Updated: 02:18 PM EST
Andrea Yates Again Pleads Not Guilty
Original Murder Convictions for Deaths of Children Overturned

HOUSTON (Jan. 9) - Andrea Yates pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in
the drowning deaths of her children Monday as she made her first court
appearance since her 2002 capital murder convictions were overturned.
State District Judge Belinda Hill set a March 20 trial date.


David J. Phillip, Pool / AP
Andrea Yates, right, is escorted out of a Houston, Texas, court Monday after
pleading not guilty by reason of insanity in the drowning deaths of her
children.

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Yates, 41, will remain in the custody of the Harris County Sheriff's
Department until she is retried for the deaths of three of her five children.
Her
attorney, George Parnham, had asked that Yates be sent to Rusk State Hospital
until the new trial.
During her original trial, jurors rejected Yates' insanity defense and found
her guilty for the 2001 deaths of three of the children drowned in the family
bathtub: 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John and the youngest, 6-month-old Mary.
Evidence was presented about the drownings of the other two children -- Paul,
3, and Luke, 2 -- but Yates was not charged in their deaths.
Yates was sentenced to life in prison.
Her convictions were overturned last January by a state appeals court because
of testimony by the state's expert witness, forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz.
He testified that, shortly before Yates killed her five children,
television's "Law and Order" series broadcast an episode about a woman with
postpartum
depression who drowned her children. No such episode ever existed.
1/9/2006 11:51:31
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