Question

This week you learned about mental health and law. You also learned about the case of Andrea Yates. Your discussion is two fold.

Part A:

Having read about Andrea Yates, answer the following questions keeping her in mind:

• How should judicial system prosecute a mentally disturbed offender who has committed a serious crime?
  • When answering this question, think about jury selection (should the jury receive training in mental illness). Think about the judges presiding over these cases (should the judge receive training in mental illness).
  • Should Andrea Yates receive the death penalty? Justify your answer.

Part B:

For this, you need to do a bit of investigation. Find out the psychiatrist who testified in Andrea Yates' case.

• What was his assessment of Andrea's mental health at the time of the crime?
• What did he testify regarding insanity for Andrea during first and second trial?
• Without giving out the answer, this psychiatrist provided an information during the first trial which was not true? What was it? Do you think that fictitious statement affected the jury's decision? Should/was this psychiatrist held responsible?

Answer 1

Andrea Yates suffered from acute depression and psychosis (delusions) when she drowned her children in a bathtub in her house in Houston. She was convicted not guilty and was send to a Texas mental hospital.She tried to commit suicide atleast once before systematically drowning her four children to death. Alot of concern, both ethical and psychological oriented comes across as this case is analysed. One if them is the role of judiciary and their tratement of a mentally ill offender. Judicial system needs to make it mandatory for its judges and staff member to go through a training programme on how to deal with mentally ill offenders. A penal policy can be passed that focus on the creation of judiciary -mental health liaison programmes which not only trains the judiciary but also provides workshops, conferences by psychiatrist and psychologist on the subject matter of clinical psychology. This would not only sentitize the system towards mental illness but give an in-depth perspective about the psychological state of the offender while commuting a crime.

The psychiatrist who handled her case was Dr.Muhammad Sawed who treated her and noted in his chart that she showed no symptoms of psychosis.He refused to give her an anti-psychotic medicine on the request of Yate's husband. He deemed her suffering from neurosis but rejected any presence of psychosis. On the other hand, Yate was deemed as extremely ill by another psychiatrist, Dr.Ellen Allbritton, a psychiatrist at Devereux who contradicted Saeed's testimony and said , "She looked very ill, withdrawn. It looked like she hadn't taken care of herself in quite some time," Allbritton told the court. "I wouldn't have trusted her to walk across the street."( CNN, March5,2002).

Contradictions from both the psychiatrist on their diagnosis did have an effect on the hearing. One cannot ignore the fact that she drowned her children and was receiving a psychiatric treatment at that time, which proves that her actions could have been controlled if Dr.Saeed vested his interest in her treatment and provided her the right medicines to avoid any dysfunctional act. Nonetheless, one cannot deny that the crime was committedandcould have been avoided if Yates received right treatment andtherapy for her mental illness.

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