TYLER, Texas — She knows it was wrong now, but Deanna Laney was unremorseful and sincerely believed she was carrying out God's will even six days after she stoned two of her sons to death last year, jurors learned from a videotaped interview Thursday.

In December 2003, after treatment and medication, Deanna Laney sobbed incessantly while discussing the killings.

But they also heard that the 39-year-old, devoutly religious housewife told a jail official seven hours after the killings that she should talk to a lawyer before divulging what voices had been telling her.

Judge Cynthia Stevens Kent ruled that, with this testimony, defense lawyers opened the door for testimony that would normally be inadmissible. People accused of crimes have a constitutional right to remain silent and that right cannot be used against them, but Stevens concluded after a 90-minute hearing outside the jury's presence that defense psychiatrist Philip Resnick gave prosecutors a loophole to get the evidence before the jury.

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Prosecutor April Sykes tried to use her cross-examination of Resnick to show that Laney knew some of her conduct was wrong before and after the killings. Resnick, however, stuck by his conclusion that Laney knew murder was illegal under "man's law" but she was answering to a higher authority when she attacked sons Joshua, 8, Luke, 6, and Aaron, 14 months.

Joshua and Luke died. Aaron has permanent disabilities as a result of the attacks two days before Mother's Day last year. Laney, on trial for capital murder, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

In the videotaped interview on May 16, 2003, Laney told Resnick she believed that by killing her children she would join Andrea Yates as the second of God's two witnesses.

"I thought we were going to be two witnesses to the end of time. I remember there was a lady in Houston who drowned her children," Laney explained. "I was thinking she killed the youngest, and then the middle and then the oldest. I was thinking, 'Hmm, am I going to be one of the witnesses?' These were thoughts in my head."

The defendant's husband, Keith Laney, cried as a videotaped interview of his wife was played for jurors.

Yates drowned her five children. A Houston jury rejected her insanity defense in 2002 and she received a life sentence. According to testimony in that case, Yates suffered from postpartum depression and was under professional care. Laney, by contrast, had not been diagnosed with any mental disease, and family members said that they found her to be a loving mother and devout Christian woman.

Resnick, like two prosecution experts, testified that he concluded Laney suffered from such a severe mental disease that her hallucinations and delusions about God's plan for her prevented her from understanding that killing her children was wrong. He noted that Laney was unremorseful in her May 16 interview, but sobbed seven months later after treatment, anti-psychotic drugs and a realization that her belief that God wanted her to kill her children was a hallucination.

"When I saw her May 16, Mrs. Laney was still frankly delusional, still believing she had done the right thing in killing her two children and injuring the third," Resnick testified.

During that session, Laney was asked by Resnick whether she believed God is infallible.

"In our faith, we believe the word of God. The word is an infallible word," Laney said.

Asked a short time later why she was suddenly crying, which she had not done when describing her children's deaths in graphic detail, Laney said, "I feel the Holy Spirit rising up within me when I speak about Him."

Prosecutors on Thursday, the fourth day of the trial, began a not-so-subtle shift in approach with witnesses. In contrast to their opening statements Monday, prosecutors seems to be building toward asking the jury to find Laney guilty of capital murder.

On Monday, by contrast, Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham told jurors that "the system" will have worked regardless of whether they find Laney guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity.

On Thursday, however, Sykes mentioned the brutal nature of the killings in questioning Resnick about his testimony that Laney tried to be "kind" in the manner in which she killed the children.

Sykes reminded Resnick of previous evidence that Laney crushed the boys skulls with large rocks, that she placed boulders on their chests, and that Luke didn't die right away.

"Is that kind?" Sykes asked.

The question set off a lengthy semantic argument which ended when Sykes asked whether she could be deemed insane because she believed her deceased grandmother spoke to her through red birds.

"I'd rather not comment on your mental health," Resnick responded.

The trial is being broadcast by Court TV.