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Andrea Yates Debacle a Tragic Wake-Up Call

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Media Link - Boston Globe
Written by Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D.   
Saturday, 29 July 2006 00:00
Andrea Yates, who systematically drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001, was originally found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in 2002. Now, in 2006, a new jury has determined that she was insane and therefore not responsible for her actions. Instead, she'll be placed in a mental hospital and eventually released. Her ex-husband, with whom she's still friends, applauded the new jury's decision. He thanked them for "rising above the superficial facts" because she was obviously psychotic rather than a true killer. Hmmm...Five dead kids, maliciously tortured and killed by their mother. These are superficial facts? This man clearly has issues. Since when is the burden of proof on the victims of a crime (or those who represent the victims) to show that a person is NOT insane when he or she does profoundly irrational things? Imagine if Osama bin Laden and other terrorists were handled this way. What if we refused to hunt him down and kill him because, clearly, he's insane and doesn't really know what he's doing? What if a psychiatrist testified this to be the case and it was up to everyone else to prove the psychiatrist wrong? That would be the end of the pursuit of Osama bin Laden. At most, he'd end up in a psychiatric facility if we ever found him. The Andrea Yates debacle is a wake-up call to our legal system. The vague, unfounded view that insanity means not knowing right from wrong, even when you competently and deliberately execute a terrorist act against innocent victims, provides the potential for anyone to be released from responsibility for his or her actions. Let's be blunt here. It takes work to drown all five of your kids. You must watch them gasp for breath, struggle for life--and still decide to let them die. If Andrea Yates can be released from responsibility for killing her children in a clearly insane, yet also systematic and premeditated way, then you or I can be released from any wrongdoing we commit in a period of "depression." Could this be the true motive behind a jury forgiving the unforgivable? A world where everything becomes tolerable and excusable is the real definition of insanity, if you ask me.
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