A not-so beautiful mind: The realities of mental illness

It seems America has had a very short love affair with schizophrenia. Like Professor Nash, Andrea Yates suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, a mental condition which causes her to hear imaginary voices that are impossible to distinguish from real ones. Like Professor Nash, Mrs. Yates stopped taking her medication and subsequently her condition worsened. In the movie, John Nash almost drowned his child. Andrea Yates succeeded in drowning hers. However, unlike Professor Nash, Andrea Yates will have no Oscar-nominated movie made about her triumph over mental illness. Instead, she will likely be put to death in a Texas prison. This week's decision by a Texas jury to convict Mrs. Yates guilty of murder rather than declare her insane is a travesty. This case not only shows complete ignorance of the realities of mental illness, but also displays the tendency of juries to ignore the stipulations of the law and instead simply rule how they please.

No one disagrees that Andrea Yates is a killer. However, unlike most killers, she made no attempt to conceal her actions, calling the police and informing them that she had just drowned all her children. Also, unlike in most normal crimes, there was no obvious motive for her to commit murder, as there was nothing she stood to gain from her children's deaths. Killing one's children is a very unnatural thing to do, and there seemed to be no rational thought process that could have caused her to want to commit such a heinous act. However, there was one "good" reason for Andrea Yates to kill her children, albeit a completely insane one. Mrs. Yates thought that she had not been a good mother to her children, so therefore her children would be better off in death. During the trial, doctors documented her history of mental illness, which include catatonic depression, repeated suicide attempts and visions of gruesome violence. Yates had been treated with the most powerful antidepressant drugs available, and her doctors almost resorted to shock therapy. All the signs point to a woman who is clearly insane. As long as she could not tell right from wrong while committing her crime, she cannot be found guilty for murder. According to the law, she should be committed to a mental institution and treated for her disease.

However, the jury would have nothing of it. The jurors unanimously convicted her with three counts of first degree murder, as if she had planned her children's death coolly and rationally. Despite overwhelming evidence, every single one of the twelve jurors failed (ref-used?) to see this woman as insane. The law dictates that if one cannot tell right from wrong at the time of committing a crime, they cannot be held responsible for their actions. Despite the law, every single one of the twelve jurors refused to believe Mrs. Yates had no idea what she was doing was wrong. In fact, in Yates' own twisted world, her actions were in fact noble and not wrong in the least. Since Mrs. Yates believed that her children "weren't developing correctly," a fate worse than death, in committing the killings Mrs. Yates believed that her actions were morally justified.

This represents a clear break with reality and a complete inability to tell what is truly right and wrong. In sum, the jury in the trial disregarded the evidence in the trial and the rule of law when making their decision to convict Mrs. Yates as guilty. The case can be made that the jury wanted to remove Mrs. Yates from society forever and disallowed declaring her insane because she might one day be freed on medication, but this is completely immaterial. The execution of mentally ill individuals also cannot be justified as a deterrent against further crimes, as it is not a conscious choice of the afflicted to make irrational decisions. It is the responsibility of the jury to carry out a sentence under the direction of the law, not with accordance of the juries' plan for society. Obviously, this judgment did not come with strictly the law in mind. Nothing could quell the jury's demand for revenge, and they were willing to overlook evidence and the law itself in order to bring that about.

Right now, Andrea Yates sits in court hearing deliberations on whether she should be put to death for her mental illness. Andrea Yates is a sick individual and will probably be put to death despite the laws that should prevent that from happening. In the future, Americans need to be better educated about the ravages of mental illness and the inability of the afflicted to control their actions. Since the irrationally ill often have no real conception of what they are doing, punishing them as if they are rational is morally unjustifiable. Most of all, juries need to remember that they are present to uphold the law, not to ignore or try to interpret it. Andrea Yates was driven to kill because her insanity caused her to act irrationally; later this week a jury of the sane will probably condemn her to death because they cannot think outside their own purely rational world. David Sillers is from Potomac, Md. He can be reached at dsillers@princeton.edu.