"Severe mental illness like psychosis can lead to a tragedy like this - that people can see things that aren't real and hear things that aren't real and believe things that aren't real, and act in that distorted reality." -Andrea Yates Andrea Yates, who was eventually found innocent, was convicted for the murder of her 5 children. Since then, this has been a very controversial court case where people’s opinions are all over the boards. The debate between her being guilty or innocent has created a calamity within the eyes of the court and everyone who was present during the trials. Although she committed the act of murder, there was enough exculpatory evidence so that in 2006, 5 years after the incident, she was proven innocent and given the …show more content…
When Andrea first became ill and it was never diagnosed to be postpartum depression and psychosis, many people told Rusty that she needed help and he failed to acknowledge that until he was forced to. And even when it was presented that she was not stable, he still allowed Andrea to be alone with the children, as well as homeschool them. Even after Andrea first attempted suicide, she was still allowed to be alone with her children full time. At the time of deciding whether or not to declare Andrea guilty, prosecutors also questioned whether or not to charge Rusty with crimes of omission and child endangerment (“Was Russell Yates Culpable?”) and after that, Rusty then began to point fingers at Andrea’s doctors and also Andrea. Before he was being questioned, he stated “Part of me blames her because she did it but part of me doesn’t blame her because it wasn’t her… she had psychotic side effects of her depression that lead her to do this ”. (“A Mother’s Madness”), so essentially, he began to put more blame on her once he was becoming more culpable to prosecutors. Another factor that could lead to some of the responsibility being put on Rusty is the fact that when Andrea had her fourth child, doctors and psychiatrists warned him that having another kid could lead to more problems after birth. And after a year or so, they had another kid. Rusty knew the potential effects of having another child and had they not, the case could have been