Andrea Yates Getting New Trial

[DawnCt1]

d -
She is in a secure treatment center, as she will be once she is again found guilty. She is not being held in a jail cell, she is at a Psychiatric treatment center connected with the Prison where she has been ever since she was found guilty at the first trial. The family had the option of having her moved away from this place when her conviction was overturne
Yates has divorced her and she is no longer covered under Health Insurance and she has no source of income. She has no means to pay for Psychiatric care other than what the taxpayers of Texas provide for her. If she were to be released from "prison" she would become a Medicaid patient..... it is very doubtful that her quality of Medical care will improve.

I don't think she will ever be found "not guilty" and I do feel she needs to recieve treatment for the rest of her life. If its in the secure treatment center of the correctional facility, I have no problem with that.

 

[C.Ann]

I don't think she will ever be found "not guilty" and I do feel she needs to recieve treatment for the rest of her life. If its in the secure treatment center of the correctional facility, I have no problem with that.

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Same here.. I just wish her husband would have had to bear some accountability as well..

 

[Wishing on a star]

She should be in a hospital getting intensive treatment and her moron husband should be on death row. The guy was abusive and pushed her over the edge. She never should have had that last child and should never have been left alone with them in the mental state she was in.

My thoughts EXACTLY!!!!

 

[Toby'sFriend]

I don't think she will ever be found "not guilty" and I do feel she needs to recieve treatment for the rest of her life.

No I agree. I think perhaps some kind of plea bargain which will guarantee she remains locked away right where she is will be the best option. That will insure that she never joins the general prison population, and also that she will never be released from the Psychiatric unit.

She certainly deserves a new trial - but I feel it is probably just a whole lot of time and money for pretty much the same outcome. I do feel that her circumstances should take the death penalty out of play. Even if this trial were to return "Insane" Prosecutors could then just turn around and charge her for the deaths in the other two children which were not included in the first trial.

From what I have read in recent years, her health is failing physically as well as mentally.

I was always a little shocked and saddened that they could not find some kind of child endangerment charge to hit her husband with. If we can put people away for not feeding their kids, certainly we should be able to lock him up also.

 

[Val]

Andrea Yates is a good exemplar for guilty but insane. She DID commit the crime- and when she is on medication she can understand the implications of her actions. Without medication she is insane, legally and psychologically. She is always mentally ill- regardless of meds or not. Think of it as diabetes- the individual is always a diabetic, but can be medicated and regulate the blood sugar, or choose to be unregulated. Because she has a history of violent behavior when off her medications (and suidical when on them because of the memory of her actions), and because schizophrenia is extremely difficult to treat, I would advocate for continued hospitalization until there is strong evidence that she is in remission (which, giving current treatment guidelines, is extremley unlikely). She is not fit for a prison population- she would act out, cause more problems and probably become a victim. She should be in a locked mental hospital where she can be protected from herself. Her husband does bear some responsibility- but so does society in that we need to learn to actively treat the mentally ill and not ignore and shun them.

Schizophrenia is highly resistant to treatment and prognosis is very, very poor for those with active cases. I have spent much of my professional career working and doing research on schizophrenia and related diseases and see relatively little progress. If diseases such as cancer had such poor outcomes we would be up in arms and screaming at congress. When someone is diagnosed with cancer, we rush to the family's aide, send flowers and run telethons. When someone is diagnosed with a mental illness we shun and blame the family and the individual, hide, and ignore. Perhaps instead of blaming Andrea Yates we should see her case as a call to action for better treatments, better medication compliance, and greater research. What she did was beyond wrong, and she must pay the consequences. At the same time, she has little capacity to understand or prevent such violent behavior in the future- and thus she must be protected from herself. Perhaps if she had received adequate treatment this tragedy could have been avoided. In the children's memory, if nothing else, we need to fight for better treatment and research for the mentally ill.

 

[DawnCt1]

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Same here.. I just wish her husband would have had to
bear some accountability as well..

You know, I had often wondered why he didn't see that she was as sick as she was and then I thought about it in the context of physical illnesss. I remember when my father was dying of lung cancer. I saw him fail on a daily basis and then I saw him rally in between, so the proximity to the illness sort of blinded me to how bad he really looked. I would compare his appearance to how I saw him the day before or perhaps 2 days before. People that didn't see him for a week or two would be shocked by his appearance. The same was true for my mother.
Sometimes close proximity to an illness, whether physical or mental really doesn't let us see how ill they are.
With regard to mental illness. I used to work on a locked teen psych unit. A lot of our kids were pretty sick. We had one girl with boarderline personality disorder and in the unit she looked pretty healthy. It wasn't until I took her out to lunch at Friendly's ( reward for good behavior) and saw her in the outside world, did she not look so good. (Flat affect, etc).

 

[JennyMominRI]

You know, I had often wondered why he didn't see that she was as sick as she was and then I thought about it in the context of physical illnesss. I remember when my father was dying of lung cancer. I saw him fail on a daily basis and then I saw him rally in between, so the proximity to the illness sort of blinded me to how bad he really looked. I would compare his appearance to how I saw him the day before or perhaps 2 days before. People that didn't see him for a week or two would be shocked by his appearance. The same was true for my mother.
Sometimes close proximity to an illness, whether physical or mental really doesn't let us see how ill they are.
.

Boy, I really have to agree with you on this one...
Sorry about your Dad... Ed's Mom died from lymphoma

 

[CharlesTD]

Why waste a jail cell put her in the ground just like she did to the kids.

 

[DawnCt1]

Boy, I really have to agree with you on this one...
Sorry about your Dad... Ed's Mom died from lymphoma

Thank you. I lost my Mom 9 years ago to breast cancer.

 

[DawnCt1]

Why waste a jail cell put her in the ground just like she did to the kids.

Because we aren't schizophrenic and we have a sense of humanity.

 

[JennyMominRI]

2 days before Andrea yates killed her children her Husband retured with her to the hospital.. The Doctor refused to admit her and refused to give her the meds Rusty Yates kept telling them she needed.. Her doctor started that she never had hallucination ,delusions or was aware that she was usicidal..Even though nurses noted all of this in her record..Andrea yates was failed by the medical community and in a smaller sense by her husband An excellent article on the case from TIME magazine
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html

 

[CharlesTD]

Because we aren't schizophrenic and we have a sense of humanity.

Who cares a life for a life in cases like this is my feeling. Especially if it is your kids or wife or husband regarldess of the mindset ie mentally ill or not. Why waste your tax dollars trying to rehab a person that took her own kids lives forget it I am not that compassionate. That is one thing I wish our government up here would change I hope they some day bring back capital punishment rather than having the rest of us pay for the wackos locked up.

 

[JennyMominRI]

Who cares a life for a life in cases like this is my feeling. Especially if it is your kids or wife or husband regarldess of the mindset ie mentally ill or not. Why waste your tax dollars trying to rehab a person that took her own kids lives forget it I am not that compassionate. That is one thing I wish our government up here would change I hope they some day bring back capital punishment rather than having the rest of us pay for the wackos locked up.

Who said anything about rehab?

 

[CharlesTD]

Who said anything about rehab?

Putting her in a hospital to treat her is considered rehab.

 

[JennyMominRI]

Putting her in a hospital to treat her is considered rehab.

She is recieving treatment in jail also.

 

[KarenC]

Who cares a life for a life in cases like this is my feeling. Especially if it is your kids or wife or husband regarldess of the mindset ie mentally ill or not. Why waste your tax dollars trying to rehab a person that took her own kids lives forget it I am not that compassionate. That is one thing I wish our government up here would change I hope they some day bring back capital punishment rather than having the rest of us pay for the wackos locked up.

Administering capital punishment if FAR more costly to the taxpayers than life in prison. If your arguement for capital punishment is based on economics, you should argue against it. Our system isn't perfect and the appeals process is in place to ensure we don't execute innocents.

 

[DawnCt1]

Who cares a life for a life in cases like this is my feeling. Especially if it is your kids or wife or husband regarldess of the mindset ie mentally ill or not. Why waste your tax dollars trying to rehab a person that took her own kids lives forget it I am not that compassionate. That is one thing I wish our government up here would change I hope they some day bring back capital punishment rather than having the rest of us pay for the wackos locked up.

I don't think that there is much hope if any, of rehabilitating Andrea Yates. She will never be able to live independently. I don't think that is a goal for her right now. I certainly see a major difference in how we treat psychotic patients vs. sociopaths. A definition that was meant to be humorous actually has some insight. A neurotic builds dream houses, psychotics live in them and a sociopath attempt to collect the rent.

 

[DawnCt1]

Putting her in a hospital to treat her is considered rehab.

Not at all. Many people with chronic illnesses and disabilities of all kinds are hospitalized with no hope of rehabilitation. Some problems can't be fixed.

 

[CharlesTD]

Not at all. Many people with chronic illnesses and disabilities of all kinds are hospitalized with no hope of rehabilitation. Some problems can't be fixed.

Oh I agree but putting somone inteh hospital for many many years that has killed her children is costing you more than an execution would in the long run IMHO so my feeling is why waste that much money over the long period when you can cull the mentally unstable lady from the herd and be done with it.

 

[DawnCt1]

Oh I agree but putting somone inteh hospital for many many years that has killed her children is costing you more than an execution would in the long run IMHO so my feeling is why waste that much money over the long period when you can cull the mentally unstable lady from the herd and be done with it.

Because there are just some decisions we make as a society that have absolutely nothing to do with money. Bill Bennett got in trouble for trying to explain that....