Thank God Andrea Yates' new trial has ended today with a verdict of insanity for her.
Severe mental illness is a hell that this woman lived with for years prior to the (easily predictable, based on her history) psychotic break that led her to do this horrifying crime.
She had postpartum psychosis with previous babies and had been hospitalized more than once. She and her husband were advised in the strongest terms by her doctors NOT to have another baby, but he left his severely mentally ill wife home with 4 young children every day and then knocked her up with a 5th. Soon after that baby's birth, she killed the children.
She needs to be in a locked mental hospital for the rest of her life and will be. But in my opinion, her now-ex-husband (remarried and a new father) bears tremendous responsibility for what happened. She was clearly, clearly crazy by every possible measure for several years before this happened and yet he continued to leave their children in her care every day while he went to work, and continued to impregnate her.
I have deep sympathy for Andrea Yates but not so much for Rusty Yates.
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27 comments:
Good to hear it and agreed 100%. It's about time that illness is not recognized as a crime. And you're right, the ex is obviously not an innocent party.
Rusty should be charged with murder: the murder of the Yates children, yes, but also the murder of Andrea Yates.
Being an adult living with bipolar disorder, I can say that I have always had nothing but incredible sympathy for Andrea. Mental illness has such a ridiculous stigma around it; it's a crisis of chemistry, not of character. Rusty in his uninformed, head-up-his-ass, fundamentalist freak way denied his children any chance at life the moment that he decided that Andrea's illness was not genuine.
I'm lucky. I have a great psychiatrist, a terrific therapist, a medication scheme that (for the time being anyway) really works for me, and most importantly, a husband who loves me for who I am, mental illness and all. Being mentally ill doesn't make anyone a bad person, but boy, does it ever bring out the bad side of the people who live with that person. Not so with my husband.
Andrea was told time and time again that having more babies would basically be suicide. Whether or not she heeded this call is not really known. What we do know is that FundieFreak Rusty decided that it was The Will Of God for Andrea to stop her prescribed medications (antipsychotics, heavy stuff) and get knocked up again as soon as Rusty could squirt.
Look what happened as a result of his negligence. His obstinance. His JesusFreakery. His refusal to believe that his wife wasn't being "on the level" (his actual words) when she sat catatonic for days at a time, unwashed, unfed, and unresponsive to any stimuli.
Yep, the will of God, for sure. Now I say that it is the will of Everything That Is Decent In This World that Rusty be removed from Wife Number Two and his new brood and sent up the river, where he belongs. I think that it might be fitting for him to have to be Big Al's common-law wife and hausfrau of Cellblock C for the rest of his life, considering the complete and utter contempt that he obviously has for women, for mothers, for children, and especially for Andrea.
What Laura said.
Laura's nailed it.
Ditto Laura
The "man" has spawned AGAIN?!?
Rusty thought it was the Will Of God for Andrea to breed heself (and her kids) to death but its not "In God's Plan" for him to keep his "sickness and health" vow...just move onto a new victim...er, I mean wife
I agree with you Katie..and Laura!!! Its so sad and weird for me because I live not far from them.
I definitely agree she belongs in a mental hospital. I've read the investigative book about this case; it changed my mind about Rusty once you read all the evidence in the case. I'm no longer as passionate about Rusty's guilt in this case, or if he could have prevented what Andrea did. It is a fantasizing book and worth reading.
From the records, he and the extended family were diligent in getting her mental health treatment every step and even had her committed when she refused help. The portrait of her is one of a somewhat difficult woman for him to deal with and she was the one who wanted more children.
I think an enormous amount of blame lies with the Texas psychiatric hospital and doctors treating her. They should be locked up for her negligent treatment. Systemically they dropped the ball in caring for her after Rusty had her committed, a couple of months later they stopped treating her for no know reason and they stopped her medication shortly before she killed the children; Rusty objected to them doing this and complained on more then one occasion! When she was in the psych hospital they had no inpatient therapy or support for "mothers with ppdepression" so they made her attend 12 step AA meeting daily! :-o How insane is that, this is a women that never drank or did drugs? There was no professional available to treat her specifically for the postpartum depression; it was generalist psychiatrist with little experience in ppd. The doctor made huge blunders in his judgment call in treating her! Rusty could not find local resources that could help her properly.
Rusty knew how sick she was but the doctors did not agree with him, from what I read his behavior and actions the months and years before she killed the children absolutely troubled him and he was gravely concerned, he set up a tight system of over sight for her and the children. She was almost never ever alone with the kids, except that one brief moment when she figured out to kill them.
Laura,
Read the book about this case it will really intrigue you.
It was not Rusty that stopped her medication, it was the doctors (who used very poor judgment in treating Andrea), Rusty and the extended family complained bitterly to her doctor and objected to the doctor's decision to take her off medication, and Rusty wanted her hospitalized again, it was the doctor who messed up.
Read my other comment.
I have absolutely no trouble believing that there was negligence at the hands of the doctor. None whatsoever. One of the things in life that I am TRULY grateful for is that I hit the HMO jackpot when I got my psychiatrist. He is caring, he listens to me, he knows me very well, and he has rarely if ever given me bad advice. There are some real quacks out there. Then again, in the world of psychiatry, there are still those "professionals" who believe that women by and large fabricate post-partum symptoms. :-(
Always remember what they say about doctors: in med school, it doesn't matter if you graduate first in your class or last. Both students walk away with the title of "doctor."
Every time someone kills someone else there is a reason. There is always a cause. Some are easier to see than others. But, of course, people do what they do because of chemistry and environment. In this case, Ms. Yates chemistry alligned with her environment and she killed. I feel for her. I really do. But to spare her prison because the details of her murders are something that we feel we can explain begs the following question: if I could explain to you exactly why a gang member engaged in a drive by shooting, if I could tell you exactly which chemical and environmental factors caused the behavior to occur, if you could understand what I was saying and it made sense to you and you believed me, should that gang member be spared prison just like Ms. Yates? What we have here is an illogically disparate application of justice. It may be the case (and I really mean this) that it makes no sense to punish people for their crimes. It may be the case that we should give them all treatment and rehabilitation instead. But it is unfair and illogical to allow sympathetic white women to drown their children with impunity while black males go to the death chamber. Murder is murder.
Robert, you are conveniently leaving out the little detail of Andrea being Stark Raving Bonkers at the time of the murders.
People murder for many reasons. The analogy that you draw, the one with the "gang member" and the drive-by shooting, is a cheap way to draw the emotions that invariably surround racism as a means of furthering your argument. After all, you do play the race card at the end of your post. I didn't realize that all gang members are black. I guess my time at the County Attorney's office in the gangs bureau taught me nothing.
You're not just comparing apples to oranges here. You're comparing apples to snow tires. That is to say, they have really nothing to do with one another.
People murder for all sorts of reasons. After I worked in the gangs bureau at the CA, I moved over to homicide. I can't begin to tell you about the horrors that I witnessed (although I did get to know the detectives on that show The First 48. They're all real sweethearts). People murder for money. They murder for sex. They murder for revenge, and they murder for desperation. They murder for passion. They murder for profit. They murder for drugs...a lot.
Andrea Yates fits none of those categories, but I will reckon that the Hypothetical Gang Member fits one or more. This is because Andrea's mental illness...ILLNESS, as in disease...which was UNTREATED by medication or therapy at the time of the murders, caused her to murder the children that she loved very much. In fact, the illness had her believing that she was drowning her children to save them from certain damnation.
These are not the thoughts of a rational person. They are the thoughts of a mentally ill person. I should know, as I live with a mental illness every day. I am properly medicated and have been taught to manage my illness so that I can have a terrific and productive life. Andrea Yates didn't have that privilege. Instead, she was handed a Bible by Rusty and told to spread her legs. No medication. No therapy. No recognition of her illness (despite what Rusty The Cretin may say today). No proper care. No heed for the admonishment that another baby would be akin to Andrea committing suicide.
She murdered the children that she loved because she was insane, ignored by a fundamentalist freak of a husband who thinks that Mental Illness Makes The Baby Jesus Cry, and the recipient of shockingly bad psychiatric treatment.
So, no. It isn't the same thing. Not by a longshot. And there is just a little something about your post that leads me to be that you are being disingenuous about this entire matter. Just call it a hunch.
Laura -
You missed the point. Mental illness is an arbitrary construct and therefore has no legitimate role in the criminal justice system. The Yates result epitomizes the problem. All of our brains operate based on the same principles. Some brains operate pretty well and allow us to function well within society's guidelines while other brains have malfunctions (some worse than others) which cause anti-social behavior. We have given names to some of those malfunctions - names like postpartum depression or schizophrenia. Typically, we give a name to a malfunction if either (i) the symptoms of the malfunction are easy to classify (schizophrenia) or (ii) the cause of the malfunction is easy to establish (battered wife syndrome). Often we give names to malfunctions for political or social reasons - disorders frequently experienced the advantaged in society are given names while those malfunctions experienced by the poor and by non-whites are not named. But despite the fact that these classifications are entirely arbitrary (all behavior is caused - not just the behavior of those persons who have names attached to their mental states) we excuse criminal act perpetrated by persons who have a named malfunction while sending criminals who have an unnamed behavioral malfunction to the death chamber. This is illogical. With regard to race, unfortunately politics does play a huge role in justice. If you don't like the gang member example, then how about a black woman who drowned her five children. I doubt she would be in a mental hospital -even if her attorney could explain the factors that drove her to kill. Face it - Andrea Yates got off of a brutal quintuple murder because she was a sympathetic white woman. And you can bet that the next white woman who kills her kids will use the same defense.
"Mental illness is an arbitrary construct and therefore has no legitimate role in the criminal justice system."
Robert,
Yes, it does in a humane society!
Interesting argument, but it does not hold up. You are confusing anti social criminal behavior with people who commit crimes and while suffering from a mental illness.
It's possible you're one of these people who don't believe in mental illness.
If so, I refuse to engage or answer someone so misinformed like you!
People charged with insanity do not fit the typical criminal profile. Have you forgotten that we live in a humane society and "reason of insanity" needs to exist for that reason in our legal system?
Laura -
One additional thought. Your post seems to suggest that because you can explain why Andrea Yates killed her kids (the factors that created the mental state that caused her to kill), that she should not go to prison. If I could accurately describe the factors that created the mental state that caused rapist to rape, should he too be spared prison?
More hysterical argument based on emotion, Robert...you're really not clever enough to throw stuff like that out there, but I'll take your bait.
The mentally ill should not be sent to prison for any crime. They should be given the appropriate treatment and released when it is determined that they are no longer a threat to others, no longer a threat to themselves, and that they are aware of what they did and aware that it was wrong.
Andrea Yates was a desperately ill individual who was failed by the system, her religion, and most importantly, her husband. These are facts. She was catatonic, non-responsive, unbathed, and without food or drink for days at a stretch leading up to the murders. Yet Rusty, in his infinite wisdom, left that pathetic creature in charge of the brood he supposedly loved so much. The woman was too fragile, too crazy to take care of herself; how effective a caregiver did Rusty think that she was going to be? I guess that he was too busy off at NASA flirting with his somethin' somethin' on the side (that very rarely gets mentioned in any article about dear Rusty).
She murdered her children. Those are five lives that were taken in a particularly violent and horrific way. Nothing can be done to give those children their lives back. However, something could have been done to give their mother her life back, before she decided to fill up that bathtub and chase her children around the house. I guess her role as Chief Cook, Bottle Washer, Caregiver, Teacher, and Legs Spreader was more important to her husband.
Rusty also blames the drug Remeron as being the cause of Andrea's psychosis. BZZZZZT! Try again, Rusty. Remeron has the opposite effect on people: it renders you passive, it makes you terribly sleepy, it slows your metabolism (users of Remeron curse the weight gain that it causes). You gotta love old Rusty: there's nothing like a whopper of a lawsuit against a drug company, coupled with an attempt to have a drug that has helped millions of mentally ill adults around the globe pulled from the market, to not only fund your new personal little Jonestown, but to make yourself feel better about your own culpability in the whole sordid mess. It wasn't that Rusty was a self-centered ass who refused to help his batshit crazy wife. It also wasn't that Rusty "loved" his children enough to leave them all day with a woman who hadn't bathed in four days, and who heard voices telling her that she was Satan. It was the MEDICATION, silly. Not Rusty. Not Rusty. NOT RUSTY.
Thank you for bringing my vagina into this discussion as a means of attempting to trump me in some "Gotcha!" sort of way, but it isn't going to work.
Here's a thought for you: our kidneys all operate on the same principles, too. Are you saying that people who are diabetic are faking it? Because, you know, mental illness is a chemical imbalance, just like diabetes is.
For all of your esoteric rambling, I do think what lies beneath is a discrimination against the mentally ill, along with a shocking adhesion to a ridiculous set of fallacies and presumptions with which you attempt to fashion and further your specious arguments. Here is not the place to continue arguing with you or anyone else, especially since doing so is akin to bashing my head against a brick wall. After a while, who needs the headache?
Laura and Dewi -
My arguments are not "hysterical" and are certainly not based on emotion. Further, though I never claimed to be "clever" I don't think that it is very kind of you to insult me. I thought we were just having lively conversation on a political topic. Let's try to keep it polite, shall we? At any rate - back to the topic: You both state that the mentally ill should be spared prison in a humane society. I can accept this premise. It seems reasonable. It may be the case that treatment would be better for society than prison. I have certainly heard that case made forcefully, with supporting statistics and have often found myself persuaded by certain arguments to that effect. You also imply that I stated that mental defects are not real. I am not quite sure where you got this. To the extent that there is any confusion about my position, mental defects are certainly real. I, for one have known a number of people with mental problems ranging from minor to major. These problems have caused my friends and relatives to behave in ways that do not fit society's expectations in one way or another. But the issue here is not whether mental problems exist (they certanly do). The issue is whether or not it makes sense to say that if your anti-social behavior pattern has a name attached to it, you get treatment and if your anti-social behavior pattern does not have a tidy name attached to it, you go to prison. The fact is that all behavior is caused. When someone kills, there is a reason. Perhaps it was child sexual abuse. Perhaps it was a traumatic brain injury. But the criminal act is caused. It is caused by chemicals. It is caused by prior experience. Given this, moral praise and blame (and thus our judicial system) cannot be based on the premise that, if the killer's criminal behavior can be clinically explained, no blame is assesed. Because if you do, it is a slippery slope. Given perfect science, all behavior will one day be clinically explainable. Will all anti-social behavior patterns then be classified as mental illnesses? Maybe this would be OK because then everyone would get treatment and maybe this would be good for society (see discussion above). But what has happened to date is not OK. What we have now is a situation where our criminal justice system uses mental illness as a justification to give sympathetic and societally favored groups preferential treatment under the law. This is not right. I feel sorry for Andrea Yates. I am sure she is crazy. I am sure that her mental illness caused her to kill. I feel sorry for Charles Manson. I am sure he is crazy and that his mental illness caused him to kill. But none of you is crying for Charles Manson as he rots in jail. Why? Finally, I feel odd doing this, because in a polite, intellectual discourse, I should not have to, but you have me all wrong. I am as politically liberal as any of you. I tend to lean to the socialist side if anything. But I am also intellectually honest and nothing that either of you have said places even the smallest of chinks in my argument.
Robert
I agree with you that this discourse is interesting and Laura please stop bashing people or being mean spirited. For some reason Katie's blog brings out intense passion in people who comment.
Robert I understand your POV. However let's shift the conversation to this particular crime, which is very rare in modern times, and unlike other insane criminal behaviors such as Charles Manson's. The crime of Infanticide that Andrea Yates committed is different then other criminal acts and behavior. Dr Margaret Spinelli a psychiatrist in NY has done years of research and written the only textbook about Infanticide and the law. It is a fascinating read, and very misunderstood by our judicial system.
I believe in America we're uncivilized in how women are treated who commit infanticide (my politics tells me it's tied in to the pro-life agenda and the laws regarding infanticide will never change). European countries do not convict mothers of a crime or embroil them in the legal system when they commit infanticide; they put them in a mental hospital! I believe Andrea is now where she belongs and believe she needs to be supervised for the rest of her life.
Let me add a thought...
A woman who commits infanticide is unlike someone like Charles Manson, or Son of Sam. Even though they all share the defense of criminal insanity, there is a difference. I think those two should not be allowed to be eligible for patrol, nor should they ever have the opportunity even think they might be free.
I am open to the prospect that Andrea should get treatment rather than jail. But if she does, so should Jeffrey Dahmer. Do you agree? If not, why?
I can see there is a place for leniency for women who kill their infants and children when suffering from postpartum psychosis. Call it the Twinkie defense. It's not a common crime; it's a sad quiet crime that is one hundred percent preventable with appropriate support.
I do not view homicidal criminal delusional maniacs like Jeffery Dahmer as someone who deserves leniency with the law, or in the same category as someone like Andrea Yates.
Some people are criminals first who happen to have a mental illness. Jeffery Dahmer fits that category. Therefore, I'm not sympathetic that they are mentally ill.
While I understand your point, and perhaps it is easy to make when you compare Yates and Dahmer, the problem is that most contrasts are not that stark. Because the law deals in absolutes and metes out judgments that are awful (death, prison), it is just not fair to say that, because we can see so clearly what caused Yates to kill (and I think that we can see this) that she gets a pass. It is tempting to be lenient when you can see the cause of the crime and where the criminal is sympathetic, but isn't it unfair to send someone else to prison because their crimes are harder to explain and their demographic profiles are less sympathetic? It is not consistent with the core values of our justice system. I am for treatment. But it should be provided uniformly if it is to be provided at all.
Charles Manson, while being completely raving batshit crazy, is not insane in the eyes of American jurisprudence. He may have authorized insane crimes, he may have done a lot of crazy crimes himself, but he was found mentally competent at the time of his trial in 1970/1971. So were "the girls": Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Susan Atikins. Charles "Tex" Watson was, too. In fact, the only member of The Family who was ever deemed to be mentaly incompetent was Steven "Clem" Grogan, who was not involved in the Tate/LaBianca slayings, but who was heavily implicated in the "suicide" of Family member John "Zero" Haught.
The so-called Helter Skelter motive was more a creation of the very brilliant attorney Vincent Bugliosi than anything Charlie came up with. Instead, many think that the Sharon Tate slayings were a calculated move to "prove" that Family member Bobby Beusoleil couldn't have murdered Family associate Gary Hinman. Hence, the bloody writings on the walls, the similar gore. If this was indeed the case, it pretty much proves that Charlie is not nor ever was "insane" in a criminal legal sense. He knew perfectly well what he was orchestrating.
David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz most likely deserved an insanity ruling, but he most certainly did not get one. That never would have flown with an angry and terrorized New York City, who had just spent the last two years in fear (culminating in that horrible summer of 1977). Instead, Berkowitz was found guilty of six first-degree murder charges, and given six consecutive life terms. Incredibly, he does come up for parole, but he has recently started to decline his hearings, stating that he has no business walking the streets as a free man, as he had caused so much pain when he had in the 70s. Berkowitz is now a valued member of the prison counseling system and has turned his life over to Jesus Christ. By all accounts, he is now a model prisoner, and should he wish to go up for parole, there is every reason to believe that it would eventually be granted.
Andrea Yates' post partum psychosis most certainly should NOT be likened to the so-called "Twinkie Defense." It was her lack of medication that caused her to murder her children. The "Twinkie Defense" purports the opposite: that something as innocuous as a Twinkie, some vitamins, a Diet Coke, etc., caused the criminal to have a Jeckyll-and-Hyde reaction and commit a monstrous act. In the case of the "Twinkie" case, it was disgruntled San Francisco city employee Dan White who chose to load a gun, drive downtown to the San Francisco Mayor's Office, and mow down Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk. White was also an avowed anti-Semite and homophobe, and he targeted Milk specifically because Milk was openly gay. White was found guilty of manslaughter, serving less than five years for the two murders. However, roughly a year after his parole, White committed suicide. He had been plagued by outraged publicity since his release from a community still ludicrous that two men's lives could be so callously disregarded in the name of junk food. White couldn't handle the publicity, so he killed himself.
Laura -
I agree that Andrea Yates' mental state caused her to kill. Her brain chemicals and past experiences conspired to cause her to murder five children. But what I can't get past is that every time someone is murdered, the killer's mental state causes the killing. Because murder is anti-social behavior, there is always something non-standard about the mental state that causes the killing. So why do some defective mental states (leading to anti-social behavior) warrant treatment while others warrant the chair? Nobody has ever been able to explain this to me. Charles Manson was mean-spirited and hateful. He was and is also nutty. His crazy, mean personality was likely caused by the awful conditions of his childhood coupled with chemical imbalances. I am not sure what this "mental illness" of his is called but I am sure we could give it a name if we wanted. But we don't have to give CM's state of mind a name to know that it caused him to kill. Using state of mind as a justification for murder does not work unless it is applied evenly. And applying it evenly would never work because it would allow people we don't like (Manson) to avoid the punishment we all want to see him get. Normally, I don't insist on consistency in all areas. But in the criminal justice system, where lives are destroyed by the judgments rendered, the application of law must be entirely consistent if it is to maintain its intellectual integrity.
Laura said...
"JesusFreakery"
Please let's not get into the Christian-bashing, ok? Christ does not condone treating your wife like a breeding machine. Check the letters of Saint Paul -- y'know, where he goes on and on about how husbands should love their wives and their bodies the way they love themselves and their own bodies.
(And this is coming from a Catholic mom who uses natural family planning, does not use artificial birth control, and is 9 months pregnant with her third child -- all wanted, thank you.)
I don't know what Rusty Yates' church teaches, but being a Catholic, the only big church that sticks to its guns about birth control, I can tell you any priest would have encouraged these people to refrain from making another baby -- Andrea Yates had "grave and serious reasons" to not conceive again. (And there are highly effective, scientific ways of doing this without using chemicals or barriers -- see www.woomb.org)
So please, discuss the case, not your own bigotries -- the last acceptable bigotry in North America is hating Christians.
As for Andrea.... I feel infinite sorrow and pity for this poor lady. I am glad she will get treatment for the rest of her life.
I wasn't bashing you. Why would you think that I was?
If you are comfortable in your beliefs, great. It shouldn't render you uncomfortable that someone might suppose that religious extremism is the root of much of the evil on this planet. First of all, because such a statement is true, and secondly, it doesn't apply to you and your beliefs, does it?
Rather than become upset with me, why not turn your anger to the hysterical extremists who have hijacked Christianity and turned it into a tool of hatred, bigotry, and intolerance?
I say this as a woman who was a Catholic for over 30 years: people like Rusty Yates give ALL Christians a bad name. I'm sorry if you are uncomfortable with that fact, but your anger should be directed at him, not me. And given all that fundamentalist freaks have done to erode the rights of all Americans over the past six years, doing all that they can to turn our government into a theocracy, I wouldn't hold my breath for me to stop hollering about JesusFreaks. Loudly. And often.
Believe how you want to believe. However, don't force your religious beliefs on me. I've already been there, done that, was molested several times over the course of eight years by our parish priest.
Is it a harsh thing, calling someone a "freak"? Absolutely. It doesn't begin to cover what I feel about lunatics like Rusty, and their misdeeds.
One more thing: I'm a bipolar childfree liberal Democrat woman who married an atheist Jew. I don't need the lecture on bigotry. In fact, I think the notion that Christians are suffering at the hands of everyone in this country is absolutely ludicrous. And, as a good Catholic, I am quite certain that you realize that your Beatitudes spell out clearly how you should react to such bigotry.
Robert, I appreciate your response about the inequities in the system. As you can no doubt understand, this is an emotional issue for me, being a woman living with a mental illness. (In fact, the thought that a Catholic could actually say that she experiences "bigotry" because of her faith brings tears to my eyes. Walk a day in my shoes, or in the shoes of any of my mentally ill brethren, and all that.) I think another aspect of this case that begs for examination is that of gender. One case that I am currently fascinated with and am working to bring real justice in is that of Darlie Routier. Ms. Routier was found guilty of the murder of her sons in the 90s and now sits on death row in Texas. I believe that she is innocent. I believe that because she is a beautiful woman and was a bit on the flashy side, the cops decided that this "bimbo" had to be guilty of killing her two little boys...despite overwhelming forensic evidence to the contrary.
It's a horrible system, and it sucks. I couldn't take it for very long. I had a lot to contribute, but I couldn't handle the day-to-day miseries of working in criminal justice. It requires a very strong stomach and a very resilient soul, two things that I sorely lack, especially when it comes to children. What some parents do to their kids...and believe me, there is no way that these monsters could ever cry "Andrea Yates." Yes, true evil does exist in this world.
I find it interesting that I have posted the same thing over and over again and nobody has either (i) been convinced by my argument or (ii) explained how my argument is logically or factually flawed.
Liesl -
I hear you. My wife, I mean my "leg spreader" thought your post was quite funny.
Word
Robert
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