I suppose it is for people like Andrea Yates that we have the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, in our Constitution. I make this conjecture on the grounds that if no such amendment existed, then the mother, who systematically drowned her five children ages 6 months to 7 years, would be the recipient of the worst imaginable cruel and unusual punishment the state of Texas could think of.
Lucky for her we have rules about that sort of thing.
Lucky for her she gets a trial to determine if she will put to death or spend time in a mental institution. If it were up to many people, there would be no trial, only an execution. I would include myself in that group of people.
On June 20, 2001 Andrea Yates felt an overwhelming pressure to "save" her children. Their salvation? Not a cross, but a bathtub. A bathtub that Yates did not use to baptize her children in, but instead used it as a means of killing each one of them.
She started with the youngest, her six month old daughter, Mary. After she had held her infant underwater long enough for life to escape, she went calling through the house, "Luke!" Her 2-year-old son would be next, then 3-year-old Paul, then John, 5, and finally the oldest, Noah, 7.
As she murdered each one, she would lay their lifeless bodies on a bed, one by one. By time she got to Noah, the eldest boy had to have known something wasn't right. Have you ever known a 7-year-old little boy? I have. They're a handful, full of life, full of excitement and pretty strong. I don't think a 7-year-old boy would hold his own head underwater until death without a struggle, a tenacious struggle at that.
When police arrived at the Yates residence the only child not on the bed was Noah, his head was still submerged under water. His mother won the battle. Andrea Yates fought with her son, probably amidst pleas for help and questions of "Why are you doing this, Mommy?" Ignoring her responsibility as a mother to help her son, Yates quieted his screams by killing him.
There is a trial being held for Andrea Yates right now. The trial is not one of guilt or innocence, since she is the one who called 911 to inform the police of what she had done. There is no dispute that what I accounted for you previously most certainly happened, for Yates admits to it. The trial is one of sanity or insanity. The penalty ranges from death to time spent in a high security mental institution.
Since her arrest, Yates has been undergoing extreme psychiatric evaluation. She told one psychiatrist that "My children were not righteous. I let them stumble. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell."
The closest she came to a rebuke of her actions was to say, "I was so stupid. Couldn't I have killed just one to fulfill the prophecy? Couldn't I have offered Mary?"
Couldn't she have offered Mary?! What kind of logic is that?! "Gee, I wish I would have only killed my infant child, and not the rest?"
And what is the prophecy she speaks of?
No one is quite sure, not even the doctors. However, Yates has claimed that she hears the voice of Satan, and at one point claimed she was Satan, bearing the mark of the beast on her head. She believes that killing her children was the only way to kill Satan. Throughout her time in detention, prior to the trial, she claims to hear Satan's voice in the hallways.
So what is wrong with Andrea Yates?
Some are claiming a kind of postpartum disorder is what has caused her mental state. More specifically, doctors are calling it postpartum psychosis, an extreme form of postpartum depression that occurs in roughly 1 out of every 1,000 new mothers. The disorder has the ability to inflict hallucinations and cause the mother to hear voices.
I am willing to admit I believe Andrea Yates is not mentally stable. Any person who can methodically kill her own children is clearly not a normal individual. She is the kind of person who does not belong in society. She is the kind of person that gets referenced in the same breath as Hitler or Ted Bundy when one speaks of truly sick people. Andrea Yates is certainly messed up in the head, but does that really mean she doesn't deserve the harshest penalty possible, execution?
Proof of insanity is not a valid reason why Yates' life should be spared.
Some people who are sick don't know any better. Others who are mentally ill and commit crimes that aren't that horrible are worth treating.
But Yates knew what she was doing was bad; she knew it was Satan's work, hence her quote mentioned previously about wishing she would have only killed one of her children instead of all of them.
Andrea Yates is not worth treating or helping. She has failed miserably at being a mother and at being a decent human being.
This woman is undeserving of anything but a slow death that will take her to final judgment.
Rob Jones is a political science junior. Reach him at robert.d.jones@asu.edu.
