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Today's Stories July 28, 2006 Charles
Glass July 27, 2006 Tanya
Reinhart Saul Landau Ramzi
Kysia Tom Barry Joseph
Grosso Sharon Smith Gale Courey
Toensing Christopher Reed Werther Yusuf Mansur Richard
Harth Website of the Day
Norman
Solomon Barbara
Olshanksy David
Nally Jonathan
Cook Patrick
Cockburn William
Blum Joshua
Frank Gabriel
Kolko Daniel
Cassidy Michael
Dickinson Robert
Fisk Uri
Avnery Website
of the Day
July 25, 2006 Harry
Browne Marjorie
Cohn Robert
Bryce Sharat
G. Lin George
Bisharat CounterPunch
News Desk Zena
El-Khalil Larry
Lack Mike
Mejia Ashraf
Isma'il Website
of the Day
July 24, 2006 Mark
Levy Robert
Fisk Maher
Osseiran Paul
Craig Roberts Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
July 22-23, 2006 Jonathan
Cook Paul
Craig Roberts Gilad
Atzmon Robert
Fisk Ralph
Nader Fred
Gardner Christopher
Reed Dr.
Susan Block Najla
Said Uri
Avnery July 21, 2006 George
Galloway P.
Sainath Aseem
Shrivastava Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day July 20, 2006 William
S. Lind Robert
Jensen John
Ross Tom
Hayden Paul
Craig Roberts July 19, 2006 Patrick
Cockburn Trish
Schuh Jonathan
Cook Vicente
Navarro July 17 / 18 2006 Mike
Whitney Kathleen Christison Atrocities in the Promised Land
July 14 / 15,
2006 Alexander Cockburn Tanya Reinhart Robert Fisk Daniel Cassidy Winslow Wheeler Hugh O'Shaughnessy M. Shahid Alam William S. Lind Ramzy Baroud Gilad Atzmon Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Samar Assad Ron Jacobs Lee Ballinger Walter Brasch Dave Lindorff Clifton Ross Tom Crumpacker Ricardo Alarcon William Hughes Susie Day Farrah Hassen Poets' Basement
July 13, 2006 Rev. William
Alberts Ramzi Kysia Rep. John P. Murtha Radford / Santos Stan Cox Saul Landau José
Pertierra Website of
the Day
July 12, 2006 John Ross John Stauber Robert Boston Wayne S. Smith John Graham Kevin Prosen Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
July 11, 2006 Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin Mokhiber / Weissman Amira Hass Clare Hanrahan Brian Cloughey Felice Pace Raed Jarrar Website of the Day
July 10, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Uri Avnery Roger Burbach Ron Jacobs Joshua Frank Missy Comley Beattie Alexander Cockburn
Stephen Green Paul Craig
Roberts Greg Moses Ralph Nader Laura Carlsen Conn Hallinan John Chuckman Fred Gardner Dr. Tod Mikuriya Pierre Tristam Lucinda Marshall David Swanson Heather Gray Dave Zirin
/ John Cox Mark Engler Michael Lettieri Ron Jacobs Jamal Juma' Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement
July 7, 2006 John Ross July 6, 2006 Nick Dearden John Stanton Ralph Nader Laray Polk Saul Landau Joshua Frank William S. Lind Adelman / Lindorff Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
Mike Whitney Saul Landau Ramzy Baroud Missy Comley Beattie Arthur Neslen Vincent Maruffi Paul Cantor Paul D. Johnson David Price
Col. Dan Smith Chris Floyd Marjorie Cohn James Brooks Medea Benjamin Matt Reichel Elisa Salasin Rick Wilhelm Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
July 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Dr. Bouthaina Shaban Julia Olmstead Dave Lindorff Andres Gomez Alan Singer Alexander Cockburn
Paul Craig
Roberts Stephen T.
Banko Daniel Cassidy Fawzia Afzal-Khan Jeff Taylor John Ross Greg Moses Laura Carlsen Justin E.H.
Smith Brian Cloughley Anthony Papa Mike Ferner Jerry Tucker Jane Goodall / Rick Asselta Phyllis Pollack Poets' Basement
June 30, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Heather Williams Burbach / Cantor Nick Dearden Michael J.
Smith Brian Concannon Virginia Tilley
Bill Quigley Ron Jacobs Paul Craig
Roberts June 28, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Greg Moses Mark Weisbrot Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff William S.
Lind Mike Ferner Zoltan Grossman
Marjorie Cohn Benjamin /
Jarrar William Hughes Doug Giebel Uri Avnery Alexander Cockburn
June 26, 2006 Don Santina Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Rafael Rodriguez-Cruz Evelyn Pringle Jonathan Cook
June 23, 2006 Youmans / Erakat Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Col. Dan Smith
June 22, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Winslow T.
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July 28, 2006 Why the Jury Did the Right ThingThe Second Andrea Yates VerdictBy ELAINE CASSEL On Wednesday, July 26, after eleven hours of deliberation, a jury found Andrea Yates--who in 2001 drowned her five children -- not guilty by reason of insanity. This was Yates's second trial. In March 2002, a Texas jury deliberated only three-and-a-half hours before finding her guilty of capital murder, denying her plea for acquittal based on the insanity defense. The jury showed mercy, however: She could have received the death penalty; instead, she was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. On appeal, the conviction was overturned--which resulted in the second trial. In this article I will explain why Yates's first conviction was overturned, what was different about the trial this time, and why the second jury's decision was the right one.
The Texas insanity statute makes it well nigh impossible for a defendant to mount a successful insanity defense. Like many other states, Texas revised its insanity defense statute after John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the 1981 attempted assassination of then- President Ronald Reagan. The Hinckley verdict enraged many, and fed the common misperception that people acquitted on those grounds "get away with murder." But the reality is that the Hinckley verdict was unusual, for several reasons. First, the Hinckley verdict was based on an unusual and now-repealed law that required prosecutors in the District of Columbia to prove that Hinckley was sane. Most laws then, as now, required the defendant to prove insanity. Second, it was unusual that Hinckley asserted the defense in a murder case, and that he prevailed. Contrary to popular belief, less than one percent of people charged with crimes plead insanity and of those, few are charged with murder, and fewer still are acquitted. A 2001 study of 100,000 indicted
defendants found that only 75 pled Despite the atypical nature of the Hinckley verdict, however, Texas and other states revised their statutes. A key requirement in criminal law is mens rea: a "guilty mind." But what, exactly, must a defendant know and understand to possess mens rea? Texas and other states reacting to the Hinckley verdict defined mens rea as simply knowing that the act was wrong. Laws that follow a less stringent standard require generally that defendants prove that as a result of a mental disease or defect, they lacked the capacity either to appreciate the criminality of their conduct or to conform their conduct to the requirements of the law. In Yates's case, the prosecutors insisted, and the jury believed, that Yates indeed knew that the killings were "wrong." The evidence: She waited until her husband left the house before drowning the children, and she placed calls to law enforcement after she had killed them. But this shows the limited nature of the Texas insanity defense, a limitation the Supreme Court recently sanctioned. In Clark v. Arizona, decided in June 2006, the Supreme Court upheld a statute similar to that under which Yates was first convicted. The decision validated insanity statutes that will not cover even seriously mentally ill people--like Yates--who were psychotic at the time of their crimes. Indeed, in Clark itself, the defendant was not even allowed to introduce evidence of the effect of his psychosis on his crimes. The Court's decision found no problem with this: The defendant, it held, could be deemed guilty of murder as long as he knew one thing: that he had killed a law enforcement officer. Never mind that the prosecution conceded that Clark was in a schizophrenic, paranoid, delusional state of mind. In the end, it is not surprising that the jury in the first Yates trial found her guilty under the Texas standard. After all, it was plain that she "knew" she killed her children -- because she called and reported their deaths.
If the Texas insanity statute itself is valid, why was the first Yates conviction overturned on appeal? The answer is that the prosecution presented damaging evidence that turned out to be false--and that could have been key to her conviction. In the first trial, the prosecution introduced as its expert psychological witness Park Dietz, a "star" mental health expert who usually testifies for the prosecution in famous trials. Dietz concluded that Yates knew what she was doing when she killed her children. He also embellished his testimony with an interesting tidbit that proved not to be true. Yates had a long history of severe mental illness with delusional episodes. After the birth of her youngest child, six months before the murders, she was diagnosed with postpartum depression. But the prosecution still argued that her assertion of the insanity defense was some kind of ruse. And it enlisted Dietz to help with this argument. Apparently, Yates was a "Law & Order" fan. Dietz surmised that her murderous plot was hatched after viewing a "Law & Order" episode in which a woman drowned her children in a bathtub and claimed post-partum depression as an insanity defense. The prosecutor hammered away at this point in his closing argument, arguing that Yates had wanted to kill her children because she was overwhelmed by them. This "Law & Order" episode, he argued, planted the seed for murdering her children and blaming it on her postpartum depression. In fact, there was no such episode--as research by an investigative journalist who wrote for the show revealed. The false testimony made a solid basis for appeal. Two appellate courts agreed that Dietz's testimony could have led to the guilty verdict, and ordered a new trial.
In the second trial, the same mental health testimony -- taken from voluminous mental health records -- was introduced. It showed Yates to have been severely mentally ill at the time of the crimes. She was living under great stress with five children and her husband in a school bus. Shortly before the murders, she went for mental health treatment and begged to be hospitalized. After her arrest, Yates told law enforcement and mental health experts that she felt that she was such a bad mother that if she killed the children they would be spared from the evil of living with her. In their innocence, she said, they would have eternal life in heaven. These facts had not changed. So what made the second trial's outcome different? There are several possibilities. When Yates was first charged with the murders, she was found incompetent to be tried (meaning that she was unable to understand the charges and the proceedings, and to assist her attorneys in her defense). She was hospitalized and ordered to take medication so that the trial could go forward. But, as courtroom observers noted, the medication made her appear unfeeling, even zombie-like. And the prosecution used this against her, to suggest she was not even mourning the loss of her children. At the second trial, not only did she appear more human, but her defense team (the same attorneys from the first trial) introduced more witnesses to help show that she was, in fact, a fragile woman who loved her children, but delusionally believed death was best for them. In addition, as one of her attorneys noted, the passage of time might have helped Yates. The first trial took place only six months after the killings. Moreover, the makeup of the jury might have helped this time. The first jury consisted of eight women and four men. The second jury was evenly divided between men and women. It's possible that women, especially those who'd faced similar challenges as caregivers, might have been especially unsympathetic to Yates. But also, as in the first trial, the Texas statute favored Yates in a single, but important way (even as it encouraged the jury to ignore her delusions). The statute put the burden on Yates to prove that she was insane at the time of the crimes, but she was only required to do so by a preponderance of the evidence--an evidentiary standard meaning, roughly, proof "more likely than not." So if Yates and her attorneys could tip the scales only slightly in favor of her insanity, the jury could find her not guilty by reason of insanity The prosecution, on the other hand, had to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This time, the jury deliberated almost four times longer than it did the first time. Perhaps the first jury was able to move more quickly due to Dietz's false "Law & Order" claim. And perhaps this time, the second jury rightly focused on Yates's psychosis--evidence of which strongly militated against her "knowing" that her actions were "wrong." Amazingly, the prosecution introduced the testimony of Park Dietz again. And the judge forbade the defense from mentioning the falsity Dietz had introduced into the proceedings the first time. (I believe that was an error: Surely, the falsity was relevant to Dietz's credibility as a witness. It may also have been an error serious enough, if a conviction had ensued, to lead to yet another reversal on appeal.) This time, Dietz admitted that Yates might have been psychotic at the time of the murders, but he still insisted that she knew what she did was wrong. Until the jurors speak, if they do speak, we won't know the factors that led to their verdict. What we can say, and anyone who reads Yates's mental health records will likely agree, is that if ever there was a defendant who deserved the benefit of the insanity defense, it was this sad, sick woman.
The Texas prosecutors might not be finished with Yates yet. She was only charged with the murders of three of her five children. This seems to have been a deliberate ploy to give prosecutors a second chance if she was acquitted at the first trial--a ploy that surely violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution's Double Jeopardy clause. Assuming prosecutors do not play that vindictive hand, however, Yates is far from a free woman. She is sentenced to a maximum-security criminal ward in a state mental hospital, where she is likely to have less freedom than if she were in the women's prison. The difference, though, is that in the state mental hospital, Yates will have mental health treatment, and the chance to get better. Periodically, she will be examined to see if she is still insane and if she is still dangerous to herself or others. The law requires that when and if Yates no longer meets either test, she must be released. But in reality, this will not happen anytime soon. John Hinckley, for instance, has been committed now for 25 years. (He only recently won the right to visit his parents in a setting outside of the hospital.) In sum, Yates's insanity verdict is, for all practical purposes, a life term in a prison-like setting. If she ever gets better, and thus gets out, she will probably be an old woman. She will also suffer a punishment that she might not have endured, had she remained in prison, without treatment: She will suffer even more keenly the loss of the children she killed, and of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren she will never hold. Elaine Cassel practices law in Virginia and the
District of Columbia and teaches law and psychology. She doesn't
like being lied to. Her new book The
War on Civil Liberties: How Bush and Ashcroft Have Dismantled
the Bill of Rights, is published by Lawrence Hill. She can
be reached at: ecassel1@cox.net
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                    |
