HOUSTON – Defense attorneys for a woman accused of drowning her children in her bathtub have again asked a judge to delay her capital murder retrial, which is scheduled to begin next week.
Attorney George Parnham and co-counsel Wendell Odom asked state District Judge Belinda Hill on Friday to reschedule the trial of Andrea Yates until sometime this summer. Two defense experts will not be available to testify if it begins as scheduled on Monday.
Earlier this month, the judge denied Parnham's initial request for a delay and said jury selection would go forward as scheduled Monday.
Yates was convicted of capital murder in 2002, but the conviction was overturned because a forensic psychiatrist gave false testimony.
Yates, 41, who faces two capital murder charges, has again pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. Jurors in her 2002 trial rejected her insanity defense and sentenced her to life in prison. The five children who drowned in the 2001 incident ranged in age from 6 months to 7 years.
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