Houston ? Mental health advocates and defense attorneys hope the public’s mindset about mentally ill defendants has changed in the five years since Andrea Yates filled her bathtub with water and drowned her five children.

Since Yates’ 2002 conviction, which was overturned on appeal, several other Texas mothers have killed their children and been found not guilty by reason of insanity.

As Yates’ retrial begins today with opening statements, those verdicts – as well as community outreach and education efforts about mental illness – are encouraging to the woman’s attorneys, who say her severe postpartum psychosis prevented her from knowing her action was wrong.

As in her first trial, Yates has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. If the jury agrees, she could be committed to a state hospital, with periodic hearings to determine whether she should be released. A guilty verdict would mean life in prison.

“Jurors, I think, know now that it’s a misconception that a person … gets out of the defendant’s chair, gets in the elevator and walks free,” said George Parnham, Yates’ lead attorney. “Andrea Yates will be in (a psychiatric hospital) for the rest of her life, no doubt about it.”