Yates understood her crime, psychiatrist says

Yesterday in the Andrea Yates trial, a forensic psychiatrist testified at length that Yates acted as though she understood what might happen after she killed her five children — though it didn't initially occur to her that she might be executed for doing it. Testimony from Michael Welner centered on a 14-hour interview he had with Yates in May concerning her feelings after she was picked up by police in June 2001, including her reaction when she heard a radio talk-show host threaten to shoot her between the eyes:

"He was angry, and he wanted justice," Yates said during the videotaped interview at Rusk State Hospital. Asked if she understood why the talk show host was upset, Yates said, "Yes ... (because of) what had happened — five children."

Yates told Welner it was when she heard that — in a police car on her way downtown — that she first realized she might be executed for drowning her children. But Welner pointed out several things he said showed that Yates knew the killings were wrong: She declined treatment opportunities and medical advice, she kept her homicidal thoughts to herself, she called the police so they would discover the kids' bodies before her mother-in-law did and she wasn't willing to talk to her husband when he confronted her about the drownings. "Russell Yates was summoned home, and when he confronted her, she deliberately ignored him and turned away from him so they wouldn't have any contact. That is consistent with shame," Welner said.

In her capital murder retrial, Yates' attorneys are trying to prove that she didn't know right from wrong when she drowned the kids and therefore is not guilty by reason of insanity. The prosecutors' case is that Yates knew what she had done was wrong. if Yates is found not guilty, she'll be sent to a state mental hospital under the jurisdiction of the court; if she's found guilty, she'll be sentenced to life in prison.