People have their own opinions when it comes to issuing court trials, especially when it comes down to a person being found guilty, or a person being found not guilty by reason of insanity. Did this person know what they were doing when they committed a crime? Did they know it was morally wrong? Do they have any remorse for what they have done? These are all questions courts look at when someone has committed a brutal crime, but is it fair to claim someone as “insane” or “mentally ill”, rather than putting them behind bars and calling them a criminal like the rest of them? The first time I heard about the insanity plea was in the Andrea Yates case back in 2001. Yates was class valedictorian when she was in high school with a good background. …show more content…
After each child, her symptoms seemed to worsen. She overdosed on depression medicine and was admitted for psychiatric treatment many times after multiple attempts to kill herself. Her husband claimed to have never changed a diaper in his life and was also known to be very controlling and manipulative. They claimed to have been living a hypocritical Christian lifestyle, where her husband made it seem like they were a happy family, but was actually a huge role in Andrea’s depression. There is no doubt that all this outweighed stress and manipulation took control of her life. So, in June of 2001, Andrea Yates drowned all of her children in the bathtub of her own home and later called the police and turned herself in. She claimed that Satan had spoke to her multiple times and told her that unless she killed her children, they would end up in …show more content…
Doing this, in her mind, was the only way she could protect her children. In her first trial, she was found guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. She found herself being allowed to have a second trial, and after deliberating her mental state at the time of the crime, the court had found her “not guilty by reason of insanity.” She would find herself being committed to a psychiatric facility to be treated, rather than being sent to jail for life. This is where the guilty of insanity plea gets tricky. You can’t send someone to a mental hospital for life. People are sent there to get treated and released once they are better. Once Andrea Yates is claimed to be back in a normal state, she is free to go and can be released back into
She did kill her husband so she has to be punished. That makes sense. At the same time, I think she could have a mitigating factor because she had battered women syndrome. What she had done was wrong, but, as she says, I can see that she could not deal with her husband anymore. It is difficult for me to decide whether she goes to a mental facility or prison.
On July 15, 2008, Cindy Anthony announced that her two-year old granddaughter Caylee, had not been seen for nearly a month. Also, she wanted her daughter Casey Anthony taken into custody for robbing a car and money. Casey lied many times to investigators and displayed no emotion about her daughters disappearance. On October 14, 2008, Casey Anthony was arraigned by a Florida grand jury on first degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child, and four counts of providing false information to a law enforcement officer. Later, human remains were identified as Caylee's on December 11, 2008, in the woods approximately a quarter of a mile from the Anthony residence.
Caylee Anthony was reported missing July 15th, 2008. She had been last seen June 16th, 2008. The mother of Caylee Anthony is Casey Anthony. The day Caylee Anthony went missing, Casey claims to have gotten off of work to go pick 2 year old Caylee Anthony up from her nanny’s house. But when she got there none was home.
Yates was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 after being convicted of capital murder for drowning her 5 children, ranging from 6 months to 7 years old. Andrea Yates story begins two years before the incident. After the birth of her fourth child, she attempted suicide, and was diagnosed with postpartum depression and psychosis. A month after her first diagnosis, she attempted suicide again. About a year after her attempted suicide, she became pregnant with her fifth child.
On June 20th, 2001, Andrea Yates killed her five young children Noah, John, Paul, Luke, and Mary in the bathtub of the family’s home in Houston, Texas. The family was Caucasian, and at the time of the crime, Noah was 7, John was 5, Paul was 3, Luke was 2, Mary was 6 months, and Yates was 36. Yates’s husband Russell “Rusty” Yates was at work at the time of the crime. Yates killed her children as a result of her post-partum psychosis and other mental illnesses that had been developing throughout her life. After she finished the murders, Yates called the police and then called Rusty to tell him to come home.
After reading chapters one and two of the Psychology in Everyday Life book and learning about the four big ideas in psychology, and also while trying to figure out the contributing factors of Andrea Yates’ murder of her children. I have to focus in on and think about big idea two, the biopsychosocial approach, that integrates three levels which are biological, psychological and social/cultural; all together these factors influence and give insight into behavior and mental processes. (CITE BOOK) After reviewing these, the psychological factors that I believe to have contributed to Andrea Yates’ murder of her children are, firstly biological, Andrea had a genetic predispositions, which means Andrea had an increased likelihood of developing
Prosecutor Park Dietz had claimed in his testimony that Andrea had gotten her idea to drown the children from an episode of Law and Order, in which a woman drowned her own children but got away with it through the insanity defense. The producers of the television show later came forward and stated that no such episode existed, Dietz simply melded together parts of separate programs. The Texas Court of Appeals decided that was reason enough for a retrial, considering the jury’s difficult primary decision could have been biased by false information. So, on June 26, 2006, five years after her sentencing to life in prison, Andrea’s retrial began. The prime reason why it is so difficult to declare someone not guilty by reason of insanity in Texas is the M’Naghten Rule.
Let me explain- she was insane Andrea Yates was a mother of five children ranging from six months old to seven years old. One day, after a normal morning, Andrea’s husband left for work and Andrea drew a bath and drowned her five children in the bathtub. The reason for this?
Many people may think of Andrea Yates as the disgraceful mother who murdered all 5 of her children. Also many people do not know that she was severely ill. In fact she was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life, but a court of appeals reversed the conviction and found her insane. She was diagnosed postpartum depression and psychosis. For the people who do know what postpartum depression mean is that each time she gave birth she got more depressed due to hormone change or fatigue.
It took about a month for Rusty to start noticing Andrea was falling back into her old depressive ways. She was caught talking about suicide again and once held a knife to her neck and begged Rusty to just let her die. July 1999, Yates suffered from a nervous breakdown and tried again to commit suicide and was hospitalized. The doctors determined she suffered from postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis is a rare psychiatric emergency in which symptoms of high mood and racing thoughts (mania), depression, severe confusion, loss of inhibition, paranoia, hallucinations and delusions set in, beginning suddenly in the first two weeks after delivery.
Andrea Yates was “charged by two indictments with capital murder for the drowning deaths of her children” (Yates, Andrea Pia v. The State of Texas). In January 2005, Yates conviction was overturned when information became present that Dr. Park Dietz’s statement during the trial was false. This led to a retrial and Yates upheld her not guilty by reason of insanity defense. The jury agreed and she was remanded to a mental facility in Texas, until she is no longer deemed a threat to
Two women from Texas, Andrea Yates, 37 and Darlie Routier, 27 both shocked the world when they brutally murdered their children. Both women were described as wonderful mothers who loved their children, but were also described as having post-partum issues during the last years of their children’s lives. Andrea Yates admitted to her harsh crimes and was willing to take any punishment that was given, as she believed she was saving her children’s souls. On the other hand, Darlie Routier did not admitted her crimes towards her children. Darlie Routier pleaded not guilty, but prosecutors believed differently after many conflicts appeared in her story.
The Andrea Yates Case: The Insanity Defense On June 20, 2001, in Houston, Texas, Andrea Pia Yates was charged with the murder of her five children, which she drowned in the bathtub one at a time, and was found not guilty by reason of insanity under the Texas Law Insanity Defense. The legislative history of the Texas Law Insanity Defense begins with the British test for right and wrong, known as the M’Naghten, being adopted in the majority of American states. The M’Naghten test for right and wrong required a mental disease that kept the defendant from controlling their actions and that cognitive impairment is the cause for the defective reasoning of what is right and what is wrong. Beginning in 1973, Texas adopted the American Law Institute’s
On the morning of June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates murdered all five of her children by drowning them in her household’s bathtub while her husband was away. After the birth of her 4th child, Yates became diagnosed with postpartum depression and this carried on after the birth of her 5th. Yates indicated the killing of her children was due to the fact that she was seeing violent images and hearing voices telling her to get a knife, or even hearing a voice she believed to be the devil that told her he was after her children. Such voices can be explained by the psychodynamic perspective that Yates’ behavior of killing her children was a result of these unconscious voices that were demanding her to take such violent action. Growing obsessively religious over the years, Yates followed extreme Christian views presented by the
When comparing rational choice theory to the Andrea Yates story it is evident that rational theory was in fact present throughout the duration of Andrea completing her heinous crime. According to the document provided via Investopedia, the rational theory could be defined as “... an economic principle that states that individuals always make prudent and logical decisions.” Throughout the case and its entirety, Andrea depicted characteristics of being fully rational and aware of her decisions. Several factors played a key part in determining whether or not Andrea Yates was rational at the time of the crime, factors such as; Andrea exclaimed that “she knew through a “feeling” that Satan wanted her to kill her children,” She struggled back and forth in her mind for one to two months about whether to take the lives of her children or herself. According to the rational choice theory document,