-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Woman accused of drowning children believes execution will drive away Satan Houston Chronicle Sept. 19, 2001 HOUSTON - Andrea Pia Yates wants to be executed so she and Satan will be destroyed, a psychologist testified Wednesday during a hearing to determine whether the mother accused of killing her five children is competent to stand trial. Gerald Harris, a psychologist at the University of Houston in Texas hired by the defense, visited Yates four times after she was jailed for drowning her five children in the family bathtub. The satanic delusions have begun to subside, but Yates still doesn't meet the threshold for the legal definition of competency, Harris told a jury of 11 women and one man. "She is rapidly getting better," Harris said under questioning by defense lawyer George Parnham. But Harris said he was concerned about Yates' delusions. "You're not going to defend yourself if you still believe your dying is going to get rid of Satan," Harris said of Yates' ability to help her lawyers. Jurors must decide if Yates, 37, has a rational understanding of the charges against her and can consult with her lawyers. Should they decide she is competent, Yates would go to trial on two charges of capital murder in the deaths of Noah, 7, John, 5, and Mary, 6 months. If the panel thinks she is not competent, they will have to decide whether she could become so with more treatment and medication or whether she is hopelessly incompetent. Competency only deals with Yates' state of mind today, not at the time of the deaths. Yates called police to her southeast Houston home on June 20 and admitted to killing the children along with siblings Paul, 3, and Luke, 2. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal is seeking the death penalty. He said the decision was made to allow for a full range of punishment options. Yates, wearing an orange jail uniform, sat virtually motionless during the first day of testimony. But periodically she appeared more animated than in previous court appearances. She sometimes looked at witnesses as they testified and a few times leaned over the desk to consult with lawyers when the jury was out of the courtroom. She never looked in the audience where her family was sitting on the first row. Her husband, Russell Yates, had to remain outside the court because he is scheduled to testify. Harris said Yates is being treated with anti-depressants and anti-psychotic drugs in the Harris County Jail and the medicines seem to be working. He predicted she would be fully competent within a month or two. During the first two visits within 10 days of the children's deaths, Harris said, Yates was psychotic and nearly catatonic when she spoke of her satanic delusions and hallucinations. Periodically during those visits Yates would look off as if she were listening or attending to someone else, Harris said. "She told me that Satan was talking to her," Harris said. "She said she had seen images of Satan in the walls (of the jail). "She said she should be punished and that the state would destroy her and Satan," Harris said later under cross-examination by the state. In a competency hearing, the defense has the burden of proof and calls witnesses first. During cross-examination, prosecutor Joe Owmby questioned whether it was possible Yates concocted the "complicated scheme with Satan" because she was facing the death penalty. "She lives in a state that has the death penalty," Owmby said. "You find it delusional that she thinks the state might execute her for killing five people?" Laura Marangell, a Baylor College of Medicine psychiatrist in Houston, said she had studied Yates' medical history, which included hospitalizations and outpatient treatment for major depression after the birth of her fourth and fifth children. If the jury should find Yates incompetent based on the progress she has made in the past with proper medication, she should be competent within a month, Marangell said. The medical records indicated Yates had attempted suicide twice, had homicidal thoughts and suffered from psychosis that seemed to improve only with medication. About a month before the children died, Yates had been hospitalized and received outpatient treatment. Her attending doctor discontinued a prescription for an anti-psychotic 16 days before the killings. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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