Maybe the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard
Andrea Yates’ capital murder convictions for drowning her children were overturned Thursday by an appeals court, which ruled that a prosecution witness’ erroneous testimony about a nonexistent TV episode could have been crucial.
Yates’ lawyers had argued at a hearing last month before a three-judge panel of the First Court of Appeals in Houston that psychiatrist Park Dietz was wrong when he mentioned an episode of the TV show “Law & Order” involving a woman found innocent by reason of insanity for drowning her children.
After jurors found Yates guilty, attorneys in the case and jurors learned no such episode existed.
First, why the Hell is someone using the TV show Law and Order as expert testimony? The impact of a television show on law seems silly to me. Second, who cares if the show never existed?
January 7th, 2005 at 6:02 pm
I have to forward this to my wife. We’re L&O addicts. Incredible.
January 7th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
Hell, you should forward this to the show’s producers. They’ve already “jumped the shark,” so it’s about time to do the really weird self-referential stuff before the final flame-out.
January 7th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
I had the same question when I saw the article in my local paper. Reading the whole thing, it became clear that the expert testimony concerned the issue of whether the defendent’s insanity plea would stick.
Supposedly, if the defendent saw an episode of that program that depicted a woman drowning her children and pleading insanity due to postpartum depression, this would bear on the question of whether she had the mental capacity to see the program and plan her crime using the same excuse that worked on tv.
The expert witness (who was testifying for the prosecution, BTW) indicated that such an episode did in fact air before the crime was committed. This statement turned out to be false. Thus, if the defendent could not have seen a program to give her the idea, the testimony has no relevance to her state of mind. And her defense focused on the insanity plea rather than seeking to prove actual innocence.
It’s still more than a little odd, and IMHO should not constitute grounds to overturn, but in context it’s at least an understandable decision.
January 8th, 2005 at 7:32 pm
Having met Doctor Dietz once I’d say he’s the one who is nuts. His making up a television program doesn’t surprise me, however with this outcome he should be able to get work as a defense “expert”.