neadods: (Default)
neadods ([personal profile] neadods) wrote2005-01-06 12:52 pm

(no subject)

Well, well, well, Andrea Yeats' conviction was overturned on appeal. What is this going to do to Rusty's plan to divorce her and breed up a replacement bunch of kids on another woman he'd grind down?

I don't get it.

[identity profile] fiona64.livejournal.com 2005-01-06 06:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Did she suddenly *not* drown those kids?

I guess I need to go look up some news articles. Did they determine that she was not guilty by reason of insanity? Is she going to be institutionalized?

Is someone going to go kick Rusty in the nuts? (I volunteer to be first, BTW.)
lizbetann: (Lucrezia)

Re: I don't get it.

[personal profile] lizbetann 2005-01-06 07:23 pm (UTC)(link)
From NY Times:

An appeals court in Texas today overturned the murder conviction of Andrea Yates in the 2001 drowning deaths of her children, after finding that an expert witness for the prosecution provided false testimony in her trial.

Justices for the First Court of Appeals in Houston said that the testimony, from a psychiatrist, was central to the prosecution's arguments that Mrs. Yates was not insane when she drowned her five children, and that she knew the difference between right and wrong.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Park Dietz, testified that he had been a consultant on an episode of the television series "Law & Order" in which a woman drowns her children in a bathtub and later is acquitted by reason of insanity. Mrs. Yates said she was a frequent viewer of "Law & Order."

Her attorneys argued in an appeal last month that her conviction should be overturned partly because Dr. Dietz lied about having consulted on the "Law & Order" episode, which never existed.


So overturned because of technical reasons, not because of the merit of the case. And L&O is affecting the courts? J'amuse.

Re: I don't get it.

[identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com 2005-01-06 07:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, CSI is affecting the courts too, so I'm not surprised that L&O is too.

Re: I don't get it.

[identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com 2005-01-06 07:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, no, she drowned 'em. But the question is, was she sane when she did it? That's what she was put in jail for, for being sane. Yes, she should be institutionalized.

And I vote that Rusty not be kicked in the nuts so much as completely divested of 'em. Because why in hell is HE not in jail for criminal neglect, knowing that he'd made his wife unable to care for the children and yet sticking them entirely in her care for any portion of the day?

Re: I don't get it.

[identity profile] shanaeden.livejournal.com 2005-01-07 02:20 am (UTC)(link)
I had never read that Rusty had "made" her unable to care for the kids. I thought that she had been deemed as clinically depressed leading to psychosis, partially due to post partum. Not true?

Re: I don't get it.

[identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com 2005-01-07 01:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Rusty made her unable because:

1) They were both warned by doctors that her pospartum depression would deepen with each child and to stop having children. He talked her into getting pregnant again.

2) Once he got her pregnant all those times, he fostered a belief in her that women didn't deserve medication for the pain of birth and were solely responsible for the care of all those children. I have yet to see a newspaper article suggesting that he allowed her to get help, to have aid, or do to anything except make herself a slave to feeding/clothing/teaching the children without break.

3) He raised the tension on her by making her move out of her house and care for the entire brood in a broken-down school bus, adding crowding (which in itself results in psychological breakdowns) to the rest of her problems. This was, eventually, fixed and the family was allowed to move back into their own home.

4) He was aware that she had mental problems; one of his "defenses" at the trial was that if the doctors had given her the proper drugs, she would have been too passive to harm the children. Yet despite knowing that she was doped to the gills, despite being aware enough that she needed help that he had his mother coming over every day to deal with the children, he also made sure that she was left alone with the children for a period of time every day. I think it was to "bond." It was during this unsupervised time that she snapped and killed them.

So - he continues the behavoir that deranges her, medicates her to the eyeballs, and leaves several small children in her care. That is both criminal abuse of Andrea and criminal neglect of the children. Quite bluntly, those children would not have died if he hadn't pushed their mother into pospartum psychois and then left them alone with her.

Re: I don't get it.

[identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com 2005-01-07 07:04 pm (UTC)(link)
And just to ice the cake, in one of the news articles about the appeal today, he justifies his divorce because "She hurt me too much." Not "I can't deal with her pain," not "I can't get over what she did to those children," no, "She hurt *me* too much." That man thinks the sun shines out his ass - and wants us all to be solar worshippers.

Re: I don't get it.

[identity profile] shanaeden.livejournal.com 2005-01-07 07:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I didn't know any of those specifics. That's just awful :( It's too bad she didn't have the will to realize that he was a horrible influence on her life, and it's so sad for his children. When I had read he was getting divorced it had seemed reasonable. It still is because maybe without him her life can take on some new meaning.

[identity profile] starcat-jewel.livejournal.com 2005-01-11 04:08 am (UTC)(link)
Late comment 'cos I've been out of town for a few days. Is the shrink going to be put in jail for perjury? Remember, this key prosecution witness lied under oath! Does he get off scot-free?