As Ex-Husband Remarries, Yates Gets Second Trial

March 19, 2006 — -- Russell Yates got married this weekend on a gray, cloudy afternoon, just days before the start of his ex-wife Andrea's second trial in the drowning deaths of their five children.

He married Laura Arnold, a tall willowy blond, whom he met at the church they both attend, the same church where the funerals were held for his children. He left the ceremony in a red Corvette, with his new wife at his side.

Andrea Yates is aware her ex-husband is remarrying, but is not bitter, said George Parnham, one of her attorneys.

"I think that she wishes him the best," Parnham said. "She is grieved that she has put him through what happened. She has accepted complete responsibility for what has happened on June the 20th of '01. She blames nobody but herself, and she understands he needs to get on with his life."

Pleading 'Not Guilty'

Yates lingers in a mental institution under intensive psychiatric care. But many are still baffled how a loving mother could do what she did to the children she clearly loved.

Once again, she is pleading not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of capital murder in the deaths of three of her five children.

She is being tried a second time because the First Court of Appeals in Houston threw out her conviction last year, citing false testimony from a key prosecution witness.

Thousands of pages of her medical records, which document her slide into psychosis triggered by postpartum depression after the birth of each of her children, have been entered into evidence

Explaining Mental Illness

Defense attorney Wendell Odom hopes this time he can make a jury understand her mental illness.

"This is a woman whose instincts to save her children were completely warped," he said, "because of schizophrenia and because of this postpartum onslaught and hormones. But what happens is -- try to put logic to her thinking; her thinking is not logical -- she is thinking she is saving them. Her intent was not to murder the children but to save them."

Dr. Richard Pesikoff, a Baylor College of Medicine professor of psychiatry who is leading Yates' medical defense team, feels so strongly that what happed at Yates' first trial was wrong that he's leading her medical defense pro bono. Why? He says people need to understand the difference between criminal gangster behavior and mental illness.

"She can be ruled to be an insane woman and not a criminal," Pesikoff said. "It doesn't mean when the jury comes back with an insane verdict that she goes home. Remember Mr. Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan back in the '80s? Do you know that was over 20 years ago and he's still a patient in a psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C.? Nobody's saying this woman walks out of court. All we're saying is she does not get judged to be a killer, murderer, gangster, criminal. She gets judged to be insane."

Pesikoff said Americans should have compassion and not punish the mentally ill or retarded, realizing they may not know right from wrong.

He said someone wouldn't treat a 5-year-old as a criminal if they committed a criminal act. But he says that's what prosecutors now often do with the mentally ill.

"I'd like to see Mrs. Yates judged to be insane and get mental health care," Pesikoff said. "I don't think she should go to prison. I think she should be in a mental hospital where she should get the appropriate care."

Prosecution: She Knew What She Was Doing

The district attorney's team prosecuting Yates is asking for life in prison, saying insanity is not a medical issue -- it's a legal issue. Assistant District Attorney Alan Curry said prosecutors believe Yates was mentally ill, but that she also knew what she was doing.

"It'll pull at the heart strings from both the defense side and the state side," Curry said. "A defendant who was testified by the defense, was a good mother before all this happened, and we have the lives of five dead children that were taken away. So it's going to pull at the heart strings from both sides."

Death Penalty Off the Table

On June 20, 2001, Yates drowned her five children, Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, six months; in the bathtub of the family's suburban Houston home.

She laid the four youngest victims on a bed and covered their bodies with a sheet. Noah's body was found floating facedown in the bathtub.

When her husband, Russell, called from work, Yates told him to come home. She then called 911, and later that day told police she had killed her children.

Yates said Satan ordered her to kill her five children to save them from eternal damnation.

In the first trial, Park Dietz was the only psychiatrist to testify. He said Yates had a history of postpartum depression and was sane when she killed her children. The court later determined that testimony to be false.

Now, the death penalty is off the table. The range of punishment is 40 years to life.

Odom said Yates understands very little about what is happening to her.

"She is almost childlike these days," he said.