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American Morning
The Big Question: Will Russell Yates' Testimony Save His Wife's Life?
Aired February 28, 2002 - 07:16 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The big question at this hour, will Russell Yates' testimony save his wife's life? In just a few hours, Russell Yates will be back on the witness stand as the defense tries to bolster his wife's insanity claim. He will be cross-examined by the prosecution today. Defense lawyers yesterday used Russell Yates' testimony to show jurors why he is standing by the woman who drowned his five children.
Here is Ed Lavandera's report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RUSSELL YATES: Say cheese.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cheese.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For almost 10 minutes, silent home video of Andrea Yates playing with her five children was projected on a giant screen in the courtroom. The silence was intense. Jurors' eyes locked on the images of a smiling mother and jubilant children. As the video played, Russell and Andrea Yates exchanged nervous glances.
FAIRY CAROLAND, RUSSELL YATES' AUNT: The pictures were saying that were indicative of what their life was like the majority of time and that's the way Rusty wanted the lives of his family preserved.
LAVANDERA: Tearful emotion overwhelmed Russell Yates as he held a tiny heart-shaped book, the last Valentine's Day gift Andrea made for the children. She filled the books with playful coupons. Each had a message. One, Andrea wrote that it was redeemable for a big squeezy hug. This is the Andrea Yates defense athletes want the jury to see.
GEORGE PARNHAM, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I thought that it was important to at least reinforce the difference between the mother on June the 20th and the mother that she had been.
WENDELL ODOM, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: She was crying almost the entire last hour and she just, every, it was just hard on her, every time they would talk about the children or the marriage or the relationship, it was just a real rough day for Andrea. LAVANDERA: On several occasions, Russell Yates said no one in the family saw Andrea as a danger. He says regular doses of the anti- psychotic medication Haldol helped Andrea through the first bout of psychosis after their fourth child Luke was born. But Yates says the same treatment wasn't repeated when the symptoms returned last year.
Two days before the drownings Russell says he was desperate to find a cure and that he felt beaten.
CAROLAND: It hurts a lot. And when I see him on the stand I don't just see the wonderful man that he's grown into. I see the little boy that I knew when he was small and he was in curls. That's also what I see.
LAVANDERA: Ed Lavandera, CNN, Houston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZAHN: And Anne Gesalman has been covering the trial for "Newsweek" and got a firsthand look at Russell Yates' appearance in court yesterday and at the jury's reaction. She joins us from Houston this morning.
Anne, thanks very much for being with us.
ANNE GESALMAN, "NEWSWEEK": Good morning.
ZAHN: This is the first appearance Russell Yates had in a courtroom when his wife was present. Was there any interaction?
GESALMAN: Well, actually, they had seen each other in one other courtroom appearance during a competency hearing in the fall. But that was far less emotional than what we saw yesterday. Rusty and Andrea did look at each other quite a bit. And at first Rusty seemed extremely sort of fidgety on the witness stand and sort of rocking in his chair, almost like he was trying to avoid looking at Andrea. But then when there was a brief conversation between the lawyers and the judge at the side of the bench, they had quite a few moments to just sort of look at each other and even mouth what appeared to be words of encouragement. It was hard to see what they were saying. But they seemed to really be connecting. And, of course, then they became very emotional when the videotape was shown a bit later.
ZAHN: Let's talk a little bit about the significance of that videotape. It was taken, as I understand it, at the time of the birth or shortly after the birth of their fifth child, Mary. We're going to show a different section of the tape, a different part than what the jury saw. But as we see that, tell us about the impact of the other portion of this tape when it was shown to the jury.
GESALMAN: Well, the tape lasted about seven minutes and it was a videotape but the judge ruled that the jury could not hear the audio portion. So it was the feel of a silent movie. The courtroom was completely silent and what you saw on the screen was many children bouncing, happy. There were, there were portions of the tape the children were bouncing on the family bed. Noah, the oldest boy, was holding the newborn baby, Mary, in the hospital room. The videotape at one point panned to Andrea Yates, who was in her hospital gown sitting on her hospital bed, clearly had just delivered Mary within the last 24 hours but yet was openly holding her children and expressing all kinds of love to the kids and, of course, her newborn baby.
It was, it seemed like very happy moments for the Yates family and the jury seemed very moved by it, scribbled notes intently. Andrea, at the very first frame of the video, began to sob. The video began with pictures of Noah kneeling down by a potted plant that had a butterfly attached to a flower. And of course we've heard many times that Noah was just in love with butterflies. And so this apparently was a moving moment for both Andrea and Rusty. They both began to sob at the sight of Noah with his butterflies.
ZAHN: And you said obviously the jury was very moved by this video, as well, and the jurors were scribbling notes. Could you gauge, based on that reaction, if it was the reaction of jurors who might potentially want to save Ms. Yates from a potential death sentence?
GESALMAN: Well, it's just very difficult to tell what's going on in the minds of the jurors. I will say I've seen a number of juries in the past and this one seemed to be very intent on hearing the evidence very clearly. I think that if anyone was taking more feverish notes in that courtroom than the many reporters there, it was the jury. Each one of them has a note pad. Each one of them has a pen in their hand.
During the videotape, as you asked, they were not crying, but they were very attentive and watching the tape, watching Rusty, watching her. They seemed to be sort of caught up in it. Of course, we believe the reason the videotape was shown was to be a stark contrast to the earlier videotape we'd seen in the trial, of course, that showed the Yates children dead. It was a much different scene, a much different picture.
And so it did not end in tears by the jury, but they seemed to be moved by it.
ZAHN: Anne, before we let you go, to a certain extent Russell Yates has been under siege in this trial with many people posing the question what sort of responsibility he might bear for what happened to his children. And we just heard this very poignant reaction from one of his family members saying that two days before the drownings he reached a point of desperation, not understanding how he could go on to help his wife. A closing thought on that this morning?
GESALMAN: Well, Rusty has been scrutinized quite a bit since June 20 and this was the first time that we've really seen an attorney put very pointed questions to him about, you know, at different points during her treatment, from 1999 on to 2001 when this tragedy happened, you know, why didn't you do more? Why didn't you find another doctor if you weren't pleased with the one that you had? Why didn't you continue, if you had concerns, why didn't you essentially do more? And at each time he was asked basically that question. He said essentially that he thought he was doing the right thing, that he thought he was going to the right people and that he also had just, as many of us, had just sort of a general ignorance of mental illness and the severity of it. And, of course, Andrea was not very expressive and so that leant some mystery to what was going on in her mind.
But it was a difficult moment for him. The defense attorney was very pointed, but I wouldn't say belligerent. And I think he came off fairly well.
ZAHN: All right, Anne Gesalman, thank you very much for your insights. And we would love to count on you down the road for future observations of the trial.
GESALMAN: Sure.
ZAHN: Thank you for your time this morning.
GESALMAN: Sure. Absolutely. Thank you.
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