The Andrea Yates case is the only one in which I thought she should not be found guilty, but instead placed in a mental institution. What I truly believed is that her DH should have been the one in prison.
If you ever looked at the progression of photos of her, from her teen and young adult years to the time she killed her children, it was heartbreaking. She was a pretty, healthy, happy, cheerful looking woman who by all accounts was full of life and loving and giving. Devoted to her kids. As the years passed, and with each pregnancy, she got worse and worse. She became gaunt and literally a shadow of her former self. Any spark that had ever been in her eyes was gone and she just wasn't "there." Her mind was gone.
If you have ever, even once, been around a truly psychotic person, they will scare the beejesus out of you because when you look in their eyes, you realize they just aren't in the same world as us. It's frightening and pitiful at the same time, especially if you know that person USED to be completely normal.
When she had the 4th child and went from postpartum depression to full blown psychosis, the doctors told her and her DH in no uncertain terms that she should never have a baby again. That she would become psychotic again and it might be even worse. Any decent, loving DH would have run to the doctor and gotten snipped. But nooooooo, he just had to have another kid. She was in no shape to make an informed decision. Someone (her DH) needed to think and act for both of them and protect her physical and mental health.........and now we know, by extension, that of the children. He failed miserably. Why have one more child, knowing your wife will become psychotic? They already had 4 beautiful, healthy children and she needed help, not another baby and the psychosis it would bring.
By all accounts, any time she starts to make any progress, she realizes the full impact of what she had done and it sets her back again. It's a vicious cycle. If she's medicated enough to make her well enough, she is overcome by what she's done and has to deal with it over and over again. She will be in hell forever. Meanwhile, he's gone on, remarried and started a new family.