Yates Knows Husband Remarried
Doctors monitored Andrea Yates' mental state after she learned her ex-husband remarried over the weekend, days before her retrial Monday in the 2001 drowning deaths of their children, her attorney said.
"I spoke with the doctors yesterday when I saw the photographs in the paper," George Parnham
Yates was convicted of murder in 2002, but the conviction was overturned because a forensic psychiatrist gave false testimony. She has again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity for her second trial, which was to begin Monday.
Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty.
Yates' lawyers were to ask the judge for a delay.
"I think both sides can use extra time," Parnham told Syler. "This case is extremely important, obviously to Andrea Yates. There are also issues of mental health and the criminal justice system that take center stage and we want, certainly, to be as well-prepared and as effective as possible in presenting these issues to the jury in defense of our client."
Yates' former husband, Rusty Yates, divorced her in March 2005, three years after she was sentenced to life in prison in the deaths of the five children, who ranged in age from 6 months to 7 years.
Parnham said his client is "the best that I've ever seen her" due to "excellent care" in the state prison system and the state mental health system.
"Continued hospitalization for Andrea will help her withstand the pressures and rigors of one more time of going back to this situation in front of a jury and in front of the public," Parnham said.
Rusty Yates married Laura Arnold, 41, during a private ceremony Saturday at the church where they met.
The church minister said Yates chose to move on with his life while resisting temptation to pity himself.
"I have bittersweet feelings about (the remarriage)," Parnham says. "I told Rusty a number of years ago that, obviously, there has to come a point in where he gets on with his life. Andrea has to get on with hers."