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Yates Expert Holds His Ground

The Andrea Yates child murder trial is very much a battle of the expert witnesses, and credibility is the turf to be won and lost. CBSNews.com Legal Consultant Andrew Cohen analyzes the latest testimony and its likely impact on the case.



Prosecutor Joe Owmby poked and prodded and bobbed and weaved and raised his voice and lowered his voice and put up graphics and brought down graphics and in the end, after less than two hours of back-and-forth, landed barely a scratch on the credibility and reputation and conclusions of Dr. Phillip Resnick, the man who quite literally wrote the book on the psychology of child killings.

On Friday, Dr. Resnick, a defense expert, told jurors that in his opinion Yates was legally insane when she killed her children last June 20th. And on Tuesday, after Owmby was through with his cross-examination, Resnick's position was no less clear or authoritative or definitive.

In fact, it's arguable that Resnick's command of the subject matter for which he was called to testify is even more apparent to jurors today than it was last week. He was that good. And he looked that good.

If it is possible to actually look like a genius, or at least what passes for a genius these days, Resnick has the look-sort of a cross between a Ivy League professor and a rocket scientist. I'm glad I never have to duel with him in a courtroom and it's easy to see why he has the reputation he does in his field.

It was a mismatch from the start, actually. No contest. While Owmby has shown flashes of grit and style during the course of the trial, Resnick is simply in a different league. He's been answering snotty questions from prosecutors and defense attorneys for a generation-over 30 years-and he clearly has developed a sense of where the lawyer wants to lead him during any particular examination.

That prescience came in handy repeatedly on Tuesday when he stopped Owmby in his tracks just as the prosecutor was trying to back him into a corner. It was like watching a cat toy with a mouse and I suspect few witnesses have made Owmby look as mousy as Resnick did on Tuesday.

For example, Owmby got Resnick to concede again (he had done so during direct examination last Friday) that in his opinion Yates knew that killing her children was legally wrong. But Owmby got nowhere, and I mean nowhere, when he tried to budge the good doctor even an inch on the more crucial question of whether Yates knew what she was doing was "morally" wrong or just plain old wrong, which seems to be one of elements of insanity under the laws of Texas.

Owmby tried to go through and around and behind and underneath Resnick's testimony but in the end the doctor simply repeated what he had told jurors last week: even though Yates realized that what she was doing was against the law, she still thought she was doing the right thing because in her psychotic state Yates thought that killing her children was the "higher good" since it would guarantee them a spot in heaven while guaranteeing that Satan, whom she believed resided within her, would be killed when she was executed by the State.

And just in case jurors didn't catch that conclusion the first few times Resnick offered it, he gave them a few more catch phrases to hang onto. Given the nature of her psychosis, Yates selected the "lesser of negative consequences" Resnick told jurors. "There is no rational explanation for killing five children unless you think it's in their best interests," he added when asked by Owmby if it was possible that Yates was faking her psychosis or at least faking the reasoning she offered after the killings were done.

Yates' own lawyers could not have elicited such powerful testimony in favor of their client. They were so delighted, in fact, that they didn't even stand up and object when Owmby's questions of Resnick clearly were legally objectionable. He was doing well enough on his own, one attorney told me later.

Then, previewing what the state's own medical hired-gun is going to testify to later this week, Owmby asked Resnick if it were possible for Yates to have killed her children not only for altruistic reasons - which is Resnick's view - but also out of revenge for and frustration with her controlling husband and her suffocating lifestyle.

What Owmby hoped Resnick would concede is that the two reasons are not mutually exclusive, setting up future testimony from prosecution witnesses that Yates killed her kids for simple revenge against Russell Yates and not for some complicated religion-based theory based upon Heaven and Hell. "Mutually exclusive," Resnick declared, explaining to jurors that revenge and altruism in general were fairly opposite intentions. Case closed.

Owmby deserves credit for at least one thing. He knew when to quit while he was behind. After Yates' attorney George Parnham further bolstered Resnick's image with jurors during a brief re-direct examination, Owmby asked only a question or two on re-cross. Isn't the simplest explanation sometimes the best one? he asked Resnick. No, the expert replied with the final precise word, sometimes it is and sometimes things are just complicated.

By Andrew Cohen

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