Compare and Contrast Cases of Two Texas Mothers: Andrea Yates and Dena Schlosser

Compare and Contrast Cases of Two Texas Mothers

Introduction

This paper compares and contrasts two cases of Texas Mothers: Andrea Yates and Dena Schlosser under the light of Texas insanity defense. In addition, also addresses why Andrea Yates found guilty and Dena Schlosser was not guilty.



Discussion

Two Texas women (Andrea Yates and Dena Schlosser) had killed their children. Andrea Yates had drowned her 5 children in the bathtub at her home in suburban Houston during the year 2001 while Dena Schlosser had cut off her daughters' arm with a knife in her own home in suburban Dallas during the year 2004.

There are several things that Yates and Schlosser had in common. Both women were married and who had followed the mainstream religious leaders. Both Yates and Schlosser, after the birth of their daughter, they were suffering from postpartum depression and were patients of psychosis. Moreover, Yates and Schlosser after murdering their children stated that they were asked by God to kill their children (Fersch & Fersch, 2005). However, Schlosser's husband filled a divorce after killing her daughter while Yates' husband did not.

Both cases and defense lawyers had emphasized on the plea of Texas insanity defense. The plea of insanity refers to a legal defense where the defendant confess that he/she committed offense; however, asserted that he/she is not liable because of mental disorder. In Texas, this law permits the insanity appeal as a legally binding defense. In order to meet the criteria of legally insanity, a defendant should be able to show that he/she is not in his/her senses while committing a crime or did not understand the difference between right or wrong (Shannon, 2006).

In Texas, the insanity defense law is one of the preventive in the country. So constricted are the degree of the old law of the state, which is not sufficient for defense lawyers of Yates to merely establish that Yates had been attempted suicide twice and admitted four times for psychiatric care and received medical care of psychosis before killing her children by drowning them in the bathtub, which evidently present in the records of the hospital. Additionally, the prosecution did not challenge that Yates had been suffering from severe mental disorder. Motives of Andrea Yates can have been imaginary and hallucination; whereas, the defense lawyer was unable to prove that she was not able to distinguish between good and evil, or right and wrong while murdering her children. It was the jury to convict her or found not guilty by reason of insanity.

In case of Yates, jury to reach their decision, judges based their decision closely on the influential and convincing proof of a reputable forensic psychiatrist named Park Dietz, who charged about $500 per hour by the prosecutor to disagree claims that Yates was insane as per the Texas law. The key witness of the state (Park Dietz) who has presented before the court, which he mixed up evidences that prosecutor ...