[Cafferty:] The Andrea Yates murder trial begins the morning in Houston, Texas. The question is, how do you go about convincing a jury that a mother didn't know right from wrong when she methodically drowned all five of her young children. Attorney Dick DeGuerin successfully defended a woman accused of killing two of her seven kids, and he joins us now from Houston to talk about the possible strategy on the part of Andrea Yates defense lawyers in this upcoming trial. Mr. DeGuerin, nice to have you with us.
[Dick Deguerin, Defense Attorney:] Thanks, good morning.
[Cafferty:] From a legal point of view, severe case of postpartum depression, severe enough to justify the murders of five children. Is that a long shot in the courtroom for her lawyers?
[Deguerin:] I don't think the lawyers should concentrate only on postpartum depression. That's only a very small part of the picture. This women had a long history of descent into insanity, and what they have got to do, what the lawyers have to do, is portray, through facts, through people around her, through the medical records, what happened to her.
[Cafferty:] What is it in her background, in your opinion, that might be strong enough to overcome the impact on the jury of the deaths of five innocent children?
[Deguerin:] Well, first, you have to understand that most people would say right off the bat that this women must have been crazy to kill her children. So, they have got a leg up on that. It's going to get into a battle of the experts, there are paid experts on both sides, and what the defense has to do is portray a woman that, not only because of her medical condition, but also because of her circumstances, did not know that her conduct was wrong, by showing that she was delusional, by explaining what delusions were what they are, and how strong they can be.
[Cafferty:] She has a history of apparently portraying herself as a bad mother, obviously something that the defense lawyers could use to begin to shore up the kind of a case that you're talking about here.
[Deguerin:] Well, she has a history, also, of attempted suicide, of hospitalization, of being heavily sedated, and then not taking her medication. In fact, just two weeks before this happened, she was taken off her anti-psychotic medicine. It was a great mistake on the part of the doctors.
[Cafferty:] You successfully defended a woman, as I mentioned in the introduction, who had apparently set about the task of killing all seven of her children. Two of them did ultimately die, but at her trial, you were her lawyer, and she wound up getting probation. Tell us a little about your strategy in that case, and how it might or might not apply in the case of Andrea Yates.
[Deguerin:] Well, I think it is very similar because what we did was we established the factual background. We showed how she had been mistreated by her husband. She and the children had both been sexually and physically abused by her husband. She was destitute. She had no place to turn, and in addition, she had been diagnosed with not postpartum depression, but with a split personality, paranoia, schizophrenia. And so she had a history of severe mental illness, as well as a factual basis for it.
[Cafferty:] The jury in this trial upcoming will not doubt be shown pictures of the crime scene. Each of the children drowned in the bathtub. How do you how do you deal, as a defense attorney, with the impact those kinds of horrific images are likely to have on a jury?
[Deguerin:] Well, it is going to be terrific, and that's why probably the prosecution is going to start off with that. There's a videotape that the officers took when they first arrived on the scene. There will be still pictures, and the prosecutor will describe how she must have held her children under water while they struggled until they died. It is going to be a terrible, prejudicial picture that the jury is going to have right out of the box, and that's why it is going to be so difficult for the defense to overcome.
[Cafferty:] Do you think there's any chance that that her defense will prevail? Can she win this trial, do you think?
[Deguerin:] Yes, I think she can. It is going to be very difficult, and it's really too close to call right now, but the truth is that no mother in her right mind would have done this. That's a simple fact that is going to be hard for the prosecution to overcome. But then again, they have got a hired gun, a paid expert, that is going to come in and testify, goes all over the country testifying, who was able to convince the jury that Jeffrey Dahmer, who ate his victims, was sane. So, that guy is going to be pretty persuasive.
[Cafferty:] What about the strategy, and we hear that this may be a part of the defense's case to bring her husband, Russell, into the trial and to suggest that, perhaps, she is not entirely culpable in the deaths of the kids, that perhaps there's something more that he might have been able to do. He could of or should have seen this coming, that based on his knowledge of her past and her past medical history that, perhaps, he didn't do enough. Is that something you might expect to see during the trial, and how successful a ploy might it be?
[Deguerin:] Oh, I don't think it's a ploy at all. I think the lawyers need to show the factual background, not only of the husband, and what went on in their home, and very few people know what goes on behind closed doors, but also all of the people around her. Her friends, her relatives, those who should have noticed how crazy she was becoming.
[Cafferty:] So you expect that he and other family members will be will be brought into this as well, right?
[Deguerin:] Oh, I think so. I think clearly he'll be a witness, and others that were close to her who saw what was going on, saw her descent into madness.
[Cafferty:] All right, Mr. DeGuerin, we are going to have to leave it there. I appreciate you joining us on "American Morning." Thank you for your time. Dick DeGuerin, an attorney, joining us from Houston, Texas at the start of the Andrea Yates murder trial. You can see live coverage of the opening statements of that trial here on CNN. That is scheduled to happen at 11:30 Eastern time this morning.