Page 21 - Rusty Yates News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> overwhelmingly, people were very harsh in their assessment. the community of psychiatric workers, doctors were horrified that we would prosecute someone who had a legitimate mental illness, but that was a minority. >> andrea yates' actions were certainly incomprehensible. but did that mean she was insane? >> you can be mentally ill and the standard under the law is that if you know right from wrong, that's not a medical standard. that's a legal standard. >> there's no legal definition for what's right or wrong, and the law tells us that if there's no legal definition, then a juror is able t...

Went to a very prestigious nursing school in texas. did very well in nursing school. and then married and started having children, and her goal was to be a wonderful mother. >> they met in 1989. they were both 25. four years later, they married. almost immediately, andrea was pregnant. >> i think the thing that surprised us was how fast that happened. she used to joke -- i mean she wouldn't like me to say this, but she called herself fertile myrtle. seemed like every -- yeah. it wasn't hard. >> they would give each child a biblical name. >> i know that rusty knew and believed that, you know, w...

That he smiled a lot. >> he didn't show the kind of emotion that was expected. and once he was kind of typecast as not showing enough emotion, no matter how much he showed after that, that's how he was viewed. >> rusty's demeanor so incensed the houston community that some people believed he was complicit in the murders. >> the harris county district attorney's office received so many inquiries about whether he was also liable for the deaths of children and if you talk to people on the street, there were a lot of people who would express that idea to you. >> did i do everything that i could an...

>> is someone burglarizing your house? i mean, what is it? >> the dispatcher assigned me that particular call for service being that it was in my zone of responsibility. another unit, david napp, he checked by with me, which is common practice, you know, day shift, slow, guys killing time, helping each other out. >> eight minutes after dialing 911 andrea yates calls her husband rusty yates and tells him it's time to come home. it's not yet 10:00 a.m. >> i couldn't imagine what had actually happened, but i was worried because andrea called me with a firm tone and said i needed to come home and ...

>> the woman here is not the woman that killed my children. she obviously wasn't herself. and i think that will come out. ou know, i'm just completely surprised that people think that, well, because i defend andrea as being a wonderful mother, that she shouldn't be punished, that somehow, you know, i'm condoning her actions, you know? her actions were almost indescribably devastating to me and my family. >> he took it upon himself like it was some kind of badge of honor and on tv and giving interviews and all kinds of stuff which is macabre and then at the funeral he actually had a slide show ...