Mother who killed 5 children faces death

A Texas mother who drowned her five children in the bath faces a possible death sentence after being convicted of murder by a jury that rejected her claim of insanity.

Andrea Yates, 37, took her children, aged from six months to seven years, into the bathroom one by one and drowned them, then called the police.

The court heard that the former nurse, who had suffered severe depression and attempted suicide, was overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising five children and believed she was a bad mother. But a jury took just 31/2 hours to find her guilty of two counts of capital murder covering the deaths of three of her children.

Yates, of Houston, showed little reaction as the judge read the verdict. Her husband, Russell, muttered "Oh God" and buried his head in his hands, and some of Yates's relatives left the courtroom in tears.

The crime attracted widespread publicity as a stunned US public asked what could cause a mother to systematically kill her children. It also raised new questions about the effects of post-natal depression, which Russell Yates and defence experts said Yates had struggled with for years.

Yates, who admitted the five drownings, did not testify but her videotaped interviews with psychiatrists, her audiotaped confession to police and her emergency police call the day of the drownings were all played for jurors.

Police found her eldest child Noah, seven, in the bath. The other children - John, five; Paul, three; Luke, two, and six-month-old Mary - were under a wet sheet on a bed.