Andrea Yates : insane, not guilty

They should both be in jail. She killed her kids, and he knew she was not all there in the head.

She had postpartum depression. She was told not to have a fifth child because her postpartum for the last 4 had gotten progressively worse and I guess her dad died shortly after the birth of one of em. At any rate, I hope someone emails this to Mr. Tom Cruise. He's such a dickhead.

He can cure her......with his tears.

WHAT GOOD ARE THOSE!!?? THE TEARS OF AN ALIEN??!
Oh sorry, he's not the alien. I forgot.

Sorry, but equating someone cheating on their spouse with the deliberate murder of their five children, even in joking, is ridiculous. This woman deserves to, at best, spend the rest of her life in prison. This was a premeditated drowning of five children ,which I don't care how mentally ill you are, there is nothing worth redeeming this individual.

Not guilty by reason of insanity is a fucking copout. Responsibility.

Welp, life in a mental hospital at the very least.

My opinion is that what she did is horribly wrong and should spend her life in prison or a mental hospital with no chance of release. What I dont get is why is the husband not spending it in there too? If she was told at kid 4 to not have more why did they have 5? In other words they should have snipped his sac!

Now I have a question, not in support of this woman but a question none the less. Have any of you had or seen or lived with post partum depression? psycosis?

To clarify... I don't care if he cheated on his wife. I don't know if he did or not.. However, they never should have had so many kids, especially with him knowing she had mental problems. By keep it in his pants I meant spank it himself instead of plowing his wife and knocking her up. And I hold him responsible since he left her alone with those kids. Would you leave your kids with anyone you knew was mentally unstable? I don't care if she was his wife, he had a responsibility to those kids to protect them.. he didn't.

Being that this happened here in my hometown I don't know if we got more media coverage about it than some of y'all but in essence he worked and kept her trapped at home taking care of those kids. Personally I would go insane with 5 kids to take care of and no break..! I know the part of town they lived in, I lived in that area. There are TONS of daycares around, lots of options. He chose wrong, and should be punished. If it was a financial decision.. maybe she should have been out getting a job not staying home.. then it would have been more feasible. I have a HUGE issue with men who require their wives to stay home.. but I digress, that's not the topic ATM.

Can you believe that anyone who could kill their own child, let alone five of them is completely sane?? I have been depressed before, you do not think rationally. Not having had a kid I can't imagine the depths that post partum depression could sink you to. She has said she was "saving" them. This is from a family that were hard core Christians.. in her mind I really don't think she saw herself as doing something wrong but was instead sending them to Heaven. She was protecting them from the "evil" that had "infected" her.. AKA she was mentally ill and not getting the care she needed to cure that.. and in her perception through her Christian beliefs that was her mindset.

Was it right, what she did? Obviously not.. but remember.. LEGALLY they had to find her not guilty since she was insane when she did this. I am proud that a jury of my fellow Houstonians was able to look past their own opinions and feelings to see that and that the justice system worked right for once.

this fucking peice of trash needs to be tortured to death! thousands of mothers out there deal with the same kind of stuff she dealt with every day and they dont kill thier kids! and many of them dont live in such a nice part of town (Clear lake is a higher end suburb of houston near the bay with all kinds of amenaties). Blaming what happened on the Husband is tantamount to saying that Macdonalds is responsible for people having Fat assess! I'm so ashamed of my fellow Houstonians that this fucking worthless piece of trash is not going to die that it makes me sick!
I hope that if there is a Hell, this Bitch gets a bumped to the front of the line!

What kind of bullshit permissive culture do we live in that someone who kills 5 people, 5 Children does not deserve to die? I dont care if shes Insane (which she is NOT) she still needs to be drowned and revived 5 times.. Then on the sixth time she can stay dead..

I didn't have hardcore postpartum depression, but pretty much all women get it to some degree. The chemicals/hormones released into your body after (hell, during) pregnancy, make you somewhat nuts. For two weeks after having David, I felt like there was a dark cloud over my head, that I was going to be the worst mother in the world, and all I could do was sit in my bathrobe and cry...and I NEVER cry. It's no joke. I was able to rationalize, even through how nuts I was feeling, that it was hormonal and that it would pass...but I also had a very doting husband by my side who took care of both me and the baby through the full first three months. This woman obviously had a by far worse case of it and she was left alone to stumble through it...and I'm willing to bet no one feels the pain of losing those children more acutely than she does. I wouldn't be surprised if the woman kills herself before anyone else gets the chance. This isn't the first time a woman has caused her baby harm because of postpartum depression and it won't be the last. It's just a big story because of how many children were involved.

That isn't to say that she shouldn't receive punishment for the crime...at the very least because she was foolish enough to do it a fifth time. The whole situation is just sad.

I was very lucky I guess...as I couldn't have felt better after having my daughter, and not only was I single, but when I went back to my job, the week before my disability time was up, I was told I had been laid off. So I there I was with a brand new baby to support, totally on my own, and no job. I will admit that did create a couple sleepless nights, but I never felt anything I would consider out of the ordinary or unmanageable. It took me a month to get a job, and after that life went on as it had before, except I had a new little person to share it with.
I find this whole thing uncomprehensible, and for the life of me can honestly say I wouldn't have been able to make a decision either way. It's a good thing I wasn't on the jury.

I don't understand the rationale that because she was able to kill 5 children she was obviously crazy. Well - seriel killers do gruesome things - make them automatically crazy? For that matter you could argue that anyone that ever commited a sex crime or murder is obviously crazy - and the only convictions would be minor ones.

I can live with someone pleading insanity - fine - you spend your time (what you would spend in jail) in a mental hospital. What I can't get behind is temporary, and suddenly a much reduced sentence. Actions have consequences, and excuses piss me off. People need to be responisble for their actions. It is bullshit like this that is also the reason you can sue poeple for the most ignorant shit and actually win. It didn't use to be like this, and kids didn't use to slaughter each other in schools, and people didn't get to spend the rest of their life spending millions for getting burned etc etc. Our society is going to fucking shit because people no longer take responsibilty for their actions, and because we as a society enable this because we are so fucking scared of not being sensitive to someone needs or being insensitive to a problem/group and insensitive is so "out" right now. It sickens me and makes me sick to be a part of such an ignorant, illogical, sheepminded society.

She.
Murdered.
Five.
Kids.
She is not suited to remain a part of society. Ever. Again.

Something to consider - why didn't she use birth control herself? It's not just up to the husband. In any case, she knew what she did was wrong, that in itself would suggest she's sane and could assist in her defense. Basically, she killed her kids and the case was tried in the media - people felt bad and she got off. She is a serial killer...technically.

Either way, she's not going anywhere for a long time.

I almost made a post untill I realized you were joking ....


















You are joking right?



If I killed my kids becasue of Kidney cancer could I get off? Depression is a disease. It has a cure. Her not seeking treatment is what led to the death of the children.

or maybe it was the water in the tub.

Righhhhhhhht.......
So abstinence was supposed to be the way to go? First off, many people have sex without having children by accident. If this was what happened and they were using reliable birth control, then I can't see how you can expect people in a normal marriage to say, "Welp, just blow and handjobs baby unless you or I get cut." If this was planned, then there was nothing, besides an operation, that would have prevented her from having the final say over having a kid. I challenge anyone to find any state that gives the final say in a pregancy to the husband.

From the perspective you provide the man was damned and to blame, regardless of what he did. He had a job to do, provide for the 6 people that he was responsible for, providing for a day off of the child rearing activities would have been fine, but child rearing was her primary job and responsibility. That is the simple truth.

Honestly, I'm not sure it's possible to kill 5 of your own kids, by drowning no less, and not be on some level, insane. And with that said I still think she should be in jail for life. Or killed whatever. She shouldn't be allowed to be around anything living that she could overpower.

Let me explain for Veb and anyone else who thinks she should have just been popping the pill every morning. This is a *hardcore* religious woman/family. As in birth control is "wrong". And, as in the woman is subserviant to the man and he controls everything. Therefore I say it was HIS responsibility to decide if they had another kid. And I heard on the news that they supposedly decided "together" to have additional kids after the doctors told her not to. If she's in a bad mental state what would have given him the idea that she was capable of deciding this? Nothing. This is a case of the man controling his wife and doing as he pleased. I have seen this type of chauvanistic controlling behavior cloaked in Christianity before, this is the "bible belt". But again, I digress.

While I understand and accept that not everyone is going to agree that she was mentally incapacitated and ill when she did this what I don't understand is why more people aren't calling for him to be held accountable as well. Here is a man who was completely sane and capable of seeing the danger he left his children in but who chose not to do anything about it.

Also, an observation I wanted to share about this topic.. In TV and radio and kind of even on the board here it seems that this issue is severely split along gender lines. Most (not all!) men seem to be outraged and want to see her severely punished, placing the blame on Andrea. On the women's side what you usually hear (not always!) is a call for the husband to be held responsible as well, and there seems to be a lot more empathy and understanding for the condition Andrea was suffering from.

I wanted to address that one statement directly.. If you do your job poorly you can be fired right? No matter if it's the job you want to do, if you like your job or what.. if you can't do it you are fired. Because if you can't do your job, you don't need to be doing your job. Period. Maybe it shouldn't have been her job and responsibility..