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American Morning
Defense in Andrea Yates' Trial Has Rested
Aired March 07, 2002 - 07:17 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.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: To Houston now and the Andrea Yates murder trial. The defense in that trial has rested. In the courtroom yesterday before wrapping their case, Yates' lawyers presented two videotape interviews that they claim prove that Andrea Yates was insane when she drowned her five children.
Here's CNN's Ed Lavandera.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): One woman, two distinctly different images. The first tape shows Andrea Yates five weeks after the murders. Dark shadows circle her eyes. She appears withered. Yates mumbles through the interview. Her jaw twitches as she stares blankly off camera.
She's asked, "Why didn't you kill yourself instead of the children?" Yates never answers.
The second tape is an interview with Yates in early February after eight months of taking anti-psychotic medication. She's engaged in the conversation. Yates says the psychosis has left her mind, the voices are silent, the hallucinations have disappeared.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We hope it's compelling. I mean that's the way we want it.
LAVANDERA: The video images don't capture Andrea Yates on the day of the murders. To be found legally insane in Texas, a jury must believe Yates did not know right from wrong as she drowned her children.
RUSTY HARDIN, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: It is going to come down to, I think, those 12 people and how, where do they start out, do they start out thinking about the children or do they start out thinking about the mother?
LAVANDERA: Defense attorneys used a preeminent expert on women's mental health issues as their final witness. Lucy Puryear, who conducted the two interviews, says schizophrenia caused Andrea Yates' psychotic delusions. In September, she described to CNN what someone like Yates experiences.
LUCY PURYEAR, PSYCHIATRIST: Mother has thoughts and feelings about hurting the children that are often bizarre and delusional and if the woman's not treated, some bad things can happen.
LAVANDERA (on camera): Prosecutors asked Dr. Puryear if she had ever treated anyone who talked about killing their children as a way of getting back at a dominating spouse. Andrea Yates says she felt overwhelmed and pressured by motherhood. It's a sign, perhaps, the prosecution will explore this motive as they start presenting their own medical experts starting Thursday.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, Houston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The big question at this hour, did Andrea Yates' lawyers get the job done? Did they prove their defense of not guilty by reason of insanity?
Joining us now for a closer look at how the defense did and what we can expect from the prosecution, Cynthia Alksne, former federal prosecutor, who joins us from Washington this morning. Good to see you again, Cynthia.
CYNTHIA ALKSNE, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Good morning.
ZAHN: All right, in order to be found legally insane, the jurors must believe that Andrea Yates did not know right from wrong at the time of the drowning deaths of her children. Did the defense prove that, in your judgment?
ALKSNE: Well, they did a lot of things quite well. But let's frame it first so you understand what a win is considered. For them, they only have to get one person to disagree with the rest of the jury in order to hang the case up and essentially win it in that way. You know, the prosecution has to get 12 jurors, the defense only has to get one. So you have to sort of look at it from that as a different goal from the prosecution.
They did a couple things really well. The first is that they brought home her sickness and detailed her downward spiral through the use of her family and her friends and the videos that we just heard about, and that was important. They also did a great job with the experts pounding home and defining her mental illness. Remember, the prosecution chose not to really discuss much about her mental illness on opening and the defense has jumped into that and filled that vacuum and filled it all up and set the baseline.
And that is a pretty important thing to do. And then the other thing that I thought they did extremely well was because they painted the whole picture for the jury, the defense attorneys had become the truth tellers in the courtroom. So when the jurors want to know what really happened, they can look over to the defense attorneys and look for that. That's something that will really help the defense attorneys come closing.
ZAHN: All right, so Cynthia, if you had been sitting on that jury yesterday, would you have bought the defense case? I know that might be a tough thing for you to admit as a former prosecutor, but it was pretty darned compelling, wasn't it?
ALKSNE: It is very compelling and, you know, I've tried a lot of cases, and I've tried a lot of cases in Texas. And if I had been sitting across the table from these defense attorneys, I would be pretty worried.
ZAHN: I'm also hearing you say, as a former prosecutor, perhaps, that the defense out lawyered the prosecution here. Am I correct?
ALKSNE: So far I think so. I think that the prosecutors didn't take advantage of their opening statement and withered away a very important opportunity. The defense attorneys did. They're the ones who have defined her illness. And so now the prosecutors are sort of playing catch-up.
I mean here we have a case that they spent about a day on the murders of these children and now a long time on Andrea Yates. The prosecutors have a tough road to hoe now to bring the case back home to the murder of the children.
You know, they have to obviously in their rebuttal case, they have to talk about her and why she knew right from wrong. But they also have to get the jury's attention back so that they're focusing again on the death of these children instead of, you know, all about Andrea Yates. And that's going to be hard. They have to do that. They have to win the battle of the experts.
Park Dietz (ph), who is the prosecution's expert, is very experienced. He's very personable. He's good with a jury. He turns to the jury and talks to them. He has to be as compelling as all of the -- the defense had nine psychiatric experts and that's going to be a difficult task.
The good news for the prosecution and a mistake that the defense made was their expert admitted that Andrea Yates knew it was illegal to kill her children. And he had to sort of dance around that. Well, she doesn't right from wrong and she thought it was right and da da da da da, but she knew it was illegal. That's a contradiction sort of in thinking that the prosecution can take advantage of and we'll see if they do.
ZAHN: And you've just talked about the challenge of the prosecution having to shift the focus now. What do you think will be the lingering impact of the videotapes the defense showed of two strikingly different Andrea Yates, one a remorseful, psychotic woman, the other one a more coherent, happy person?
ALKSNE: Right. And...
ZAHN: Do you think that that's going to be hard for jurors to erase from their mind?
ALKSNE: I think it will be and also remember, there was a witness, this nurse, this M.D. Anderson (ph) nurse who is a very old friend of Andrea Yates who told a compelling story about her downward spiral and described what eventually the jurors saw on the videotape. I think that's been one of the strengths of the defense is they really have made her illness come alive through the use of these friends and the videotapes.
ZAHN: Well, is it...
ALKSNE: It's going to be tough for the prosecution to get 12 jurors to agree that she was sane. It may also be tough for the defense to get 12 to say she's insane, but the hung jury possibility is a very real one.
ZAHN: Well, you've given us a very good perspective on all this as we try to figure out where the case goes from here.
Cynthia Alksne, good to have you with us, as always.
ALKSNE: Thank you.
ZAHN: Appreciate your time this morning.
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