Vol. 8, No. 3, 2002 Page 7
"[If Andrea Yates, who murdered her five children, can be shown to have severe brain dysfunction] the issue then would not be is she competent, or did she know right from wrong? Rather, was she capable—that is, did she have the capacity to oppose the gruesome directives of a pathologically functioning brain to which she was now both unwilling spectator and victim? It is important that those involved in her legal case, the public, Yates and her suffering family eventually realize that she was not the victim of her past, nor the handmaiden of evil influences, but the innocent victim of a neurological illness in which the brain gave rather than took directions, like the heart no longer keeping its regular beat or pumping the correct amount of blood. Both processes are independent of the person."
Dr. Frank Adams, in the Houston Chronicle, February 20, 2002