he said aired in the weeks before Yates' arrest, was a mistake. Dietz described an episode in which a woman was acquitted by reason of insanity of killing her child. Jurors learned of the incorrect testimony after they convicted Yates, but before they sentenced her to life in prison.

Yates, 41, has again pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. To prove insanity, Yates must show she suffered from a severe mental disease or defect and didn't know her actions were wrong.

Yates called police to her Houston home in June 2001, where an officer found the bodies of her four youngest children -- John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2 and Mary, 6-months -- laid out on a bed. The oldest, 7-year-old Noah, was discovered floating face down in the tub's murky brown water. Hours later Yates confessed to the drownings.

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

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