Yates confessed to drowning her children. Prior to her second trial, she told
Michael Welner that she waited for Rusty to leave for work that morning before filling the bathtub because she knew he would have prevented her from harming them. After the murders, police found the family dog locked up; Rusty advised Welner that it had normally been allowed to run free, and was so when he had left the house, leading the psychiatrist to allege that she locked it in a cage to prevent it from interfering with her killing the children one by one. Rusty got a family friend, George Parnham, to act as her attorney. Prior to her trial, Yates rejected an offer to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. Although the
defense's expert testimony agreed that Yates was psychotic, Texas law requires that, in order to successfully assert the
insanity defense, the defendant must prove that they could not discern right from wrong [legal "right from wrong" not "moral" right from wrong] at the time of the crime. In March 2002, a jury rejected the insanity defense and found Yates guilty. Although the
prosecution had sought the
death penalty, the jury refused that option. The trial court sentenced Yates to
life imprisonment in the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice with eligibility for
parole in forty years. Author
Suzanne O'Malley, who was covering the trial for
O: The Oprah Magazine,
The New York Times Magazine, and
NBC News, had previously been a writer for
Law & Order and immediately reported that no such episode existed. The appellate court held unanimously that the jury might have been influenced by Dietz's false testimony, and therefore a new trial would be necessary (
Law & Order: Criminal Intent did air
an episode two years later based in part on Yates's case). On January 9, 2006, Yates again entered pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity. Her lawyers rejected a plea offer for a 35-year sentence for non-capital murder. On February 1, 2006, she was granted release on
bail on the condition that she be admitted to a
mental health treatment facility. On July 26, 2006, after three days of deliberations, Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity, as defined by the state of Texas. She was thereafter committed to the
North Texas State Hospital–Vernon Campus. In January 2007, she was moved to the
Kerrville State Hospital, a low security mental facility in
Kerrville, Texas. the state of Texas asserted that she was, by legal definition, aware enough to judge her actions as right or wrong—despite her mental defect. The prosecution further implied spousal revenge as motive for the killings, despite the conclusion of defense experts that there was no evidence to support such a motive. Although the original jury believed she was legally aware of her actions, they disagreed that her motive was spousal revenge. Her mother expressed shock when she heard of Rusty's plan while at the gathering with them, saying Yates wasn't stable enough to care for the children. She noted that Yates demonstrated she wasn't in her right mind when she nearly choked Mary by trying to feed her solid food. According to authors
Suzy Spencer and Suzanne O'Malley, who investigated her story in great detail, it was during a phone call Dr. Saeed made to Rusty during the breaking news of the killings that Saeed first learned that she was not being supervised full time. Nevertheless, Yates became pregnant with her fifth child, Mary, only seven weeks after being discharged from Dr. Starbranch's care on January 12, 2000. Rusty stated to the media he was never told by psychiatrists that Yates was psychotic nor that she could harm the children, and that, had he known otherwise, he would have never had more children. He believed that his wife was "sick" and could be cured by medication; he had no idea the extent of her condition. "If I'd known she was psychotic, we'd never have even considered having more kids," he told the
Dallas Observer." However, Yates revealed to her prison psychiatrist, Dr. Melissa Ferguson, that prior to their last child, "she had told Rusty that she did not want to have sex because Dr. Starbranch had said she might hurt her children." Rusty, she said, simply asserted his procreative religious beliefs, complimented her as a good mother and persuaded her that she could handle more children. O'Malley highlighted Rusty's continuing sense of unreality regarding having more children:
Medical community Rusty contended that as a psychiatrist, Dr. Saeed was responsible for recognizing and properly treating Yates's psychosis, not a medically untrained person like himself. He claimed that, despite his urging to check her medical records for prior treatment, Dr. Saeed had refused to continue her regimen of the anti-psychotic Haldol, the treatment that had worked for her during her first breakdown in 1999: Rusty added that his wife was too sick to be discharged from her last stay in the hospital in May 2001. He said he noticed the staff lower their heads as if in shame and embarrassment, turning away without saying a word. The hospital had no other choice due to the ten-day psychiatric hospitalization insurance constraints of their provider,
Blue Cross Blue Shield, subcontracted by Magellan Health Services. According to Dr. Moira Dolan, executive director of the Medical Accountability Network, "
homicidal ideation" was added to the warning label of the antidepressant drug
Effexor as a rare adverse event in 2005. Yates, she said, had been taking 450 mg, twice the recommended maximum dose, for a month before killing her children. Dr. Lucy Puryear, an expert witness hired by Yates's defense team, countered this contention regarding the administration of her antidepressants, saying the dosages prescribed by Dr. Saeed are not uncommon in practice and had nothing at all to do with her re-emergent psychosis. She suggested rather that Yates's psychosis returned as a result of the Haldol having been discontinued by her doctor two weeks earlier.
Religious influences Media outlets alleged that
Michael Woroniecki, an itinerant preacher whom Rusty had met while attending
Auburn University, bore some responsibility for the deaths due to certain teachings which were found in his newsletter titled
The Perilous Times, which the Yates family had received on occasion, and which was entered into evidence at the trial. Both Woroniecki and Rusty have rejected these accusations. Rusty said that his family's relationship with Woroniecki was not that close and that Woroniecki did not cause her delusions. Woroniecki maintained that his correspondence with them was intended to help them strengthen their marriage and find the love that he says his own family had found in
Jesus. Both men agreed that the alleged connection between his message and her mental state was "nothing more than media-created fiction." ==Divorce==