A Texas jury yesterday spared Andrea Yates from execution by lethal injection, sentencing her to life in prison for drowning her five young children in the family bath last summer.
In the 35 minutes it took to determine her sentence, the eight women and four men of the jury decided Yates was not a danger to society, which means an automatic life sentence. Under Texas law, that is at least 40 years without a chance of parole.
The 37-year-old former nurse confessed to drowning her children, aged 6 months to 7 years, in the bath of their Houston home on June 20, 2001, but she said she did it to protect them from Satan.
She had been mentally ill for at least two years, twice attempting suicide and four times being treated at a mental hospital, testimony showed.
The same jury took less than four hours on Tuesday to convict her of capital murder, rejecting the insanity defence her lawyers mounted.
Prosecutors acknowledged Yates was sick but successfully persuaded the panel she knew the crime was wrong, the only standard for sanity in Texas.
Prosecutors asked and received the court's permission to pursue the death penalty, but suggested in closing arguments that jurors hand down a life sentence.
In emotional testimony the mother and husband of Yates pleaded that the mentally ill housewife's life be spared from a death sentence.
"I'm here pleading for her life; I've lost seven people in one year," a teary-eyed Ms Karin Kennedy told the jury.
"She was a wonderful mother, she was the most caring person I know," said a sobbing Mr Russell Yates, who has stood by his wife throughout her trial for systematically drowning the children under the impression that she was saving them from Hell.
Yates' defence hinged on her mental illness inhibiting her from knowing right from wrong when she murdered Noah (7), John (5), Luke (3), Paul (2), and Mary, six months. Yates' mother-in-law, Dora, said she kept a journal in which she wrote about people who meant a great deal to her.
"The page on Andrea is the longest. She was such a beautiful person inside, she was always wonderful to the children," Ms Dora Yates said. "I separate what happened to the children. . . because that was not her."
There are two questions Texas juries must consider before issuing a death sentence.
They must determine a defendant constitutes a continued threat to society, and consider whether there are "sufficient mitigating factors" in a defendant's background that warrant sparing his or her life.
The National Organisation for Women supported Yates and said her case highlighted the need for more education about postpartum depression. - (Reuters, AFP)