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CNN Saturday Morning News

Jury Hears Compelling Testimony From Psychiatrist in Yates Trial

Aired February 23, 2002 - 07:19   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Attorneys for the Texas woman accused of drowning her kids will resume their insanity defense Monday. Yesterday jurors heard compelling testimony from a psychiatrist who treated Andrea Yates.

CNN's David Mattingly reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In a Houston courtroom, our first disturbing glimpse into the mind of a mother who drowned her five children. The Harris County psychiatrist treating Andrea Yates in her first days behind bars testifies she was one of the sickest patients she had ever seen.

Convinced she was Satan, Yates believed the mark of the devil was hidden under her hair, and she believed her children were doomed to suffer in hell because she was evil.

At the time of the murders, Yates had been taken off antipsychotic medication. Now she is on antipsychotics and antidepressants daily.

WENDELL ODOM, YATES DEFENSE ATTORNEY: She's well medicated, so she's doing OK.

MATTINGLY: All this follows five days of police testimony, shocking crime scene video of the Yates children, photos, and an audio-taped confession, just part of the evidence introduced by the prosecution before the state rested its case Friday morning.

JOE OWMBY, PROSECUTOR: Well, you're always a little relieved when you get past (UNINTELLIGIBLE), that's where we are now. So we got another stage of proceedings to go.

ODOM: They want to shock the jury, they want to make the jury angry. They want the jury to forget the evidence of her state of mind and concentrate simply on the prosecution's mantra, which is, five dead children.

MATTINGLY: And it's a heavy legal burden on the defense, trying to prove that Yates was so overwhelmed by psychotic delusions she did not know right from wrong when she drowned her five children in the family's bathtub.

DR. ROBERT GORDON, WILMINGTON INSTITUTE NETWORK: The one best bet that they have is not within their power, it's within the psyche and emotional state of the jury.

MATTINGLY (on camera): Friday's testimony is just the first step as defense attorneys plan to take the jury on a long journey through one woman's tragic struggle with mental illness.

David Mattingly, CNN, Houston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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