Prosecutors in Houston have said they will seek the death penalty for a Texas woman who killed her five children while suffering from post-partum depression.
This follows the decision of a jury this weekend that she is fit to stand trial, which is expected to begin in January.
The jury of 11 women and one man decided on Saturday that Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children, understood the charges and was able to communicate with her defence lawyers sufficiently to prepare a case, and was thus competent to stand trial on capital murder charges.
Yates (37) has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity to two counts of capital murder in the deaths of three of her children.
On June 20th this year, Yates, who tried twice to commit suicide after the birth of her fourth child, had called police to her suburban home where they found the five wet bodies of her children, drowned one after the other in the bath. She admitted she had done it.
On Saturday her husband and mother stood with her as the verdict was announced.
During the hearing, psychologists testified that Yates's psychosis was in remission and that she had improved mentally since the killings, but they disagreed about the extent.
Yates's medical records show that after she tried twice to commit suicide in 1999, she told a doctor she wanted to kill herself so she wouldn't hurt anyone else.
The doctor warned her that she should consider her own well-being before having more children, saying that additional births would guarantee future psychotic depression. She had her fifth child a year later.
The decision to seek the death penalty has been condemned by civil rights groups and the National Organisation of Women.
