Jury: Yates is insane, not guilty

Jurors have found Andrea Yates not guilty by reason of insanity in her capital murder retrial after nearly 13 hours of deliberation. The verdict means Yates will be sent to a state mental hospital with periodic hearings before a judge to determine whether she should be released. From the Chronicle's report:

The verdict upholding Yates' insanity defense comes after the jury deliberated more than 12 hours and spent two nights sequestered at an area hotel. Yates appeared shocked and sat staring wide-eyed with her lips slightly parted as State District Judge Belinda Hill asked each juror individually whether they agreed with the verdict.

KPRC notes that jurors took longer to reach a verdict this time than they did in Yates' first trial in 2002. Yates pleaded not guilty of the 2001 drowning deaths of her five children; her lawyers said she suffered from severe mental illness that kept her from knowing right from wrong when she killed the kids. During the retrial, defense witnesses testified that Yates hallucinated, heard voices and believed she was a bad mother and the only way to keep her children from going to hell was to kill them.

During their deliberation, jurors asked to review testimony on the definition of obsession and also took another look at a slide presentation given by the state's key expert witness, Dr. Michael Welner, who claimed Yates drowned the kids not because she believed they were going to hell but because she was overwhelmed as a mother. Welner testified he found 60 examples of behavior that showed Yates knew it was wrong to kill the children.

Jurors weren't told during the trial that a not guilty verdict would mean Yates would be committed to a mental hospital. Had she been found guilty, she would have been sentenced to life in prison.

- Other coverage from KHOU, KTRK, KTRH, Off the Kuff and Lone Star Times, plus an open-comments thread at blogHouston.