A Texas jury sentenced Andrea Yates to life in prison today for drowning her five children in a crime that shocked the nation and touched off bitter debate about treatment of the mentally ill.
The sentence, reached after a stunningly fast 35 minutes of deliberation, means Yates (37) must serve at least 40 years behind bars. The only other punishment option under tough Texas laws was death by lethal injection.
Yates, who told police after the June 20, 2001 murders she wanted the state to execute her, nodded to one of her lawyers but otherwise showed little reaction to the verdict when state District Judge Belinda Hill read it to a packed court.
Members of her family, who believed she should be treated for her mental problems and not punished, expressed relief and cried as the verdict was read. Husband Rusty Yates nodded yes as his mother sat beside him and cried. Andrea Yates' mother, Jutta Karin Kennedy, bowed her head and silently began to cry.
Yates' life sentence came in notoriously tough Harris County, where prosecutors have sent more defendants to their executions than any other US county and all but two states, Texas and Virginia. Judge Hill is expected to formally sentence Yates shortly, possibly as soon as today.
The jury's decision ended a month-long trial in which the former nurse and high school valedictorian confessed to drowning her five children in the bathtub of their Houston home, but said she was trying to save them from the devil.
She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, citing a history of mental illness that included two suicide attempts and four psychiatric hospital stays, the last one a month before the murders.
Mental health experts testified that Yates was schizophrenic and suffering from postpartum depression that began after the birth of her fourth child and flared up again after the fifth.
Her lawyers argued that had she received proper treatment and not been rushed out of hospitals because of health insurance limitations, the crime would not have been committed. Just two weeks before the drownings, her psychiatrist inexplicably took her off anti-psychotic drugs, they said.