Yates Found Guilty in Drowning Deaths

HOUSTON (AP), March 12 - Andrea Yates, the 37-year-old housewife who admitted she drowned her five children in the bathtub, was convicted of murder Tuesday by a jury that rejected her claim of insanity in just 31/2 hours.

Yates was found guilty of two counts of capital murder covering the deaths of three of her children. She could be sentenced to death or to life in prison following the penalty phase that begins Thursday.

Standing between her attorneys, Yates showed little reaction as the judge read the verdict. Her husband, Russell, muttered, "Oh, God" and buried his head in his hands, and some of Yates' relatives left the courtroom in tears.

"I'm not critiquing or criticizing the verdict," defense lawyer George Parnham said. "But it seems to me we are still back in the days of the Salem witch trials."

He described his client as "very upset." Prosecutors left the courthouse without comment.

The crime attracted widespread attention as a stunned public asked what could cause a mother to systematically kill her children. It also raised new questions about the effects of postpartum depression, which Russell Yates and experts hired by the defense said Yates had struggled with for years.

Andrea Yates never testified. But her videotaped interviews with psychiatrists, her audiotaped confession to police and her 911 call the day of the drownings all were played for jurors.

Deliberations began after prosecutors told the jury of eight women and four men that Yates, a former nurse, had thought about harming her children for years and ignored a doctor's orders in 1999 to refrain from having any more.

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