Insanity Defense Andrea Yates Case PDF

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Olivo 1 Sally Olivo Sociology of Law Professor Bambino-Donofrio 6 December 2019 Insanity Defense: Andrea Yates Case Insanity is a legal term that refers to a mental disease or defect that impairs an individual's ability to tell right from wrong, and their power to control their actions. The affirmative defense of insanity (insanity defense), excuses criminals because of their mental state. They claim that they were not in a stable state of mind when committing the crimes they committed. Some believe that people can fake insanity and get away with murder, but Joel Samaha argues otherwise. Andrea Yates suffered from postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and schizophrenia, and drowned her five children in their bathtub. It is false that anybody can use an insanity defense, and that anybody can be found not guilty because of insanity. “Defendants offer an insanity defense in less than [one] percent of all felony cases, and are successful only about one-quarter of the time.” (Samaha, p.206). In only one percent of all felony cases is the insanity defense appropriate. And of that one percent, it is only successful twenty-five percent of the time. Therefore, there is no way that one can believe anybody is even allowed to plead not guilty because of insanity. Another misconception that people have about the insanity defense is that defendants that are granted the insanity defense are given lighter sentences than those who are incarcerated. Samaha also argues that this is a myth. The text says that Not because a person pleads insanity, means this is their get-out-of-jail-free card and that they will spend less time in custody. On the contrary, Joel Samaha states that defendants who plead insanity will spend much more time

Olivo 2 confined to a mental institution than they will be in jail if found guilty. Some offenders fake insanity, and most of them have a history of mental illness and hospitalizations. Andrea Yates became depressed after her fourth son was born. On June 16th, 1999, her husband found her shaking, and the next day she tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. Yates was taken to the hospital and was prescribed antidepressants. After being released from the hospital, she held a knife to her neck, told her husband to let her die. Yates was hospitalized once again, and given many different medications including the anti-psychotic drug, Haldol. She got better, and her husband moved the family to a smaller home for the sake of her health. She seemed to be more stable. The following month, she suffered another nervous breakdown. Yates then attempted suicide twice more and was psychiatrically hospitalized two more times as well. She was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis. Her diagnosis was postpartum psychosis, described as a psychiatric emergency in which a woman suffers from depression, severe confusion, loss of selfconsciousness, paranoia, hallucinations, and delusions a woman may have after only two weeks of giving birth. Her psychiatrist Eileen Starbranch urged them not to have any more children or her mental state would become worse. Seven weeks after being discharged, Yates was pregnant with their fifth and final child. She stopped taking the Haldol in March of 2000 and gave birth to her daughter that same month. She seemed fine until her dad died a year later. She stopped taking her medication, harmed herself, and stopped feeding her baby. She needed to be hospitalized immediately for her unfit mental state. She then was under the care of another psychiatrist, Dr. Mohammed Saeed, where he treated and released. Her mental state deteriorated. On May 3rd, 2001, she filled up the bathtub and would carry out her plan to drown all five of the children in it. Dr. Saeed hospitalized Yates yet again, and he determined she may have been suicidal. Dr. Saeed

Olivo 3 was Yates's psychiatrist until June 20th, 2001, the day she killed her children as she had planned. She was not going to kill herself by drowning herself like she told the police and what Dr. Saeed thought. Yates was suicidal, and her psychiatrists and her husband knew it. At age seventeen, she had mentioned suicide to her friend. In a span of two years from 1999 to 2001, she had attempted suicide three times. Andrea Yates confessed to drowning her children. Before her second trial, she told the forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Michael Welner, that she drowned her kids after her husband left the house because she knew he would prevent her from harming them. The defense's expert testimony did agree that Yates was psychotic. However, Texas law states that to successfully declare an insanity defense, the offender had to demonstrate that they could not tell right from wrong. Samaha's text also says that to deem someone insane, they had to not have known right from wrong. In March 2002, a jury did not accept the insanity defense and declared her guilty. The prosecution also called for the death penalty, but the jury also rejected this. She got life imprisonment with eligibility for parole after forty years. Three years later, these convictions were overturned in the Texas Court of Appeals. “California psychiatrist and prosecution witness Dr. Park Dietz admitted he had given materially false testimony during the trial. In his testimony, Dietz had stated that shortly before the murders, an episode of Law&Order had aired featuring a woman who drowned her children and was acquitted of murder by reason of insanity.” Nobody, especially not an expert witness should give false testimony in a trial. If a civilian witness gave false testimony, they could face up to jail time, expert witnesses should be held to the same standards.

Olivo 4 In conclusion, insanity is an important resource in the criminal justice setting. The insanity defense helps ensure that those who need help for their mental illnesses, get that help. The jury should have accepted Yates’s insanity defense from the beginning because her unstable mental state is evident by the number of times she was admitted to the hospital, how many times she attempted suicide. Dr. Strarbranch suggested that they should not have had more children after having their fourth child and Andrea starting to present psychotic symptoms. Andrea still got pregnant with her fifth child and sure enough, her condition still became worse. She had two psychiatrists and both knew how bad her mental state was, so none of them should have discharged.

References Andrea Yates case: Witness at heart of appeal explains error. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/11/court.archive.yates2/index.html. Killer Women - A Mother's Madness | Andrea Yates Documentary. (2018, May 9). Retrieved December 12, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsYS-guaNHg&t=14s.

Olivo 5 Samaha, J. (2014). Criminal law (12th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning...