A Texas mother convicted of capital murder in the drowning deaths of her five children will have the rest of her life to mull over her crime: a jury decided to spare her from the death penalty and sentence her to life in prison.
The witness at the heart of Andrea Yates' successful appeal for drowning her five children said in a statement released that he simply made an honest mistake -- one he tried to clear up before the Texas mother's trial ended.
For the second time since Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001, defense lawyers will attempt to convince a jury that the Texas mother was legally insane when she committed the horrendous acts.
Shortly after Andrea Yates was arrested for methodically drowning her five children in the bathtub, she told an investigator that she was a bad mother who had doomed her young to eternal damnation, and the only way she knew to save them was to kill them.
Prosecutors rested their case against Andrea Yates Wednesday after a medical expert testified that the deep bruising and waterlogged internal organs observed during the autopsies of Yates' children indicated they struggled for several minutes as she drowned them one by one.
Andrea Yates' psychotic mind was like her own private battlefield in the war between good and evil, according to a defense expert who testified Thursday that Yates believed killing her five children would be a final defeating blow to Satan.
A Texas jury found that Andrea Yates was insane when she drowned her five children in a bathtub five years ago, and the panel acquitted her of capital murder in the deaths.
Court TV talked with Dr. Joseph Deltito, professor of psychiatry from New York Medical College, who discussed the Andrea Yates case February 28, 2002, in an online chat.
Take a look at the document detailing Yates' indictment.