Andrea Yates Murder Conviction Is Overturned by Texas Court

[TheGeneral+]

The murder conviction of Andrea Yates, who is serving a life sentence for drowning three of her five children, was overturned today by a Texas appeals court because of false testimony.

During Yates's 2002 trial, psychiatrist Park Dietz testified that the NBC television network had aired a program of ``Law & Order'' in which a woman drowned her children in a bath tub, the Texas First Court of Appeals of Houston said in its ruling.

Dietz said the program in which the female character was found insane aired before Yates killed her children in 2001. Dietz testified that he had treated Yates and that she frequently watched ``Law & Order.'' It was determined after the trial that NBC had, in fact, never aired such a program.

The Texas appeals court ruled that Dietz's inaccurate testimony was material to Yates's conviction.

Yates's attorneys argued during her trial that the stay-at- home mom was under psychiatric care when she killed her children and didn't know right from wrong.

 

[xpanda]

Jesus. Will she at least be locked up in a psychiatric institution for a very very very long time?

 

[GAMEFACE]

liberalism runs amok.

 

[JinnRikki]

In texas were high school football and executions are the prefered entertainment?

 

[docmercer--banned]

We miss Bush in Texas ...

Like having Genghis Kahn in charge ... We led the nation in executions under King George!

 

[docmercer--banned]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/061700-102.htm

In his five years as governor of Texas, the state executed 131 prisoners -- far more than any other state

The Chicago Tribune published a compelling report on an investigation of all 131 death cases in Governor Bush's time. It made chilling reading.


In one-third of those cases, the report showed, the lawyer who represented the death penalty defendant at trial or on appeal had been or was later disbarred or otherwise sanctioned. In 40 cases the lawyers presented no evidence at all or only one witness at the sentencing phase of the trial.

In 29 cases, the prosecution used testimony from a psychiatrist who -- based on a hypothetical question about the defendant's past -- predicted he would commit future violence. Most of those psychiatrists testified without having examined the defendant: a practice condemned professionally as unethical.

Other witnesses included one who was temporarily released from a psychiatric ward to testify, a pathologist who had admitted faking autopsies and a judge who had been reprimanded for lying about his credentials.

Asked about the Tribune study, Governor Bush said, "We've adequately answered innocence or guilt" in every case. The defendants, he said, "had full access to a fair trial."

There are two ways of understanding that comment. Either Governor Bush was contemptuous of the facts or, on a matter of life and death, he did not care.

At the heart of the problem is the Texas way of providing lawyers for defendants too poor to hire their own, as most are in death cases. There is no state system. Judges assign lawyers -- often lawyers who have contributed to their election campaigns.

"The State of Texas is a national embarrassment in the area of indigent legal services," a committee of the State Bar of Texas says in a report just approved. Again, Governor Bush has shown no concern about this reality. He vetoed a bill, passed by the legislature, that would have let Texas counties set up a limited public defender program for the poor.

Capital punishment, long favored by a majority of Americans, has become a national issue again because of concern about the fairness of its administration. Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, a Republican, imposed a moratorium on executions in that state after 13 men on death row were shown to be innocent. Pat Robertson and other conservatives have called for a national moratorium. The most complete study ever done of the death penalty process, by Prof. James S. Liebman and others at Columbia University, was published the other day. It showed that two-thirds of death convictions or sentences were upset on appeal for such reasons as incompetent defense lawyers or prosecutors who bent the rules.