I agree with this column.
She's mentally ill, but GUILTY. I think she needs to be sentenced to life in prison... hospitalized, treated, first... then sent to prison for life
COLUMN: Dead mom walking
By Bill Cleeland
Daily Illini (U. Illinois)
02/25/2002
(U-WIRE) CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Telephone operator Dorene Stubblefield received an unusual call last year. On the morning of June 20, a woman phoned her Houston 911 center requesting the police be sent to her house. When Stubblefield asked why, the caller became cryptic and avoided answering the question directly.
Stubblefield: "Are you there alone? Is your husband there with you?"
Woman: "I just need them to come."
Stubblefield: "Are you sure you are alone?"
Woman: "No, my kids are here."
Stubblefield: "How old are your kids?"
Woman: "They are 7, 5, 3, 2 and 6 months."
Stubblefield thanked the woman for providing the information and dispatched a patrol car to her address. It was a strange conversation, even by 911 standards. Many callers are excited or flustered when they dial for assistance. This woman's voice was flat, lacking emotion -- especially for someone so insistent authorities be sent.
When police arrived at 942 Beachcomber Lane minutes later, a "zombie-like" woman answered the door. Her clothes were drenched with water, her hair soaked. "I just killed my kids," Andrea Yates told the officers. They went inside to find all five of her children dead, drowned by their mother in the family's bathtub. Killer moms aren't exactly a recent phenomenon. In ancient Greek mythology, Medea slayed her children to get revenge on her husband, Jason, for cheating on her. But until recently, it seemed to be a rare, unthinkable occurrence.
The 1994 case of Susan Smith changed that, bringing national publicity to the problem of mother-child homicides. Smith claimed an African-American male had stolen her car and kidnapped her two boys. For days, the story gained national attention as the weepy mother begged the carjacker to return her children alive. Then cracks appeared in Smith's story before it finally came out she had strapped her two sons into their safety seats and allowed her car to roll into a lake, drowning them.
As with Medea, twisted love was at the root of the incident. Smith had hoped the deaths of her children would make her ex-boyfriend fall in love with her out of pity. Since then, other media reports involving murderous mothers have popped up, some even more gruesome than the Smith case. Stories emerged of mothers shooting their children, stabbing their children. Remember that old urban legend about the psycho mom who microwaved her baby to death? Well, it's not an urban legend anymore. It happened in Virginia in 1999.
Then, just as society was becoming desensitized to killer mothers, along came Andrea Yates. A woman who didn't just kill one child, or two, or three, but five. A woman whose oldest son actually saw her drown his younger sister and tried to escape before dear ol' mom dragged him back to the bathtub and drowned him, too. Prosecutors say Yates knew what she was doing and have charged her with two counts of capital murder.
Yates and her defense attorneys claim she's not guilty by reason of insanity. If convicted, she could face lethal injection or life imprisonment. If found innocent, she would be committed to a state mental hospital. It's understandable why many people believe lethal injection is the only proper punishment. If there ever was a case in which the death penalty is justified, this would seem to be it. After all, if you don't execute a woman who murdered five of her own children, who are you going to execute?
But it's not that simple. Even prosecutors admit Yates was a mentally sick woman at the time of the murders. For years she suffered from a severe case of postpartum psychosis, a condition which afflicts one in every 500 women who give birth.
In Yates' case, the illness manifested itself for two years before the murders. Voices in her head would tell her to "Get a knife!" and harm members of her family. On other occasions, she'd perform self-mutilation, such as scratching bald patches on her scalp and slashing her legs and arms with her fingernails. Twice she tried to kill herself.
Clearly Yates was a messed-up woman when she drowned her children. Whether that means she should be spared the death penalty is for a jury to decide. But given the vicious nature of the crimes, at the very least she should never see freedom again.
Mental illness should not be an automatic "get out of jail free card." Especially when five innocent lives are lost. |
