Houston ? Andrea Yates left jail early Thursday for a state mental hospital where she will await her second capital murder trial for the drowning deaths of her young children.

A bondsman posted her $200,000 bond, releasing her from incarceration for the first time since June 2001, when the five children were drowned in the family bathtub.

Yates, 41, faces capital murder charges for drowning three of the children and has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.

A jury rejected her original insanity defense in 2002 and sentenced her to life in prison. An appeals court last year overturned the convictions based on testimony by the state’s expert witness about a nonexistent episode on television’s “Law & Order” series.