Houston mother convicted for killing children

HOUSTON -- Andrea Yates, the 37-year-old housewife who admitted she drowned her five children in the bathtub, was convicted of murder Tuesday by a jury that rejected her claim of insanity in just 3 1/2 hours.

Yates was found guilty of two counts of capital murder covering the deaths of three of her children. She could be sentenced to death or to life in prison following the penalty phase that begins Thursday.

Standing between her attorneys, Yates showed little reaction as the judge read the verdict. Her husband, Russell, muttered "oh God" and buried his head in his hands, and some of Yates' relatives left the courtroom in tears.

"I'm not critiquing or criticizing the verdict," defense lawyer George Parnham said. "But it seems to me we are still back in the days of the Salem witch trials."

He described his client as "very upset." Prosecutors left the courthouse without comment.

The crime attracted widespread attention as a stunned public asked what could cause a mother to systematically kill her children. It also raised new questions about the effects of postpartum depression, which Russell Yates and experts hired by the defense said Yates had struggled with for years.

Never took stand

Andrea Yates never testified. But her videotaped interviews with psychiatrists, her audiotaped confession to police and her 911 call the day of the drownings all were played for jurors.

Deliberations began after prosecutors told the jury of eight women and four men that Yates, a former nurse, had thought about harming her children for years and ignored a doctor's orders in 1999 to refrain from having any more.

They said that even though Yates is mentally ill, she knew drowning her children was wrong.

"That's the key," prosecutor Kaylynn Williford said. "Andrea Yates knew right from wrong, and she made a choice on June 20 to kill her children deliberately and with deception."

The defense argued that she suffered from postpartum depression so severe that she had lost her ability for rational thought.

"We can't permit objective logic to be imposed on the actions of Andrea Yates," Parnham said. "She was so psychotic on June 20 that she absolutely believed what she was doing was the right thing to do."