Mother who drowned her children was ‘marked by Satan’
The trial of a woman accused of drowning her five children in a bath will hinge on testimony from doctors who talked to her before and after the deaths.
A psychiatrist told jurors that Andrea Yates thought she had been marked by Satan and left with only one way to save her children from the fires and torment of hell: to kill them.
Yates believed the state would destroy Satan when it punished her for her children’s deaths, said prison psychiatrist Dr Melissa Ferguson testified for the defence.
Prosecutors were expected to cross-examine Ferguson when the trial enters its second week in Houston, Texas, today.
Defence attorneys say the former nurse turned stay-at-home mother is innocent of murdering her children by reason of insanity. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
In Texas, a person is presumed sane and it is up to the defence to prove a defendant is insane.
‘‘‘My children weren’t righteous,’’’ Ferguson said Yates told her the day after the children died.
‘‘They stumbled because I was evil.’’’
‘‘‘I deserve to be punished. I am guilty,’’’ she quoted Yates as saying.
The defence has argued that Yates’ self-defeating attitude was a symptom of her severe mental illness, which left her unable to know if drowning her children was right or wrong.
