This stark choice has touched an especially raw nerve with the public. Many people have already condemned Yates -- who sits impassively in court, rarely uttering a word to Parnham -- as a heartless monster guilty of a crime so heinous it can never be forgiven. Yet there has also been a surprising surge of support for her -- with Rusty, 37, his wife's most outspoken champion. "Andrea loved those children," Rusty, who has not been in the courtroom because he is scheduled to testify, told PEOPLE. "Her heart was good, but her mind was sick."

Indeed, perhaps the most charged aspect of the case is the decision by the prosecution to seek the death penalty. To her defenders Yates is a good mother who was overwhelmed by emotional problems and the stress of bearing and raising five children with virtually no help. Those who have spoken on her behalf include TV host and dedicated adoptive mother Rosie O'Donnell, who herself has been treated for depression, and who has pleaded for sympathy for Yates, telling ABC News, "When you've been on the edge, you can understand what it's like to go over." Even in the Houston area, where support for capital punishment runs strong, there seems to be little sentiment in favor of executing Yates. A poll by the Houston Chronicle last November showed that only 19 percent of those surveyed wanted her to die, while 57 percent believed a life sentence was fair punishment.

Many in Yates's camp, a loose coalition of individuals and advocacy groups, reject even that solution. "It's a flagrant case of prosecuting a very sick person for being sick," says Frances "Sissy" Farenthold, a Houston attorney and former state legislator. "The first indictment I would have is against the kind of mental health care she got. She's a victim too." Unlike Susan Smith, the notorious South Carolina mother who killed her two young sons in 1994, Yates made no attempt to hide her crime. "She didn't try to cover it up," says Deborah Bell, the president of Texas NOW. "She was psychotic. It's a travesty for her to undergo a trial. "For a few, the Yates tragedy has come to represent something larger than itself. "Men become psychotic too," says Diane Bossom, a neighbor of Yates's and a former counselor. "But this was precipitated by postpartum depression and hormonal changes, so in that sense it is a women's issue."

But Owmby, an experienced prosecutor who has won a number of death-penalty cases, told jurors he would prove that Yates knew that drowning her children "was an illegal thing, that it was a sin, that it was wrong." This is important, because in Texas, as in many states, statutes allow very little leeway for defendants to use the insanity defense. If the accused knows that he is committing a crime, he can be held fully accountable, regardless of mental illness that might have triggered the action. "If you know right from wrong, in Texas you're legally sane," says Sandra Guerra Thompson, a professor of criminal law at the University of Houston. And Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal suggests that the enormity of Yates's crime demands the most severe punishment: "One of the things we look at is the impact of preventing other people from committing similar types of crimes."