BREAKING NEWS: Andrea Yates Not Guilty in Retrial

[rainstorm]

answer what? im sorry, as o'rielly said, the verdict was horrendous. remember, the psychiatrists have no "facts" either. both sides can pay them to say what they want. this is what i think, and i stick by it

[CajunMama]

Rainstorm, you are so knowledgable on this....were you there by her side and at the trial?

had i been there when she was killing her kids i would have done my best to save them. had i come upon her moments after she killed them, i would have lit into her like a bat out of hades. had i been on the jury, it would have been a hung jury.

I'm not asking what you would have done if you HAD been there. I'm asking a simple yes or no question. Were you by her side and at the trial? You keep telling us what she did, how she thought...were you there? Do you have facts to back up what you are saying? Yes or no.

here is what i know. she killed 5 kids. she killed her own kids. she did it with planning. she made what i think is a quite rational choice to spare her own life even though she was looking at her dead kids right after they died a hideous death at her own hands. i know that even though she was supposed to be suicidal, this supreme act of human barbarity did not overcome her instinct for self preservation. i also know 100% of my sympathy lies wiith her brutally killed kids. the jury let her off, so its a done deal

i'd like to see FACTS to back this up...sources cited. AGAIN, you sidestepped my yes or no question. I didn't ask what you thought. Quit evading the direct questions and answer.

Here Rain...i bolded the questions you seem to have trouble reading or evading. I don't give a hoot what o'reilly said.

[rainstorm]

What a waste of our tax dollars! She did it and she admitted it. I can't believe they have to try this case again!

Just hearing about it again is very disturbing and now we'll be hearing about it a lot more. I've cried many tears for those innocent children. Now why didn't she get the death penalty?

i agree completely sg. lets remember those innocent kids. quite a few of us feel exactly the same way. im not sure why in catching so much flack. oh well. the case did have to be retried again, however. legal errors were made in the first trial

[Regit]

Well to be fair, The O'Reilly Factor is an entertainment program, not a legal discussion group. And I won't even bother with Geraldo.

It's not like anybody's opinion is going to change here, but I have to go with decades of psychological research and with the US justice system, which has been a good system since working out the kinks in the 1960's.

[rainstorm]

Rainstorm, you are so knowledgable on this....were you there by her side and at the trial?

had i been there when she was killing her kids i would have done my best to save them. had i come upon her moments after she killed them, i would have lit into her like a bat out of hades. had i been on the jury, it would have been a hung jury.

I'm not asking what you would have done if you HAD been there. I'm asking a simple yes or no question. Were you by her side and at the trial? You keep telling us what she did, how she thought...were you there? Do you have facts to back up what you are saying? Yes or no.

here is what i know. she killed 5 kids. she killed her own kids. she did it with planning. she made what i think is a quite rational choice to spare her own life even though she was looking at her dead kids right after they died a hideous death at her own hands. i know that even though she was supposed to be suicidal, this supreme act of human barbarity did not overcome her instinct for self preservation. i also know 100% of my sympathy lies wiith her brutally killed kids. the jury let her off, so its a done deal

i'd like to see FACTS to back this up...sources cited. AGAIN, you sidestepped my yes or no question. I didn't ask what you thought. Quit evading the direct questions and answer.

Here Rain...i bolded the questions you seem to have trouble reading or evading. I don't give a hoot what o'reilly said.

thanks, and i stand by my opinions, regardless of the verdict. many people feel as i do

[CajunMama]

You are something else aren't you? You have no facts to show.

[rainstorm]

Well to be fair, The O'Reilly Factor is an entertainment program, not a legal discussion group. And I won't even bother with Geraldo.

It's not like anybody's opinion is going to change here, but I have to go with decades of psychological research and with the US justice system, which has been a good system since working out the kinks in the 1960's.

very true, the verdict is in, but we can still voice our opinions on the verdict, as many did after the oj trial.

[george_r_1961]

This "crappy justice system" that someone mentioned earlier happens to be the best in the world. A jury of her peers decided she was insane and thats that. As a human being I feel horribly for the kids and like most of us, including me, wanted revenge. That jury though had access to information that we dont, and they rendered their decision based on that information. Thats the way our system works. Sometimes we dont get the results we hoped for.

Im not defending Yates by any means. Just felt the need to throw my 2 cents in. If you want to eliminate the NGRI plea talk to your lawmakers.

Ok folks lets all take a deep breath.

[rainstorm]

You are something else aren't you? You have no facts to show.

many feel as i do. some even in this thread think she should have been executed. i have not gone that far, but i would not oppose it, had the verdict been death. its their opinion

[Janice]

Boy, I am glad I vented and finished my opinions here. We all have our opinions of her and what happened, which is fine. No one agrees. We have a judicial system and it worked. We did not see or hear what was going on in the courtroom. So, I will accept it and just hope I don't see anything like this happen again.

Amen

[Audrey2Katrina]

we can still voice our opinions on the verdict, as many did after the oj trial.

If anything, the OJ trial brought out glaringly how badly the justice system has broken. I really don't care if it were centuries of psychologists and/or psychiatrists lined up from here to Philadelphia giving what ultimately boils down to their opinions on this woman's state of mind would have to say. All I do know is that anyone THAT dangerous is a proven cancer on society and by virtue of that fact alone, should be removed from it. The sad reality here is that it is quite possible, if not probable, that this murderous woman will be let back out into society by some pencil-pusher who says that now she's cured. Too bad those five dead kids can't be "cured."

Justice wasn't served in either the Yates trial OR that of OJ. They were both travesties; and I will always believe this.

A2K

[CajunMama]

Wouldn't keeping her alive be more revengeful than death? She'll have to wake every day knowing she's in a mental institution because she killed her children. The jury, i'm sure heard much more than we have been told thus their verdict. I don't like what she did to her children anymore than any of you but many of us have never been in her shoes. Postpartum depression is a serious illness.

A2k...it will probably be a long long time, if ever, that she will be let out.

Yates will be sent after a commitment hearing Thursday to North Texas State Hospital in Vernon, a prison-like maximum-security facility encircled by a 17-foot fence and guard towers. Experts say it can take decades before psychiatrists decide that a patient is healthy enough to be released, and even then a judge can reject those findings. http://acadiana.cox.net/cci/newsnationa ... atearticle

[george_r_1961]

Wouldn't keeping her alive be more revengeful than death? She'll have to wake every day knowing she's in a mental institution because she killed her children. The jury, i'm sure heard much more than we have been told thus their verdict. I don't like what she did to her children anymore than any of you but many of us have never been in her shoes. Postpartum depression is a serious illness.

Kathy I have to agree. We want revenge but our justice system is based on facts and evidence not emotions.

[gtalum]

...as o'rielly said, the verdict was horrendous.

If O'Liely said it, it must be true.

[Audrey2Katrina]

Kathy I have to agree. We want revenge but our justice system is based on facts and evidence not emotions.

With all due respect, George, don't include me in that "we". I can speak for myself, but not for you, or anyone else, for that matter. I fully respect your right to concede that what you desired was revenge; but I do not make that same concession for my part. One can play semantics with terms like justice and revenge; but what I wanted was "justice"...for five dead kids. That "Justice" was not served.

Wouldn't keeping her alive be more revengeful than death?

Again, CajunMama, it isn't "revenge" that I felt was needed,--it was justice, and that justice wasn't meted out. That said, I concur that a full "life" of incarceration of whatever sort is at the very least what this woman deserves; unfortunately all press releases aside there is simply no way we can know for sure that this is what is in store for this "insane" woman, who was just sane enough to wait till her husband had left for work, who knew enough to methodically track down her kids according to chronological age, who knew enough about her hideous deed to cover the corpses of her dead children, and who knew enough to call 911 after the deed was done. Oh, and who never came up with this "Satan told me" story till the day AFTER she had been arrested. Flip Wilson was just a little ahead of his time with his "The Devil made me do it" shtick.

Yes Post-partem is serious, I actually know of at least one woman who has suffered from it to a serious degree--but I do not now, nor will I ever feel it justifies letting someone guilty of the attrocity this woman committed get off with a non-time-specific confinement to a mental institution. For all we know her attorney could well file to have her released in a year or two, and that, in and of itself would be an exclamation point placed squarely on this "miscarriage" of justice.

Yes, the jury has spoken--as they did in the O.J. trial--and while law-abiding citizens are bound by law to accept it; that in no way suggests they need to acknowledge these kinds of decisions as either just, or right. The reason for overturning the original jury's decision was based on a non-existent episode of Law and Order... sad... very sad. We live in a society that IMO is becoming brainwashed into the "victimhood" mentality and conditioned to identify more with the perp as a victim, than the actual victims themselves.

I still say this was a sad day in the history of American jurisprudence... as was the day the system failed to convict O.J. Simpson!

A2K

[Brent]

I completely agree A2K... I've stayed out of this thread all day too.

[GalvestonDuck]

Ugh, I have a headache now after reading all of this.

It's clear some of you have never worked with or dealt with patients, friends, or family members with mental illnesses.

First of all, remember -- she wasn't found INNOCENT of the charges. She was found not guilty BY REASON OF INSANITY. Big difference.

I have to admit, the defense did a good job with the argument about a person having a heart attack and then having a wreck that kills someone else. Is he guilty of murder because he killed someone? No, because he could not have prevented the heart attack from impairing his ability to drive. He then said that Yates "had a heart attack of the mind." Her mental illness impaired her ability to fully understand and control her actions in a rational way.

Second, say what you want about our judicial system, but it was the JURY of twelve people like you and I who found her NGRI. The lawyers, the judge, the bailiff -- none of them were there when the verdict was reached. It was up to those twelve citizens of Harris County.

And remember, she was convicted the first time, but because a prosecution witness lied on the stand, stating that she got the idea from a TV show episode (which did not exist), that conviction was overturned. That only served to make the prosecution weak -- they couldn't convict her on the facts.

And you know what's really weird -- in the "supposed" Law & Order episode, the prosecution psychiatrist said that the women in the show was found NGRI for drowning her kids. Because of his lie, that outcome actually came true (in real life, not the show obviously).

[nystate]

It is a shame that she didn't off herself before her kids had to suffer...

I find it amazing that we as a society can execute a mentally ill man for shooting a gas station clerk in a robbery but can't fry a woman who killed five children....what is wrong in this country???

[rainstorm]

Ugh, I have a headache now after reading all of this.

It's clear some of you have never worked with or dealt with patients, friends, or family members with mental illnesses.

First of all, remember -- she wasn't found INNOCENT of the charges. She was found not guilty BY REASON OF INSANITY. Big difference.

I have to admit, the defense did a good job with the argument about a person having a heart attack and then having a wreck that kills someone else. Is he guilty of murder because he killed someone? No, because he could not have prevented the heart attack from impairing his ability to drive. He then said that Yates "had a heart attack of the mind." Her mental illness impaired her ability to fully understand and control her actions in a rational way.

Second, say what you want about our judicial system, but it was the JURY of twelve people like you and I who found her NGRI. The lawyers, the judge, the bailiff -- none of them were there when the verdict was reached. It was up to those twelve citizens of Harris County.

And remember, she was convicted the first time, but because a prosecution witness lied on the stand, stating that she got the idea from a TV show episode (which did not exist), that conviction was overturned. That only served to make the prosecution weak -- they couldn't convict her on the facts.

And you know what's really weird -- in the "supposed" Law & Order episode, the prosecution psychiatrist said that the women in the show was found NGRI for drowning her kids. Because of his lie, that outcome actually came true (in real life, not the show obviously).

here is a question i have. did killing her kids cure her of her depression? i ask because im not aware of any further suicide attempts. perhaps her kids made her depressed. it could be that post partum syndrome is alot like sudden infant death syndrome. i was watching on tv that many so-called infant death syndrome deaths are turning out to be murders.
im not saying that no one legitimately suffers from these syndromes, but they may be used as excuses in many cases to cover up crimes

[GalvestonDuck]

Ugh, I have a headache now after reading all of this.

It's clear some of you have never worked with or dealt with patients, friends, or family members with mental illnesses.

First of all, remember -- she wasn't found INNOCENT of the charges. She was found not guilty BY REASON OF INSANITY. Big difference.

I have to admit, the defense did a good job with the argument about a person having a heart attack and then having a wreck that kills someone else. Is he guilty of murder because he killed someone? No, because he could not have prevented the heart attack from impairing his ability to drive. He then said that Yates "had a heart attack of the mind." Her mental illness impaired her ability to fully understand and control her actions in a rational way.

Second, say what you want about our judicial system, but it was the JURY of twelve people like you and I who found her NGRI. The lawyers, the judge, the bailiff -- none of them were there when the verdict was reached. It was up to those twelve citizens of Harris County.

And remember, she was convicted the first time, but because a prosecution witness lied on the stand, stating that she got the idea from a TV show episode (which did not exist), that conviction was overturned. That only served to make the prosecution weak -- they couldn't convict her on the facts.

And you know what's really weird -- in the "supposed" Law & Order episode, the prosecution psychiatrist said that the women in the show was found NGRI for drowning her kids. Because of his lie, that outcome actually came true (in real life, not the show obviously).

here is a question i have. did killing her kids cure her of her depression? i ask because im not aware of any further suicide attempts. perhaps her kids made her depressed. it could be that post partum syndrome is alot like sudden infant death syndrome. i was watching on tv that many so-called infant death syndrome deaths are turning out to be murders.
im not saying that no one legitimately suffers from these syndromes, but they may be used as excuses in many cases to cover up crimes

Here's a question: How much have you read about the case?