Andrea Yates left jail early Thursday for a state mental hospital where she will await her second capital murder trial for the drowning deaths of her young children.
Yates’ attorney posted her $200,000 bond, releasing her from incarceration for the first time since the five children were drowned in the family bathtub in June 2001.
State District Judge Belinda Hill set the bond Wednesday.
Yates, 41, didn’t speak as she left the jail. She carried a brown paper sack and wore jeans and a blue-and-white striped shirt as she entered a car with her attorney and a private investigator for the drive to the mental hospital.
The judge said she couldn’t order Yates to commit herself to the East Texas hospital, but said she set the bond based on Yates remaining at the hospital until her March 20 trial.
Once the trial gets under way, Yates will return to the Harris County Jail for the duration of the trial, expected to last four to six weeks.
Yates pleaded innocent
Yates faces capital murder charges for drowning three of the children and has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.
A jury rejected her original insanity defense in 2002 and sentenced her to life in prison for the drowning of 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John and 6-month-old Mary. Prosecutors presented evidence about the drownings of Paul, 3, and Luke, 2, but Yates was not charged in their deaths.
An appeals court last year overturned the convictions based on testimony by the state’s expert witness about a nonexistent episode on television’s “Law & Order” series. The expert, Park Dietz, said a show about a woman with postpartum depression who drowned her children aired shortly before Yates killed her five children.