Houston News: Andrea Yates Rejects Plea Deal

Andrea Yates has rejected a plea offer that would have sent her to prison for 35 years for drowning her children and is expected to face a retrial in March, reports Houston News. Prosecutor Joe Owmby said the state would leave the offer on the table until March 10 -- 10 days before Yates' capital murder retrial is set to begin for the deaths of three of the five children in 2001.

Yates has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, as she did at her first trial. The plea offer would require her to plead guilty or no contest to the lesser charge of murder.
"We have rejected that recommendation," Yates' attorney George Parnham said Monday.
State District Judge Belinda Hill granted the state's request Monday to hire a second expert witness to evaluate Yates. The first, forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, gave false testimony that led to the overturning of Yates' two capital murder convictions.

Parnham opposed another evaluation of Yates.
Hill denied Parnham's claim that prosecutorial misconduct in the first trial would mean double jeopardy for Yates in the second trial. Hill found that there was no evidence showing prosecutorial misconduct nor grounds for the double jeopardy claims.
The judge said she would rule Tuesday on whether the trial should halted.
When it overturned Yates convictions in the drownings, the First Court of Appeals found there was no prosecutorial misconduct. A grand jury in 2003 cleared Dietz of any wrongdoing.
Prosecutors say Dietz's false testimony about a nonexistent episode of "Law & Order" was a simple mistake.

Jurors were told of Dietz's false testimony after they rejected Yates' insanity defense but before sentencing Yates to life in prison.

During her 2002 trial, psychiatrists testified Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression, but expert witnesses disagreed over the severity of her illness and whether it prevented her from knowing that drowning her children was wrong.

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