Verdict: The Yates decision was hard

We all heard about the verdict in the Andrea Yates trial yesterday, sure. But now that post-trial interviews are coming out, we're finding out about something else jurors agreed on: Their job was tough.

"I can tell you I don't think any of us will ever forget it," said [jury foreman Todd] Frank. "Speaking for me personally, I have a 6-and-a-half- month old at home and it was pretty hard. But we paid attention for 36 days and, like I said, we all feel we made the right decision."

Frank said there was no question in jurors' minds that Yates didn't know her actions were wrong when she drowned her five children in her Clear Lake home's bathtub in 2001. What the jury did have some trouble with was the verdict "not guilty by reason of insanity": "There were certain of us would rather it would have said, 'guilty but insane,'" Frank said.

Houston defense attorney Brian Wice told the Chronicle that the men and women who served on the Yates jury may never have to do anything as difficult again: "I've never been more proud of a Harris County jury in the 27 years I've been practicing criminal law here," he said. "They took facts that make most of us either want to cry or seek some type of horrific vengeance — and they were able to nevertheless come to a verdict that was the only proper verdict under the law and the facts." He also noted that, because the death penalty wasn't an option in Yates' retrial, so people who opposed the death penalty weren't excluded from serving on the jury, Yates might have ended up with a jury more sympathetic to her insanity defense. The result "merely underscores what we as defense attorneys knew all along — that death-qualified jurors are much less likely to accept an insanity defense," Wice said.

Both Wice and UH law professor Sandra Guerra Thompson, who also talked with the Chronicle about the case, agreed that Yates will probably never be released from Rusk State Hospital, where she will be kept under court supervision. "I don't think it's likely she will ever see the outside of Rusk," Wice said. "And maybe that's what justice in this case means,'' Wice said.

- Blog reaction to the verdict from the Chron's TechBlog and more from Kuff's World