Death Sought in Yates Case

Prosecutors in a county known for sending inmates to death row said Wednesday they will seek the death penalty against a housewife and former nurse who admitted she drowned her five young children in the bathtub.

The announcement came hours after lawyers debated the mental competence of a slumped, skinny Andrea Pia Yates, 37, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors acknowledge she is mentally ill, but a state psychologist concluded earlier this week that Yates is fit to stand trial.

“The decision [to seek the death penalty] was made a long time ago,” Harris County Dist. Atty. Charles Rosenthal said. “It seems fairly appropriate to break the spell and let people know what’s going on.”

Her face shadowed by spectacles and long, stringy hair, Yates sat still in a wrinkled jail jumpsuit during a court hearing. She didn’t speak to her lawyers or glance in the direction of her husband and mother-in-law.

Yates faces capital murder charges in the drowning deaths of her children, whose ages ranged from 6 months to 7 years.

She told police that after her husband, Russell “Rusty” Yates, left for work June 20, she filled the tub and drowned Noah, John, Luke, Paul and Mary, one after the other. Then she wrapped the bodies in sheets, called the police and confessed.

A sealed report prepared by psychologist Steven J. Rubenzer concluded the young mother suffers from “a serious mental disease, not a severe mental disease,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Joseph S. Owmby told the court Wednesday.

But lawyers for Yates insist their client is too sick to be tried, and they asked to show evidence of Yates’ muddled mental state. State District Judge Belinda Hill agreed to schedule a mental competence hearing within a few weeks.

In order to stand trial, Yates must be able to understand the courtroom proceedings and to communicate with her lawyers.

“You have to be really out of it to be incompetent,” said George E. Dix, a criminal law professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “Unable, for example, to articulate the role of the people in the courtroom. Or paranoid, firmly convinced the defense lawyer is working against you. That sort of thing.”

Even if a jury agrees Yates is incompetent, she still could stand trial for the slayings. She would likely be treated with psychiatric drugs, then reevaluated, Dix said.

“Those medicines are great things,” he said.

If Yates is found competent, her lawyers will try to convince the jury she was insane on the morning her children died and was unable to distinguish between right and wrong. The insanity defense could protect Yates from being put to death.

Yates faces two counts of capital murder: one for multiple killings and a second for killing a child younger than 6. Capital murder is punishable by execution and Harris County has historically displayed an unequaled zeal for capital punishment. Of the 455 inmates on Texas’ death row, 155 were prosecuted in Harris County. If the county were a state, it would rate third in the nation in the number of criminals put to death.

But until Wednesday, prosecutors had refused to say whether they planned to seek the death penalty against the young mother, whose plight provoked a volley of debate over postpartum depression.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Rusty Yates sat beside his mother in the front row and fidgeted, eyes trained on Andrea Yates. The 36-year-old NASA computer expert has said his wife fought a brutal battle against postpartum depression after the fourth baby, Luke, was born.

In the last few years, Andrea Yates tried to kill herself with pills and threatened to slit her throat. She was hospitalized at least twice and diagnosed with “major depression and postpartum depression with psychosis,” court documents say.

For a time, her family said, the housewife appeared to have found some peace of mind. But in November, Mary was born and Andrea Yates plunged back into despondency. After her father died of Alzheimer’s disease in March, Andrea withdrew further into depression.

Yates has been locked up in the psychiatric wing of the Harris County Jail since the day her children died.