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CNN Saturday Morning News

Rare Weekend Session to be Held in Yates Trial

Aired March 09, 2002 - 09:15   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: About an hour from now, testimony will resume in the capital murder trial of Andrea Yates. The rare weekend court session will begin with the defense's cross-examination of a high-profile forensic psychiatrist.

CNN's Ed Lavandera joins us now outside the courtroom in Houston, Texas.

Hi, Ed.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Kyra.

The defense attorneys telling us yesterday as they were leaving the courthouse that they have some avenues of questioning that they're going to pursue with the prosecution's medical expert witness, Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist from California who is very well known around the country for testifying in this high -- in these high- profile cases. You might have heard that Dr. Dietz has made appearances in the John Hinckley case, the Unabomber case, Timothy McVeigh. So he's got quite a resume.

He testified yesterday that he was convinced that Andrea Yates knew from -- right from wrong. He interviewed her for four or five hours last November, and in some remarkable questioning, where Andrea Yates really reveals and walks through the day of the drownings and how she systematically drowned all five of her children. And it was the most descriptive details that we've learned so far about that morning.

But Dr. Dietz also leaving the door open, and this is what defense attorneys want to pursue, that even though Andrea Yates, he's convinced, knew right from wrong, that he wasn't very prepared yesterday to say whether or not he knew for sure that Andrea Yates met the threshold for legal insanity in the state of Texas.

So defense attorneys say that they want to explore this with Dr. Dietz. And they're also worried about those details. And at one point in Dr. Dietz' conversation with Andrea Yates, she described how she was filling off the -- that morning on June 20, the first child came up to her and said -- and that was Paul, 3-year-old Paul, I believe -- and said, "Mommy, are we going to take a bath today?" Defense attorneys know this kind of emotional evidence weighs heavily on a jury.

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GEORGE PARNHAM, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: It's not a major concern. I think they're hopefully anesthetized enough to these horrible fact situations to be able to keep their eye on the prize, so to speak.

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LAVANDERA: And that prize for the Yates family is to make sure that Andrea Yates is found not guilty by reason of insanity, which means she would go to a state mental hospital for an undetermined amount of time.

Court session resumes in about an hour, as you said, Kyra, and Dr. Park Dietz will be on the witness stand under questioning from defense attorneys.

Back to you.

PHILLIPS: Ed Lavandera, thanks so much.

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