Crime, Punishment, and Mental Illness: Law and the Behavioral Sciences in Conflict

Chapter 4: The Problems with the Insanity Defense: The Conflict Between Law and Psychiatry

79 Chapter 4 The Problems with the Insanity Defense The Conflict between Law and Psychiatry I realized it was time to be punished . . . for not being a good mother. —Andrea Yates* On June 20, 2001, at 9:48 a.m., Andrea Yates called 911 and asked for assistance. She also called her husband at work and told him that he needed to come home, but would not say why.When her husband asked if anyone was hurt,Andrea Yates responded that the kids were hurt. He asked, “Which ones?” She responded,“All of them.”Within minutes of her 911 call, several police officers arrived at theYates home and discovered four dead children, soaking wet, covered with a sheet, lying on Andrea Yates’s bed. The fifth child was still in the bathtub, floating face down. A few hours later,Yates gave a seventeen-minute confession to police sergeant Eric Mehl that detailed what had happened. *Excerpts from Andrea Yates’s full interview with Houston Police Sergeant Eric Mehl at the Houston, Texas police station, conducted on the afternoon of June 20, 2001 (HoustonChronicle.com, February 21, 2002, http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/drownings/ 1266294.html). 80 C r i m e , P u n i s h m e n t, a n d M e n ta l I l l n e s s In the confession, she stated that she was not being a good mother to her children and that her children were not developing correctly in terms of their learning and their behavior. She indicated that it was time for her to receive punishment, and she wanted the criminal justice system to punish her for not being a good mother. Two indictments charged Andrea Yates with capital murder for the drowning deaths of three of her five children. She entered a plea of not guilty because she was insane at the time of the killings.Texas law defines insanity as an affirmative defense that,“at the time of the conduct charged, the actor, as a result of severe mental disease or defect, did not know that his conduct was wrong” (Insanity,Texas Penal Code, §8.01, 2006). At trial, ten psychiatrists and two psychologists gave testimony aboutYates’s mental state at the time of the killings as well as her history of mental illness. Her medical history included hospitalizations for attempted suicide, depression, and delusions; the most recent hospitalization had occurred on March 31,2001. Four of the psychiatrists and one of the psychologists had treated her either in a medical facility or as a private patient before June 20, 2001. They testified regarding the symptoms, severity, and treatment of Andrea Yates’s mental illness. Five psychiatrists and one psychologist saw Yates on or soon after June 20 for assessment and/or treatment of her mental illness. Four of these five psychiatrists and the psychologist testified that on June 20, 2001, she did not know right from wrong, was incapable of knowing that what she did was wrong, or believed that her acts were right. The fifth psychiatrist testified that she had not made a determination regarding AndreaYates’s ability to know whether her actions were wrong; however, she testified that given Andrea Yates’s belief that the children would perish in the fires of hell, she believed that their drowning was the right thing to do. The tenth psychiatrist was the state’s sole mental health expert in the case. He testified that although Andrea Yates was Problems with the Insanity Defense 81 psychotic on June 20, she knew that what she did was wrong. He reasoned that because she said that her thoughts were coming from Satan, she must have known that they were wrong. He testified that if she believed she was saving her children, she would have shared her plan with others rather than hide it as she did, and that if she really believed that Satan was going to harm the children, she would have called the police or a pastor or would have sent the children away. He also indicated that she covered the bodies out of guilt or shame (Yates v. State, 171 S.W. 3d 215 [2005]). The jury foundYates guilty and assessed punishment of life in prison. However, following the verdict and before the punishment phase of the trial, defense counsel learned...