In a Houston courtroom a few days ago, Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the drowning of her five children. Although many conservative bloggers were outraged by Yates's "walking free,"* most people recognize the verdict as a blow for sanity and justice.
When Yates was first convicted in 2002, many people questioned how in the world a woman that clearly crazy could be held accountable. But the jury had not a doubt that she should be: they only deliberated for three and a half hours hours before returning a guilty verdict. This was less than half the time it had taken a previous jury to decide she was competent to stand trial; and competency is a standard set so low that, according to one Houston reporter, "If you're walking, you're competent."
The verdict was overturned on appeal because one of the prosecution's expert witnesses, psychiatrist and television consultant Park Dietz, had testified that Andrea Yates had gotten the idea for killing her children from a Law & Order episode that he had worked on where a mother drowned her kids. Except, oops! there wasn't any such episode. His bad. One of the most conservative appeals courts in the most conservative state in the union recognized that just perhaps telling a jury that there was a clear blueprint that the defendant was following when the blueprint didn't even exist might be prejudicial to the defendant. Ya think?
In the second trial, the jury deliberated for thirteen hours over a period of three days. Not as short as the first one, but not a tremendously long time, either. (The Scott Peterson jury took ten days to arrive at a verdict.)
So, what was the difference? Was the Law & Order episode that crucial to the first jury's decision? That seems rather strange. After all, Dietz is an expert who knows his stuff, and his misremembering about the episode was only part of a lengthy testimony, most of which had do with his perception that Yates had not been psychotic when she killed her children. He testified to that in the second trial as well.** (There were of course numerous other doctors who testified in Yates's defense, saying she was psychotic. Given than one doctor who had treated Andrea Yates following a previous bout of postpartum psychosis stated that she was one of the "five sickest patients I've ever seen," I tend to side with the jury on this.)
Maybe it was the fact that people know more about postpartum psychosis, to some extent because of the Andrea Yates case.
Or maybe it's because the prosecutors were barred from seeking the death penalty.
They were barred from doing so because the jury in the first trial had refused to sentence Yates to death. I'm sure, had they been able to, the prosecution would have gone for the death penalty all over again. Even though at the first trial they sought the death penalty during the "conviction" phase of the trial, and endorsed life imprisonment during the "sentencing" phase.
Because "death-qualified juries" are more likely to convict than other juries. Furthermore, such juries are more likely to reject insanity defenses.
Think about that... the death penalty affects who gets convicted, not just who gets sentenced to death.
Yet another way in which capital punishment warps the justice system. Not only is it applied capriciously -- you think not? God help you if you are accused of murder in Texas. Or Virginia. (For example, the rush to the executioner's chamber leads to insane laws restricting introduction of evidence of innocence on appeal. Virginia's is especially draconian -- a defendant has twenty-one days to introduce new evidence of any sort. [Edit: further research shows that they revoked the 21-day rule last year. That leaves untouched other similar but not quite as short time periods in other states.] Any evidence that shows up later, no matter how strong -- DNA exonerating the defendant, for example -- is simply disregarded.) The tendencies of death-qualified juries to convict it makes miscarriages of justice -- such as nearly happened in the Yates case -- much more likely, as prosecutors are able to game jury selection in such a way that disadvantages the defense from the start.
And yet the majority of people support the death penalty in this country.
Is this madness, or what?
* Individuals who are found "not guilty by reason of insanity" do not "walk free." They are sent to state mental hospitals, where they are locked away. The main difference between state mental hospitals and prisons is that the residents get better mental health treatment. They also tend to be locked away for longer periods than people who commit the same crime who end up in prison.
** Dietz testified in the second trial, but incredibly, the judge barred any testimony concerning his erroneous testimony at the first trial. This is staggering: defense attorneys almost always use prior testimony to impeach witnesses and throw doubt on their credibility. That the defense was precluded from doing so in this case was a boon to the prosecution.
Agreed.
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