Legal Insanity

Today the jury in the Andrea Yates trial began deliberating.

Verdicts are supposed to reflect the juries' detemination of facts and truth. Generally witnesses testify and lawyers argue conflicting versions of what occurred. The jury must then sort through the evidence,testimony and arguements to determine the truth.

But the odd thing about cases where insanity is the defense is that both prosecutors and defense attorney generally agree about what happened.

In the Yates case there was no question about what happened at the Yates home when Andrea killed her children. Everyone agreed that Andrea had a very troubling history of severe mental illness and was delusional and psychotic shortly before and shortly after she killed her children.

Yet this jury has an exteremely difficult job to do. They have to make sense of a charge and laws that make no sense.

Their verdict is supposed to reflect whether they believe Andrea was too insane to know right from wrong when she killed her children. Whether they are supposed to base that decision on what Andrea thought was wrong according to the Texas Penal Code, God, the devil, the voices in her head or her own values will remain unclear.

The verdict from the first trial focused a national spotlight on the problems with Texas insanity laws. Countless attempts were made before and after that verdict by advocates in the criminal justice and mental health fields to change Texas laws.

The truth is that in cases where violence has occured juries are always going to be afraid to find a defendant not guilty by reason of insanity regardless of whether they believe the accused to be insane. There is fear that without adequate treatment and supervison, violent acts will be repeated. And there is no way to assure jurors that the person sitting in that courtroom will be supervised, treated or prevented from hurting anyone else.

Texas laws fall woefully short of assuring treatment options for it's mentally ill citizens in the free world or in the criminal justice system.

What frightens me the most is knowing how many other severely mentally ill persons there are in Texas who are not getting treatment. The Texas legislature has consistently cut funding to MHMR resulting in eliminating treatment options for thousands of mentally ill Texans. There are countless other tragedies of the magnitude of this case that could be prevented but will not be.