The Conviction of Andrea Yates: A Narrative of Denial

INTRODUCTION Previously an anonymous married mother of five, Andrea Yates drowned her children to death in June of 2001 and instantly became a household name. The public desperately sought an explanation. Everyone hoped for a reassuring narrative about Andrea's actions that would make sense out of the senseless and thereby restore our faith that mothers do not kill their children, even in the face of the reality that they do, and that Andrea had. Two alternative accounts of the Yates tragedy immediately presented themselves. One was that Andrea (1) was insane; the other, that she was evil. If Andrea was completely crazy, then the public could embrace the notion that because the mother in this case was out of her mind, it followed that, in some sense, Andrea's authentic self did not truly kill her own children. Barring that explanation, Andrea had to have been a monster of mythical proportions who accordingly deserved harsh punishment. Either way, the public could hold onto its belief that a shockingly deviant force was at work, and people accordingly would not have to alter any of their deeply held assumptions about motherhood in response. In the social realm, extreme deviance, by its very nature, affirms rather than threatens the boundaries of the norm. In "Who Is Andrea Yates? A Short Story About Insanity," Professor Deborah W. Denno opens a startling and compelling window on the Yates prosecutor's distortion and manipulation of facts through its star expert witness, Park Dietz. (2) Though surprisingly unfamiliar with the nature of the mental illness from which Andrea was apparently suffering (postpartum depression and psychosis), as Denno relates, Dietz opined with confidence that Andrea was sane and in control when she killed her offspring. At least in part because of Dietz's testimony, a jury convicted Andrea of capital murder. (3) As Professor Denno describes with clarity and precision, the Texas law of insanity is quite narrow and unforgiving. (4) To prevail, a person would have to prove that a serious mental illness had so afflicted her that she was unable to know that her act was "wrong," an adjective that itself admits of no straightforward definition in Texas. (5) Such a standard, as I too have argued, (6) left little space for an acquittal. Add to that the charismatic, if ill-informed, testimony of Park Dietz, and Andrea may never have had a chance. I found Denno's presentation both insightful and persuasive. Andrea's conviction may have been an over-determined phenomenon, an event, in other words, for which it is difficult to identify one "but for" cause, without which the jury might have returned a verdict of not guilty. In this commentary, my objective is therefore modest. I wish not to detract in any way from Professor Denno's outstanding article but merely to add one more to the list of arguably sufficient causes for Andrea's conviction. My addition is the jury's need for a satisfying narrative. AUDIENCE CHOICE OF NARRATIVE To understand how an audience might select a narrative from a series of possibilities, consider the ancient tale of the Wisdom of Solomon. (7) In this story, two "harlots" each give birth to a baby. (8) One of the babies dies in the night, and when morning comes, each of the women claims to be the mother of the living infant. (9) The mothers bring their case before the wise King Solomon of Israel. (10) The King thus becomes the chosen finder of fact, the monarchical equivalent of today's jury. Solomon has a solution to the women's dilemma. He asks for a sword and says, "Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other." (11) In response to this grotesque decree by the King, one of the women (whom the text describes as "the woman whose the living child was") begs Solomon to spare the child, even if it will mean losing the infant to her rival. (12) The other woman says that she can live with the division of the child. …