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HOUSTON (AP) Andrea Yates had visions and heard voices
encouraging her use a knife to kill her five children but she
decided it was "too bloody," a jail psychiatrist testified
Monday.
As testimony resumed in the second week of Yates' capital murder
trial, Dr. Melissa Ferguson said under cross-examination that Yates
also ruled out drugs to kill her children but believed drugs were
possible for suicide. Ferguson interviewed the Houston mother at
the Harris County Jail the day after her children were drowned in
their bathtub June 20.
"Do you remember her making a statement, 'After thinking about
my options, I decided drowning would be the best way to end their
life'?" assistant district attorney Kaylynn Williford asked.
Yates said "something about drowning, that drowning was the
way," Ferguson replied. Asked by Williford if she recalled Yates
saying, "I decided a knife was too bloody," Ferguson said yes.
Ferguson testified Yates told her she thought about killing her
children for at least three months and thought about it the night
before the children were drowned.
Other testimony this week is expected to include doctors who
treated Yates before the killings.
Yates is on trial for two counts of capital murder for the
deaths of three of her five children. Prosecutors are seeking the
death penalty in the deaths of 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John and
6-month-old Mary. Charges could eventually be filed in the deaths
of Paul, 3, and Luke, 2.
Yates' attorneys contend the former nurse turned stay-at-home
mother is innocent by reason of insanity. Prosecutors are seeking
the death penalty.
Ferguson testified Friday that Yates thought she had been marked
by Satan, that killing her children was the only way to save her
children from the torment of hell, and that Yates believed the
state would destroy Satan when it punished her for her children's
deaths.
"'My children weren't righteous,"' Ferguson said Yates told
her. "'They stumbled because I was evil."'
"'I deserve to be punished. I am guilty,"' she quoted Yates as
saying.
Prosecutors had finished their case earlier Friday after four
days of testimony from police officers, homicide detectives, a
crime scene specialist and the 911 operator who took Yates' call.
Prosecutors presented an audiotaped statement Yates made to
police. In it she detailed how she waited until her husband left
for work to fill the tub. Jurors also viewed photos of the
children's bodies.
In Texas, a person is presumed sane and it is up to the defense
to prove a defendant is insane.
During opening statements, prosecutors said Yates knew what she
was doing was a sin and, therefore, that it was wrong.
Yates medical records from 1999 detail two suicide attempts
following Luke's birth and a doctor's warning that she should think
twice before having additional children.
They also include a mention that Yates had her first homicidal
thought following Noah's birth. If jurors determine Yates was
insane, a separate hearing will be held to determine if she will be
released or involuntarily committed.
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