Andrea Yates, mad or bad?

Q.When Andrea Yates called 911 asking for a cop, she told the dispatcher who wanted to know if she was alone: "No, my kids are here." Cops who arrived at the Yates home on June 20 found four of the children's bodies lying on a bed under a sheet and a fifth floating facedown in the bathtub, said Harris County Assistant District Attorney Joe Owmby. The breath was taken out of their bodies by the defendant, Andrea Pia Yates," he told jurors at the start of her murder trial.

A.Yates fidgeted as she sat in the courtroom as the trial began in a case that has launched an emotional national debate on postpartum depression and whether Yates needs to be treated or punished. Prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty, played the 911 tape as they seek to prove that, although they acknowledge she was in the throes of postpartum depression, Yates was sane enough to call cops after the children's deaths. But Yates' lawyer, George Parnham, told the jurors - eight women and four men - that his client had such severe postpartum depression that her delusions made her believe killing her children was the right thing to do. "Postpartum depression with psychotic features is the cruelest form of mental illness," he said in his opening remarks. "It takes the very nature and essence of motherhood - to love, nurture and protect - and changes the reality," the defense lawyer argued. Parnham said he would present evidence during the three-week trial that would show her mind was so fogged by psychosis that Yates had no idea what she was doing, much less whether it was right or wrong. "Our experts will tell you that the psychosis and the delusions that caused a loving mother to do what occurred on the 20th of June were so severe, that it was so long-standing, that Andrea Yates' ability to think in abstract terms, to give narrative responses, to be able to connect the dots, was impaired," Parnham said. The defense is expected to point to her history of mental illness, including bouts with postpartum depression prior to the killings. Parnham said his client did not get adequate care for her illness and was taken off anti-psychotic drugs two weeks before the killings. Yates' husband, Russell Yates, was at the courthouse with her mother and other relatives - but he and other scheduled witnesses were asked to leave the courtroom after the trial got underway. Russell Yates, a NASA computer engineer who buried the couple's five children in tiny, white caskets at a heart-wrenching funeral, has stood by his wife throughout the couple's ordeal If Yates is found innocent, a hearing will be held at least 30 days later to decide if she will be released or involuntarily committed.

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