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An appeals court on Thursday overturned the capital murder convictions of Andrea Yates, ruling that a prosecution witness gave false testimony that may have influenced the jury that convicted her in the drowning deaths of three of her five children.
The ruling by the 1st Court of Appeals returns the case back to the trial court for a new trial.
The court based its reversal on false testimony by a prosecution witness, psychiatrist Park Deitz, who stated during her March 2002 trial that the killings occurred shortly after an episode of the NBC television show “Law & Order” in which a woman drowned her children and later was acquitted by reason of insanity....
Other witnesses testified during the trial that Yates watched the television series, allowing the prosecution to suggest that Yates had seen the show and used the plot to plan the murders of her kids by drowning them in the tub of the family's home....
Jurors learned after Yates was convicted that the episode never existed....
The appeal cited 19 alleged errors from her trial, but the appeals court said since the false testimony issue reversed the conviction, it was not ruling on the other matters. Among other things, Yates attorneys had claimed the Texas insanity standard is unconstitutional.
Prosecutors told the court last month there was no evidence Dietz intentionally lied and that the testimony was evoked by Yates’ defense attorney during cross-examination. They also argued that Dietz’s testimony wasn’t material to the case and there was plenty of other testimony about Yates’ plans to kill her children.
“We agree that this case does not involve the state’s knowing use of perjured testimony,” the appeals court said in its ruling. But the judges said prosecutors did use the testimony twice and referred to it in closing arguments....
A wet and bedraggled Yates called police to her home on June 20, 2001, and showed them the bodies of her five children: Noah, 7, John, 5, Paul, 3, Luke, 2, and 6-month-old Mary. She had called them into the bathroom and drowned them one by one.
According to testimony, Yates was overwhelmed by motherhood, considered herself a bad mother, and had attempted suicide and been hospitalized for depression....
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