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Mother Who Drowned 5 Children in Tub Avoids a Death Sentence
By JIM YARDLEY

HOUSTON, March 15 — Andrea Pia Yates, the mentally ill mother convicted of drowning her children in a bathtub, avoided the death penalty today as a Texas jury recommended a life sentence that requires that she spend at least 40 years in prison.

The jury of eight women and four men, which took less than four hours on Tuesday to reject Mrs. Yates's insanity plea and find her guilty of murder, took only 35 minutes today to return a life sentence. Mrs. Yates, 37, seemed to smile at her lawyers before leaving the courtroom, and one of them, Wendell Odom, later described her as "relieved," if somewhat confused by the proceedings.

The punishment phase of the trial was notable for the passivity of Harris County prosecutors, usually considered among the most aggressive in the nation. Months ago, District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal had brushed aside criticism to pursue the death penalty against Mrs. Yates. Yet during closing statements today, one prosecutor, Joe Owmby, never asked jurors for a death sentence and almost seemed to be steering them to vote for life.

The other prosecutor, Kaylynn Williford, was more forceful, asking jurors to remember the brutality of the killings and saying the crime met the standard for a death sentence. But she also said, "Whatever decision you make, the state will accept."

Prosecutors made no opening statement in the punishment hearing and presented no witnesses.

Russell Yates, Mrs. Yates's husband, expressed relief at the life sentence, but added that his family was "offended she was ever prosecuted." Mr. Yates blamed the medical establishment and the justice system for failing his wife and others with mental illness.

Asked if he bore any responsibility or would change anything he had done, Mr. Yates paused. "I can't change the past," he said at a news conference after the trial. "I know I did all I could."

Given a second chance, Mr. Yates said, he would have taken his wife to a different hospital in the months before the killings and to a different psychiatrist. Defense lawyers had criticized the last psychiatrist to treat Mrs. Yates for taking her off the anti-psychotic drug Haldol about two weeks before the drownings.

"All of us in our family, we all stand behind Andrea," Mr. Yates said.

The four-week trial attracted national attention as advocates for the mentally ill argued that the standard for an insanity defense was too strict in Texas and that society needed to do more to recognize and treat mental illness.

Mrs. Yates, who had received diagnoses of postpartum depression and psychosis after her fourth and fifth children were born, confessed to the police that she drowned her five children, ages 6 months to 7 years, in a bathtub on June 20.

She later told relatives and psychiatrists that Satan was inside her and that she had killed her children to save them from "hellfire and damnation."

Patrick Kennedy, a brother of Mrs. Yates, said, "We don't as a family believe justice was accomplished here because we believe a sick person has been sent to prison for 40 years."

Dr. Lucy Puryear, a psychiatrist who testified on behalf of Mrs. Yates, said she is taking anti-psychotic medication and that because of its numbing effect, "she doesn't really have an emotional understanding of what's going on."

Defense lawyers read a short letter Mrs. Yates wrote in which she said, "I thank God I was blessed with such a precious family."

George Parnham, a defense lawyer, said Mrs. Yates "regrets that this illness brought her to a place where she could kill her own children."

Throughout the trial, lawyers and family members have been silenced by an order from Judge Belinda Hill of State District Court. But today, Mr. Yates spoke freely, saying the silencing order had been "personally injurious" to his reputation.

He responded to accusations that he was a controlling husband who had done too little to support his wife, saying he and his mother had taken responsibility for the children and other concerns during Mrs. Yates's bout with psychosis. He sharply attacked the local medical community and said he had not known that Mrs. Yates was psychotic and never thought she would harm their children.

"She never told me she'd had any thought of harming the children before," he said.

Asked if he would remain married, he said, "I don't know." Mr. Yates, a NASA engineer, said he might pursue a new career. Asked if he would like to have more children, he said: "I don't know. Maybe."

The possible sentences for capital murder in Texas are death or life in prison. Texas law requires two conditions for a death sentence: that the defendant be considered a future danger to society and that no mitigating factors warrant the lesser life sentence. Jurors today found that Mrs. Yates posed no future danger, so did not need to address the issue of mitigating factors. The date of the official sentencing has not been set.

Outside the courthouse, prosecutors were repeatedly asked about their actions during the punishment phase and their approach toward the death penalty.

Mr. Rosenthal, the district attorney, said the trial had concluded as "we had predicted," and he repeated his position that he had pursued the death penalty so jurors would have a full range of sentencing options.

Ms. Williford denied she had softened her argument. If faced with the decision again, she said, she would still have sought the death penalty.

Mr. Owmby, though, said he did not "think the facts in this case" warranted his recommending the death penalty.

Before closing arguments today and without the jury present, defense lawyers made an unsuccessful motion for a mistrial after discovering that an expert witness for the prosecution, Dr. Park Dietz, had made a mistake in his testimony. Dr. Dietz, a psychiatrist, testified that the television program "Law & Order," for which he is a consultant, broadcast an episode shortly before the killings in which a mother was acquitted on an insanity defense after drowning her children in a bathtub. But no such episode was ever taped.

Mr. Parnham, the defense lawyer, argued that this error was critical because the jury could have considered it evidence of possible premeditation after prosecutors suggested she could have seen the program.