Andrea Yates' capital murder case has been delayed because of scheduling problems with defense witnesses. Jury selection was scheduled to begin Monday, but State District Judge Belinda Hill pushed it back to June 22, with testimony scheduled to start June 26. The new date will allow two psychiatrists, George Ringholz and Lucy Puryear, to testify on Yates' behalf.
The new trial date is less than a week after the fifth anniversary of Yates' children's deaths. She drowned her five children in a bathtub June 20, 2001; about the time of the anniversary every year, her condition deteriorates, attorney George Parnham said.
"I am always concerned because each year when that anniversary comes around she decompensates to a degree," Parnham said. "Sometimes it is good. Sometimes it is not so good."
Yates' second trial comes after her first capital murder conviction was overturned based on false testimony from forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, who discussed an episode of Law & Order in which a woman was acquitted by reason of insanity after killing her child. Jurors later learned that the episode didn't exist, but they sentenced Yates to life in prison anyway. Yates has again pleaded innocent by reason of insanity; in the second trial, her lawyers will again try to show that she suffered from a mental condition so severe that she didn't know killing her children was wrong.
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