01/02/07 (TX):
State Insanity Laws Flawed?
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The Mental Health Association of Greater Houston is advocating a in change in the state's insanity defense statute. The trials of housewife Andrea Yates for the 2001 drowning of her five children should, say the MHA, convince everyone that change is needed.
They say that If ever there was an obvious case of a severely mentally ill defendant charged with murder, it was Yates. Her delusional state and severe postpartum depressions before the killings were well-documented, as was her desperate mental condition in jail after her arrest. That did not prevent the District Attorney from spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars trying to convict Yates as a murderess. One expert witness for the prosecution gave erroneous testimony in the first trial that led to the overturning of her conviction. The psychiatrist was called back to testify in the second trial, in which the jury found Yates not guilty by reason of insanity.
Medical and legal experts say the Yates case helped to educate Americans and fundamentally changed public opinion about how to handle mentally ill people who commit crimes. If so, the time is right for lawmakers to change the Texas statute to recognize situations in which a defendant might be aware his actions are wrong, but his mental state prevents him from acting on that knowledge.
In the last five years, four Texas women, including Yates, were charged with murdering their youngsters and pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. Only Yates was convicted, a verdict that was reversed on appeal. The others were Lisa Diaz of Plano, who drowned her two daughters; Deanna Laney of Tyler, who fatally beat two sons; and Dena Schlosser of Plano, who dismembered her baby daughter.
The facts of each case indicated the mothers were severely mentally ill, yet prosecutors felt compelled to charge them with murder. Schlosser's trial ended in a hung jury. A judge later took five minutes to find her not guilty by reason of insanity. She was committed to a state mental hospital in North Texas, where she became Yates' roommate and friend.
State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, has long supported insanity defense reform. He argues that people in the grips of mental illness cannot appreciate the difference between right and wrong because "the illness is too compelling."
© X-Pro 2007
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