madness. she said satan was telling her this and if you re a religious person and satan is telling you to do something, you start out with the assumption that it s wrong, this it s bad conduct. so starting from that simple proposition, we knew that she knew that it was wrong and she d expressed that she knew it was wrong. so dr. dietz testified that mrs. yates knew it was wrong, not just against the law, but against society and against god. that s pretty powerful testimony. dietz took it one step further and also presented a likely inspiration for andrea yates actions. he testified that she had watched a law & order episode that week in which a woman, to be free of her responsibilities, drowned her children and got away with murder. the show we almost always watched was law & order and the ones she watched, i watched with her, you know? and so, you know, i heard about that testimony and i m like, i don t think that happened, you know?
never blamed her, but, yet, i could never live with her again. rusty yates divorced andrea after the first trial. he enrolled in law school and is now remarried with a young son. he remains in contact with andrea. i can say that coming to a decision to divorce andrea was a really difficult. it took me probably more time than it should have, but i finally came to the understanding that there s a difference between forgiveness and consequences. i talk to her, andrea, probably four times a week. i long ago crossed the line from professionalism to, you know, personal involvement, and she is a daughter basically. and that s the way i treat andrea. george parnham and i and the mental health association of houston and some other people started the yates children s memorial fund in honor of the
to the time of the trial, she improved. i mean, to the point where she wasn t having hallucinations. on september 22nd, 2001, just three months and two days after the murders, yates was deemed competent to stand trial. the prosecution planned to argue that andrea s motive was to get back at her husband for perceived wrongs, like living in a bus, home schooling, and the inconveniences of a simpler life style. the defense knew better than to bring rusty in to the equation. had i gone after rusty, as people wanted me to do, then the jury could be told by the prosecutor in summation or at the end, she, in effect, by killing the kids, she was getting back at rusty for the various things that he had done and would give her an ulterior motive. the trial began in february 2002.
postpartum depression. in june 2006, five years to the month after the tragedy, andrea yates second trial commenced. the defense kept their arguments very specific. we focused on wrongfulness. mental health and wrongfulness and post partum issues. wrongfulness more so in the first, more so than in the first trial. we were learning. i think the defense felt that because of the time that had passed, perhaps people were more sensitive to the issue. by the time we had the second trial, i think that if there was a measurable opinion, i think it had swung to, like, maybe neutral. and neutral in the sense that she should be convicted. she should go to jail but the tire behind the car and drag her through the streets crowd had gone away. after a month of testimony, the jury deliberated for 13 hours over three days. the jury, after three days of deliberation, wanted to see the pictures of the children and about 30 minutes later, we had and they reached a verdict and some of the jur
she was stressed. andrea yates life had begun to unravel. she seemed perfectly fine up until after we had luke, which was our fourth. after her fourth child was born, she actually struggled with the thought of killing her child and she made a suicide attempt rather than risk harming her child. and there was one psychiatrist who saw her who told her and rusty don t have any more children. you need to stop. here we are on our way home. what does that say, boys? congratulations, rusty and andrea. it s boy. giving us a little welcome home. yeah. just a year later, the yates were expecting their fifth child.