Un-b-effin'-lievable!

[sindatur]

I was being sarcastic, Finn. Yates was an engineer working for NASA.

<edit>going back to the first page, it looks like that might have been a bit unclear. sorry, forgot the sarcasm tags. the point is that he isn't a shrink, and more than that, she had]/i] a shrink that failed to diagnose her condition, took her off antidepressants, etc. I fail to see how the husband can be blamed for this.

I don't think so, Syl. What I recall is she was taken off the meds (or stopped taking them herself) because they ignored the Dr's advice about getting pregnant.

[[Syl]]

www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,218445,00.html

Within months, following the death of her ailing father, her psychosis returned. Instead of taking her back to the same doctor who'd treated her before, Rusty told jurors that he and Andrea went to the Devereux-Texas Treatment Network, where Mohammed Saeed became Andrea's psychiatrist. Rusty testified that he never knew that Andrea had visions and voices; he said he never knew she had considered killing the children. Neither did Dr. Saeed, even though the delusions could have been found in medical records from 1999. Andrea would not talk or eat.

After only slight improvement, Andrea was released from Devereux. A month later, she had another episode. Rusty took her back to Devereux. Again, she was released. Dr. Saeed reluctantly prescribed Haldol, the same drug that worked in a drug cocktail for her in 1999. But after a few weeks, he took her off the drug, citing his concerns about side effects. (For more on Saeed's response, see our previous examination of the Yates trial.) Though Andrea's condition seemed to be worsening two days before the drownings, when her husband drove her to Saeed's office, Rusty testified, the doctor refused to try Haldol longer or return her to the hospital. Rusty was frustrated, he told the jury, and he didn't know what else to do.

[sindatur]

Hm, well, that doesn't track with what I recall. This is now more complicated.

[Cail]

Agree on the husband. It's not his job to diagnose his wife, but when a doctor tells you to do something (or not to do something), you do it.

Hoo-boy. Now that's a loaded statement if I ever heard one! I would really qualify that with depending on the severity and danger of what is being diagnosed, and if there are any possible working alternatives.

Sure!

If a doctor tells you to do something, you do it. If you think there's a problem with his diagnosis, you get a second opinion. But by ignoring the doctor's advice (not to have any more kids), he and his wife were taking her medical care into their own hands. Both of the Yates knew Andrea wasn't well. Against doctor's orders they continued to have kids. Because of that I assign him some culpability in the death of his children.

[Fist and Faith]

I don't understand why there are certain crimes that are so bad, that you're automatically innocent when you commit them. Innocent because we can't imagine anyone sanely committing them. It's so ass-backwards: it's as if your guilt, culpability, and monstrousity is so monumental that you can't possibly be to blame. (Kind of like terrorism in some minds, huh?) No, it has to be a sickness that's to blame. (Or the American government, or the Israeli government . . . never the people committing the crime.)

Fist:

Take your points about insanity and intelligence, but really, are we saying that any form of mental disturbance can free you of responsibility for your actions. By this definition everyone who commits murders on a multiple scale would be exempt from punishment. Do we forgive Hitler, Goering, Pol Pot, Milosevic as genocidal murderers and consign them to history as ill? What about folk who shoot up fast food restaurants or schools? Clearly none can be sane.....sane people do not do those things, but at no point should we say: we understand, its OK, hope you feel better soon. We either put them down or we lock them up; either in chokey or an asylum.

A sentence is supposed to be a punishment but also a deterrent, what about the next child killer..........same excuse...there's a precedant now!

Malik, although you didn't say so, as finn did, I assume you were responding to me, since there's only one "Good Post" post between mine and yours. Sorry if you weren't talking about me specifically, but I'll respond as though you were.

Both of you took my response too far. I did not say that anyone who commits crimes that are particularly horrifying must be insane. I didn't even imply it as I was saying how insane it seems to me. I said that she did commit the crime, and she was suffering from a type of insanity at the time. I can't see how that is not reasonable doubt. Good point, Malik, that someone can have a condition like this and be sane. I'm sure it happens a lot. And no, not all women with PPD (or PPP, as duchess pointed out) do these things. But not all women have such things to the same degree. Nor does everyone who is allergic to flowers die of anaphylactic shock in their presence. Some merely sneeze. We cannot assume that, because some women have PPD and do not kill their kids, any woman with it who does kill hers is just as emotionally and mentally stable.

Also, I wasn't at all clear about my opinion of the verdict, or whatever it is. Yes, if it comes right down to it, I'd rather take the chance of her being perfectly sane, and set her free, and keep a close eye on my kids at all times (which I do anyway) than sending an insane person to prison, where life would likely be even more unbearable for her. However, what I'd most like is for her to be in the asylum for a loooooooooooong time, getting actual help and care. (I don't have any idea if people are actually helped in those places, or if they're left naked in rooms and showered in groups with a fireman hose.) I for damned sure will never trust her alone with any human being. But I'd still rather we try to help anyone who needs it than for us to do anything else.

[sgt.null]

i worked in a mental hospital. i now work in a prison. the public would be safer if Andrea were in prison. do we really want to trust a doctor to say she is healthy enough to be free? these doctors are not infallibel. her own shrink missed her psychosis. she made out easy here. i expect she will be released at some point.

[Cail]

All she's got to do is convince a doctor that she's sane, just like she convinced a jury she was insane.

[wayfriend]

(FF: )

If you go back and review this thread, it's very interesting. The pro-guilty crowd's arguments are demonstrably angled toward a "It's a heinous crime, therefore she's guilty!" From there, it's all backwards reasononing. Therefore, she "got off". Therefore, she can't really be insane. Therefore, she's pretending to be insane. Therefore, psychiatry is bogus. Therefore, the legal system is broken. Therefore, bleeding hearts control the country. Et cetera, et cetera.

Thank goodness that the trial system we have in the US works so well (not perfectly) to defend agains that sort of subjective response.

Vigilanteism is bad for everyone, even when it is only expressed as outrage in an unimportant Watch thread.

[The Laughing Man]

[[Syl]]

Eh. I think it's more of a syntactical outrage than a vigilante one. She did it. She's guilty. *shrug* Others might argue the mitigating factors, the degree of culpability, etc.

I'm not a proponent of the death penalty, especially not in this case. But personally, if I killed any kid, much less five, much less my own, I'd hope someone would put a bullet in my head before I had a chance to realize what I did.

And rabbits, George? Tell me about the rabbits.

[Cail]

If you go back and review this thread, it's very interesting. The pro-guilty crowd's arguments are demonstrably angled toward a "It's a heinous crime, therefore she's guilty!" From there, it's all backwards reasononing. Therefore, she "got off". Therefore, she can't really be insane. Therefore, she's pretending to be insane. Therefore, psychiatry is bogus. Therefore, the legal system is broken. Therefore, bleeding hearts control the country. Et cetera, et cetera.

What a crock. She admitted to the crime and her lawyers never denied that she killed her kids. That's why she's guilty.

[Fist and Faith]

i worked in a mental hospital. i now work in a prison. the public would be safer if Andrea were in prison. do we really want to trust a doctor to say she is healthy enough to be free? these doctors are not infallibel. her own shrink missed her psychosis. she made out easy here. i expect she will be released at some point.

All she's got to do is convince a doctor that she's sane, just like she convinced a jury she was insane.

She didn't have to convince them she was insane. There only had to be reasonable doubt that she was sane. And that is why I disagree with sgtnull when he says "the public would be safer if Andrea were in prison." The public will not be safe if we do not set people free when there is a reasonable doubt. No, we are not perfectly safe. We never will be. There are crazy people out there who haven't done terrible things yet, and others who have never gotten caught. We will never be perfectly safe from either group. We need to keep an eye on our loved ones as best we can.

But there's a third group: Those who have done horrible things, gotten caught, but gotten away with it. Andrea may be among this group. She may have been faking the entire thing. I reasonably doubt it, but it's possible. Others in this group have gotten away with it because of technicalities. Improper police procedure, problems with the jury, etc. This third group is the only group we can be safe from. All we have to do is take away the "reasonable doubt" clause, as well as the "police cannot search without warrants" law, and all that kind of thing.

Now we're safe from that group. Of course, we're no longer safe from the legal system. It is no longer designed to protect the innocent. And the fact that guilty people have figured out how to exploit a system that is trying to protect the innocent does not mean we should stop trying to protect the innocent.

If you go back and review this thread, it's very interesting. The pro-guilty crowd's arguments are demonstrably angled toward a "It's a heinous crime, therefore she's guilty!" From there, it's all backwards reasononing. Therefore, she "got off". Therefore, she can't really be insane. Therefore, she's pretending to be insane. Therefore, psychiatry is bogus. Therefore, the legal system is broken. Therefore, bleeding hearts control the country. Et cetera, et cetera.

What a crock. She admitted to the crime and her lawyers never denied that she killed her kids. That's why she's guilty.

Nobody has ever suggested she did not kill her kids. You seem to be suggesting that either:
1) There's no possibility that she was insane.
or
2) We should treat people who committed a crime because they were insane the same way we treat people who were sane when they committed the same crime.

Am I simply misunderstanding you, and you are suggesting something else?

[sgt.null]

Fist: if/when Andrea is freed she may be able to have more children. she may have those children. she may "snap" once again. so exchange safer for better off. the public is better off if Andrea stays locked up.

if she is so insane that she killed her five children, she should be locked up so she doesn't do it again.

[Fist and Faith]

I do not think people who commit crimes while insane should be sent to prisons filled with sane criminals. Much less killed. (And, again, even for sane people, I'm opposed to the death penalty. Not because I argue that this or that person doesn't deserve it, but because I don't want death and vengeance to be our policy.) I would be very happy if she was a patient in some mental hospital for years to come, if not the rest of her life. I don't think we're able to cure most people of insanity. I think the doctors free people in these situations so people will say, "Wow! Dr. Jones has cured twenty people this year alone!" Then Jones gets a promotion and book deal. If the doctor paid some penalty when he claimed someone was cured and released the patient, only to have the person repeat their crime, things might be a bit better. Maybe those doctors should serve some time. And if their license to practice psychiatry wasn't taken away, they should certainly never be in the position to free insane people again. At that point, they might start doing a better job. They might start putting the necessary time and energy into actually curing those that can be cured. And they might stop releasing uncured people.

Of course, sometimes it's the fault of those running the system, not the doctors. The CEO needs to balance their books, so they push to have people released, whether the doctor says it's safe or not. But if I was the doctor, I'd find a different job before I released Yates if I didn't think she was cured. And I'd keep a record of the pressures that had been put on me to release her, because the doctor who replaces me will likely release her immediately. I'm sure they'd find a doctor who agreed with the CEO even before being hired.

We should be fighting for all of that stuff. We should not accept such behaviors from doctors and CEO's. We should have people in those positions who want to help people. Then you wouldn't want to lock insane people in prison. We may be safe from that person, but we are a lesser people for it. If we wrote a fantasy or sci-fi book about a culture from some other place or time that had the most perfect society, and was noble and good, they wouldn't be like us.

But personally, if I killed any kid, much less five, much less my own, I'd hope someone would put a bullet in my head before I had a chance to realize what I did.

Same here.

[Cail]

Fist, her sanity isn't the issue. The issue is that she killed her five children with malice aforethought. I don't care about her state of mind, and it didn't make a lick of difference to her dead children. The idea that at some point in the very near future she could be released from the hospital and free to have more kids is absolutely unacceptable.

I don't care about her rehabilitation ('cause there is none), I don't care about her mental state. I care about punishing this monster for her crimes and protecting society from her.

[Fist and Faith]

It's beyond me how you can think there's no difference between planning and doing something like that while sane, and planning and doing it when your view of life is so skewed by insanity. I don't say that in a snotty way, I truly don't know how you can view them as being the same thing.

But that aside, don't you think society would be better protected by learning as much from her as we can? Even if there's no hope of curing her, (I'm not overly optomistic. I don't know too much about psychiarty/psychology, but I don't get the impression that we can cure too many mental disorders. I suppose it's possible that the removal of the pressures of parenthood - which are so very much more intense than any other pressure I've ever felt - would be the end of her insanity. Some people cannot cope with it. Some beat their kids, some abandon them, some kill them. Some go crazy, some do not. If that's the case with Andrea, if she's now sane, I imagine she'll be wracked with guilt for the rest of her life. But without those pressures, she might never have another thought like that in her life. Of course, she might be faking the whole thing, and have truly gotten away with murder. And this is now the longest parenthetical insert in history! Woo Hoo!), couldn't we learn a lot in the attempt? Couldn't she possibly reveal clues that would alert others to women who are dangerous in the same way? Maybe something as simple as her wording something in such a way that strikes a cord with another woman, and she'll realize she's on the same road and get help, or get away from her children, or something. Maybe a husband will remember his wife using the same phrase, and suddenly recognize the danger. Heck, we could even find genetic markers.

I don't imagine such knowledge would be easy, or come soon. I imagine many such women would need to be understood, to whatever degree we could understand them, before we are able to act on the knowledge in any meaningful way. But I feel it is the right way to approach the problem. Throw her in a hole, or kill her, and we learn nothing. Yes, we safeguard society from one person who may or may not try something again. But we don't stop anyone else from doing the same thing. Some insane people are not capable of thinking of such consequences, and there's never been any shortage of sane people willing to do such things even though they do fully understand the likely consequences. OTOH, try to help her, and we will not only have tried to help someone (Justification enough, imo. How we treat her tells us what kind of people we are.), but we might be able to protect society in what I consider a better way than the one you have in mind.

Hey, remember when we agreed on things for a while there?

[Cail]

It's beyond me how you can think there's no difference between planning and doing something like that while sane, and planning and doing it when your view of life is so skewed by insanity. I don't say that in a snotty way, I truly don't know how you can view them as being the same thing.

There is no difference to the children, is there? That she might have been insane (which I reject given the facts of the case) only mitigates the crime a little, it doesn't excuse it.

And as far as learning from her, if in fact there's anything to learn, that can be done in a prison hospital during a life sentence. Fist, she can be released back into the public after 30 days in the hospital. That's insane. There is no punishment involved in the sentence, she'll walk out of the hospital with no criminal record even though she confessed to drowning her children. That's insane.

[wayfriend]

It's beyond me how you can think there's no difference between planning and doing something like that while sane, and planning and doing it when your view of life is so skewed by insanity. I don't say that in a snotty way, I truly don't know how you can view them as being the same thing.

There is no difference to the children, is there?

Does anyone believe that a more severe punishment will make a difference to them? Justice, as I have always said, includes judging a sentence that is sensitive to thise mitigating factors such as insanity.

That she might have been insane (which I reject given the facts of the case) only mitigates the crime a little, it doesn't excuse it.

The biggest fact of the case was that the verdict was deliberated as thoroughly as possible and was that she was insane. So any facts to the contrary are only picking and choosing the facts that one wishes to use to support a pre-judgement.

Fist, she can be released back into the public after 30 days in the hospital. That's insane.

There is no one who believes that that will happen. Not even you.

[Chassit]

On Friday afternoon, I was in a pretty good mood, listening to the radio while I proofed my work, and I heard, on this radio show, an awful detail about what Yates did to her kids while she was killing them that literally made my stomach turn-- you know, that awful adrenaline-rush-nausea thing you get. I'm not going to say what it was because I really don't want to think about it too much or inflict the image on anyone else. Anyway, I said out loud, "I didn't need to hear that."

I thought I could put it out of my mind. When it was time for us all to go out to dinner, though, I was down. I told my husband I'd heard something that made me want to be sick. Knowing how he reacts also to news stories like this, I didn't tell him, either.

Then he asked me what it was (the kids were outside). As I started to tell him, I thought I was pretty calm-- then I just suddenly broke into tears and could hardly finish what I was saying. You should understand that this kind of outburst seldom happens to me, no matter how bad the news was or the situation. The last time I actually cried like that was over the Columbine killings, partly because that was so close to home. I just sat there sobbing, going, "How could anyone do this to her own children, sane or not?"

I composed myself before the kids came back in, and we went out. Once I was calmer, I told my husband, "If someone had told me I'd done that to my children, whether I was sane or not when it happened, I would say, 'Kill me. Please, just kill me.'"

I'm even more convinced that this woman should stop existing. Somewhere deep within, I pity her because there must be some part of her that grieves for what she did. But she can't continue living, IMO. I believe this is a miscarriage of justice.

[Cail]

It's beyond me how you can think there's no difference between planning and doing something like that while sane, and planning and doing it when your view of life is so skewed by insanity. I don't say that in a snotty way, I truly don't know how you can view them as being the same thing.

There is no difference to the children, is there?

Does anyone believe that a more severe punishment will make a difference to them? Justice, as I have always said, includes judging a sentence that is sensitive to thise mitigating factors such as insanity.

No, it won't. But part of justice is punishment, and regardless of her mental state she deserves to be punished.

That she might have been insane (which I reject given the facts of the case) only mitigates the crime a little, it doesn't excuse it.

The biggest fact of the case was that the verdict was deliberated as thoroughly as possible and was that she was insane. So any facts to the contrary are only picking and choosing the facts that one wishes to use to support a pre-judgement.

Wrongo. The first trial she was found guilty and given a life sentence. Due to an absolutely ridiculous technicality there was a retrial.

Fist, she can be released back into the public after 30 days in the hospital. That's insane.

There is no one who believes that that will happen. Not even you.

That's not the point. The point is, she could be released in 30 days, and she could walk out of the hospital a free woman with no criminal record. And remember, Lorena Bobbit walked out of her hospital after 45 days, so it's not completely out of the question.