Yates thought she ruined kids

Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the bathtub because she thought she had ruined them so much that one would grow up to be a serial killer and another would become a mute gay prostitute, a forensic psychiatrist testified Wednesday. Dr. Phillip Resnick, who evaluated Yates about three weeks after the June 2001 drownings, said she knew her actions were illegal but didn't know they were wrong because she was trying to save the children from going to hell. "If she did not intervene and take their lives while they were still innocent, they would end up in hell," he said, testifying as a defense rebuttal witness. "Mrs. Yates knew what she was doing was right for her children." Yates, 42, is being retried because an appeals court overturned her 2002 capital murder conviction on the grounds that some erroneous testimony may have influenced jurors. Yates, charged in only three of the children's deaths, has again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. If convicted, she will be sentenced to life in prison. If found not guilty by reason of insanity, she will be committed to a state mental hospital, with periodic hearings before a judge to determine whether she should be released -- although jurors are not allowed to know that. Her attorneys say she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and meets Texas' definition of insanity: that a severe mental illness prevents someone who is committing a crime from knowing it is wrong.

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