Yates trial raises questions with insanity pleas

Our criminal justice system has failed us again. It's that simple. A polarizing issue has divided us. Where do we as a people draw the line when determining one's sanity in a criminal case? Twelve jurors in the state of Texas believe insanity in the legal sense of the word does not exist.

Andrea Yates, a Texas mother, was found guilty of three counts of capital murder for the systematic drowning of her five children June 20, 2001 according to www.msnbc.com. No one denies that it was her hands that held her children's faces underwater long enough to deprive them of air, ultimately ending their young lives.

The standard in our courtroom for the longest time has been that for a guilty verdict to be handed down, jurors must believe without a shadow of a doubt that the defendant was the perpetrator of the crimes for which he or she is being tried. Yates' defense team called 12 credible and expert psychiatrists who testified that Yates suffered from a severe mental disease and did not know killing her children was wrong. Even to those who apply the most liberal of definitions to insanity have to entertain the thought that when 12 medical experts can testify to her legal insanity, the standard for proving she was beyond a shadow of a doubt guilty has been met.

In that same msnbc.com article, the prosecutorial team agreed that Yates suffered from a severe mental disease. Were the prosecutors doing their jobs in deciding that either life in prison or the death penalty were the right choices for the jury to choose from during the sentencing phase? Could they have been using this case to step up onto the national map? Did they try to set an example of Andrea Yates?

"But it seems to me we are still back in the days of the Salem witch trials," George Parnham, one of Yates' defense attorneys, commented after the verdict was read, according to msnbc.com.

Joe Lovelace of the National Alliance of the Mentally Ill believes some good will result if Yates receives life in prison, which she did during the sentencing phase. Under Texas law, a prisoner sentenced to life in prison must serve 40 years before being considered for parole. Lovelace said that Yates would receive treatment to help with her mental instabilities. However, if she were instead placed in a mental institution, would that provide a better opportunity for medical experts to study Yates further, possibly to uncover more concrete symptoms and prevent future tragedies? With a case as extreme as this, doctors and the medical community could try new and more powerful drugs that help counter the effects of postpartum depression and psychosis. It is not right to lock this woman up for the rest of her life and throw away the key when there is still good that can come from this madness.

One of her attorneys, Wendell Odom, said Yates will not be able to pose a threat to society because she will be locked up in a state prison for the next 40 years. She will be 77 before she even will be considered for parole. She does not have a criminal mind, he added. He said the worst thing she has done in her life, besides her actions of June 20, was run a red light.

Many in the legal community, particularly those lawyers who host their own talk shows, are astounded at the swiftness of the jury's verdict. I have not heard anyone question the validity of the common American sitting on jury panels, but is a change needed there? In a case this important, with such dire consequences and such far-reaching ramifications involved, should only lawyers and other "duly-noted educated people" be allowed to sit on juries? I won't dare go as far. If a jury was unable to find that Andrea Yates suffered from a severe mental condition that impeded her judgement as to what was right and wrong, I'm convinced that the mental insanity plead will never again save a defendant's life. Which other wackos would this jury have found "legally sane"?

Let's just examine one small aspect of this case. Many witnesses have testified that Andrea Yates was a loving mother. Her sister testified that she wished she was as good a mother to her kids as Andrea was. Tell me how such a loving mother, in her right mind, would murder her five children? It seems that simple to me. We've all heard that Yates believed she was saving her children from Satan and the eternally burning flames of hell. She believed what she did was right, and her thoughts on what was right were clearly wrong.

I cannot testify to the mental condition of Yates at the time of these crimes. I have not studied the workings of the human brain. I don't agree she was completely responsible for the crime committed that day, but as a realist, I can see others holding her partially responsible. In our legal system however, they need to find her 100 percent, beyond a shadow of a doubt guilty and competent enough to know right from wrong and the consequences of her actions. I don't know if any other 12 people in their right mind could reach such a decision.

Jeffrey Cretz is a junior SMAD major who would have kept that jury in the deliberation room until a hung jury was declared.