Getting Away with Murder

Andrea Yates has been found Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity in the drowning deaths of her children. Add this to the list of Things that Trouble Me. This woman drowned not one, not two, but ALL FIVE of her children in the bathtub. She had to chase the last one down and fight him until he was dead. She had thought about it days before, even filling the bathtub with water once, "just in case" she needed it. She planned the killings at just the time of day when her husband had left for work but her mother-in-law had not yet arrived to help her for the day. She knew what she did was wrong. This verdict is a travesty. Is she insane? I completely believe in post-partum depression and psychosis. I have no doubt she suffered from that. I can possibly fathom a psychotic woman getting to the point of killing their child - but killing 5 of them, one after the other after the other? You'd think she'd catch her snap after the first one or two. I still believe she knew she was doing wrong, and that defies the insanity defense. Andrea Yates deserved the death penalty - at the very least she deserved life in prison. Now she will spend time in a mental hospital (which I'm sure is not fun, but it's not prison, either) and there is hope for recovery - hope she can eventually be released. I wonder if she will visit the grave of her children. We see it every time we go to my father-in-law's grave; we drive right past their little faces engraved on the headstone, and it breaks my heart. The jury has said she is not responsible for their deaths. So who is? I think Rusty Yates should be held accountable to some extent - he could see the problems his wife was having and yet he left the children in her care. Now he has gone on with his life - he has divorced Andrea and remarried. The whole situation is an awful tragedy, with an unsatisfactory ending.