I’d like to introduce y’all to Kenneth Lee Pierott.
Mr. Pierott is, as we say here at The LawDog Files, a critter.
In 1996, Mr. Pierott walked into the bed-room of his sister, who was completely bedridden due to cerebral palsy, and beat her head to a pulp with a heavy metal dumb-bell.
His explanation for this was that he was God, and during his on-going fight with the Devil was forced to bludgeon his sister to death because she had been corrupted by evil relatives.
He also admitted to smoking ‘wet’ — for those of you less than current on slang terms associated with recreational pharmaceutical use ‘wet’ is the street name for marijuana cigarettes soaked in embalming fluid.
Baked brain-cells aside, Mr. Pierott was diagnosed as being paranoid-schizophrenic.
At his 1998 trial, Mr. Pierrot was acquitted of the murder by being found — wait for it — Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity.
Thus, in July of 1998, Mr. Pierott was sent to the Vernon State Hospital for post-trial evaluation.
Sound familiar?
In August, he was transferred to the Rusk State Hospital for treatment.
Again, sound familiar? To quote from that link:
“George Parnham, Yates’ lead defense attorney, said he wants her transferred to Rusk Hospital, about 165 miles north of Houston, as soon as possible.”
Mr. Pierott arrives at the Rusk State Hospital, and begins to undergo treatment.
Three months later:
“It is the opinion of the patient’s attending physician that continued in-patient treatment is no longer needed,”
— former Rusk State Hospital Superintendent Harold R. Parrish Jr. wrote at the time, speaking of Kenneth Lee Pierott.
“He has reached maximum hospital benefit,”
–Rusk physician Harry Thompson, Oct. 12, 1998, at the judicial medical examination of Kenneth Lee Pierott
Mr. Kenneth Lee Pierott, being an innocent person (remember, he was found ‘Not Guilty’) is punted out of Rusk State Hospital and into an out-reach program.
In April of 2004, Mr. Pierott stuffed his girlfriend’s five year old son into the oven, turned the oven thermostat as high as it would go, and went to bed.
The child died of asphyxiation — whether he was suffocated prior to be crammed into the oven, or whether he was still alive, but suffocated by the oven gas because the pilot light wasn’t functional is a moot point — and was found by the mother of the child at breakfast the next morning.
Let me aim this one squarely at the Main Stream Media:
Do not stand there and tell me that Andrea Yates “will likely be committed for the rest of her life”, because I know better, so quit peeing on my leg and telling me that it’s raining.
Do not stand there and tell me that Andrea Yates is going to a place “not much better than prison”, because I know better, so quit peeing on my leg and telling me that it’s raining.
And do not stand there and tell me that Andrea Yates is “just as much a victim as the children”, because I sodding well know better.
Andrea Yates may, or may not, be a victim, but until someone that she loves and trusts as much as a six-month old baby loves and trusts her mother puts Andrea Yates face down in a bath-tub, until someone terrorizes and betrays her on a basic primal level, until she struggles helplessly as fouled water enters her lungs, Andrea Yates is NOT “as much a victim” as those children.
Andrea Yates woke up above ground this morning. Her children wake up … well, they won’t, will they? Ever.
Andrea Yates will have the oportunity to attend “patient cook-outs” as part of her treatment. What BBQ’s are her children going to attend?
Andrea Yates gets to breath air. The last thing her children took into their lungs was water stained with their own terror, and the terror of their siblings.
SO DON’T F***ING TELL ME THAT ANDREA YATES IS “AS MUCH A VICTIM AS HER CHILDREN”!
It isn’t rain. I know it isn’t rain. Everyone else knows it isn’t rain. Stop trying to convince me differently.
LawDog
Several years ago a neighbor’s dog got loose and went “strange”. What had once been a sweet and gentle dog was trasformed (seemingly) overnight into a snarling feral creature with no recognition of her owners or the neighborhood children she had once played with. In other words? Rabies had set into high gear, and the dog was irevacably damaged. Her owners couldn’t bring themselves to stop their beloved pet, and the dog catcher/game warden/ general man about our little county area was out of town. So my father and I went out with shotguns… and did what had to be done. Dad got to her first, a clean shot. Down and gone… no time for fear or pain. I sat and cried a little, not for the creature that had bitten several of my friends (who now had months of painful shots to deal with) but for the memory of what had been a friend. For a few moments, dad sat down with me and her, and then gathered her up to be buried. It wasn’t something we enjoyed… but you put a mad creature down. Before they can hurt someone else.
The point in the above? Doesn’t matter if she IS nutters. You put a rabid creature down – humanly, quickly. You don’t gloat, you don’t brag, you don’t view it as a “judgement”. It’s a sad thing, but one that has to be done. You mourn the person that MIGHT have been in there, but you don’t allow others to be hurt. To me? The insainity plea is MORE of a reason to keep a person in jail or for the death penelty to be used.
And isn’t it amazing how QUICKLY sanity returns AFTER the fact. Its like all the serial killers “finding Jesus”. Well, good. You’ll have someone to talk to when you get there. If Andrea Yates really was insane… the only way we will truely know she is better is if we find her hanging from her bed sheets from the guilt and grief she feels. I don’t know a woman on the planet worthy of the title of mother (or human, for that matter) who could live with the knowledge she purposfully slew her children.
I have to disagree with the previous poster: Andrea Yates is not “mad”, “rabid”, or “insane”.
If she had been insane when she murdered her children, she would have committed suicide when she realized what she had done.
Andrea Yates is something far worse than insane – she is Evil. With a capital “E”. A serial killer. A mass murderer who knowingly slaughtered children simply for the purpose of doing evil and destroying the innocent.
She will never reform, she can never change. Her choice has been made. The *only* question is whether she will be given the opportunity to murder again – because if she is given that opportunity, she will take it.
I know someone who was involved in the Pierott case and spent time with the man, and I have their word that he is crazy. Whether he’s mentally ill from birth or crazy from drug use is up in the air. Either way, doesn’t matter to me. He has proven himself to be a threat to society. I don’t believe anyone who doesn’t personally know Andrea Yates can decide if she’s insane or not. Saying she would have killed herself if she was insane… well, you just can’t dictate what someone with a mental illness will do. But again, it doesn’t really matter to me. She has shown herself to be a threat to society.
I think a big part of the problem is that judgements tend to be made in a moral sense. We judge whether what was done is “good” or “bad”, and whether or not the person is sane enough to be morally accountable for it. That’s crap. We should be evaluating whther or not the person is a threat to society and doing whatever needs to be done to remove the threat. If the person is mentally ill and that causes them to act violently, then it’s sad that they had no real choice in it, but we can’t let society suffer because of that.
It really is just like putting down a rabid dog. It’s not the dog’s fault that they’re rabid, but that doesn’t mean you let them kill everyone in the neighborhood. You do what you have to do to remove the threat.
Has anyone ever been found “guily by reason of insanity” instead of “not guilty”? If it were possible, it would really give juries a lot of leeway in their decisions.
Paul Kersey, where are you when we need you?
Andrea Yates is evil. I hope that she gets her just deserts by one way or the other.
Way back when I had to chase dinosaurs off the porch to leave the house and I was in nursing school, part of my educational curricula was to attend clinical rotations at Rusk State Hospital. To maximize the 6 weeks I was there, my instructor, Kali bless her, made sure I spent the bulk of my time in the Acute Female Unit.
Now, Acute Female Unit is not the same as A Cute Female Unit. It’s more like ‘hey, here’s a guy who is locked in the bugnuts ward with predatory crazy wimmen’. Trust me, it’s not like a women’s prison B-movie, no matter what your mental image is…more like swimming in a South American river in a raw beef wetsuit. I’d been through a nasty divorce but it was a cakewalk compared to spending time talking to patients there.
Makes you glad that the State does have places such as that and yet you wish they were funded a LOT better so the guests could stay longer. I did meet some folks who had been there for years. Lots of it, however, was more of the ‘catch and release’ variety. Stabilize them, get their meds on board, give them some classes on cognitive therapy and ship ’em back to Harris County.
Depot injections of antipsychotic meds tend to last about 3 months or so. Makes one wish they had implantable ones.
Skyview is just up the hill from RSH. That’s where they keep the truly scary ones. Spent several days working there as well. Another reason I don’t mind Texas taxes.
Regards,
Rabbit.
Rabbit,
When I was in Nursing School, probably a year or two after you, since we didn’t have Dinosaurs around, I did my Psych Clinicals at Harris County Psychiatric Center. It was the step before Rusk, and some of the patients we tended(if that’s the proper word in this case) did get sent to Rusk.
Evil.
We are, as a society, unwilling to use the word in its full meaning.
There is no accepted “cure” for evil. Religion -may- be successful, but there is no agreement on this.
We cannot say “evil” in its true meaning, because we do not want to look into the abyss. We don’t want to admit the existence of the Abyss.
Not understanding evil is why we cannot understand why Andrea Yates belongs in jail and terrorists belong dead. This is particularly true when events like Qana occur where the bad guys collapse the building hours after it is bombed and the terrorists display the same dead child over and over.
Not only is the body count in doubt, but where they died is in question.
There is no doubt that Andrea killed her own children and she didn’t even use them as suicide bombers.
Rob
Anonymous,
what evidence do you have to say that Andrea Yates is evil instead of suffering from mental illness ?
The people that are evil are the ones that will allow the death of others weaker than they, solely to assuage their conscience for putting to death “an insane person”.
The rationality response of a sane person to becoming insane will always be “kill me now, in order to guarantee that I will never harm my loved ones in an incident or another innocent”.
Only a moral coward and a person invested in sacrificing other lives for their own would say “my life is so important, other people need to take risks to die for my benefit”.
And such a person is someone like Yates that became innocent because she was insane. Any person that accepts this a judgment for themselves is already a megalomaniac as well as malignant narcissist.
You are not innocent simply because you are insane. Only the insane believe that.
I've got a better one. The lady who killed her baby by cutting her arms off in Plano 4 years ago was also Not Guilty by reason of insanity. She's now living on her own, right by a school. And remember, she's not a felon.
This can't truly have success, I feel this way.