The Texas First Court of Appeals threw out today the capital murder conviction of Clear Lake mom Andrea Yates, who's serving a life sentence for drowning her children in a bathtub.
The three-member appeals court granted Yates? motion to have her conviction reversed because, among other things, the state?s expert psychiatric witness testified that Yates had patterned her actions after a Law & Order television episode that never existed. In ordering a new trial, the appellate court said the trial judge erred in not granting a mistrial once it was learned that testimony of Dr. Park Dietz was false.
?It?s unbelievable,? defense attorney George Parnham said. ?I?m stunned, unbelievably happy and desperately trying to get a hold of Andrea.?
In 2001, Yates confessed to drowning her five children, ranging in age from 6 months to 7 years, but she pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and psychiatrists determined she suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression.
She told those psychiatrists that she drowned the children because they were not "righteous" and would burn in hell if she did not take their lives while they were still innocent.
Her case generated national interest and put a spotlight on postpartum depression. The case also raised questions about Texas? legal system when it deals with the insanity defense.
During her 2002 trial, Yates? attorneys argued the stay-at-home mom, who was under psychiatric care at the time of the murders, didn't know right from wrong when she filled up the family?s bathtub and drowned her children one by one.
The Harris County jury deliberated just 3-1/2 hours before convicting her of drowning three of her children. She was not tried in the deaths of her other two children.
Yates could have received the death penalty, but the jury sentenced her to life in prison instead.
Yates' attorneys vowed at the trial's end that they would appeal the case because of the testimony of Dietz, who told the jury he had served as a consultant on an episode of the television drama Law & Order in which a woman drowned her children in the bathtub and was judged insane. He testified the show aired shortly before Yates drowned her own children.
Prosecutors referred to Dietz's testimony in his closing arguments of the trial's guilt or innocence phase, noting that Yates regularly watched the show and that she had alluded to finding "a way out" when Dietz interviewed her in the Harris County Jail after the drownings.
But right after Yates' conviction, defense attorneys discovered no such episode was produced. As a result, both sides agreed to tell jurors who'd moved on to consider Yates' punishment that Dietz had erred in his testimony and to disregard that portion of his account.
Dietz later said he had confused the show with others and wrote a letter to prosecutors, saying, "I do not believe that watching Law & Order played any causal role in Mrs. Yates' drowning of her children."
Prosecutors told the Houston-based appeals court they didn't know that Dietz was wrong about the television show, and they argued the erroneous testimony wasn't material anyway.
Writing for the appeals court, Justice Sam Nuchi agreed the state hadn't knowingly used perjured testimony but expressed concern that the jury could have been prejudiced when weighing Yates' guilt.
"We conclude that there is a reasonable likelihood that Dr. Dietz's false testimony could have affected the judgment of the jury,'' the court ruled. "We further conclude that Dr. Dietz's false testimony affected the substantial rights of appellant.''