The 42-year-old will be committed to a state mental hospital, with periodic hearings before a judge to determine whether she should be released.

If convicted of murder, she would have faced life in prison.

Defense attorneys never disputed that Yates killed her five children — 6-month-old Mary, 2-year-old Luke, 3-year-old Paul, 5-year-old John and 7-year-old Noah — by drowning them in a bathtub of their suburban Houston home in June 2001. They based their case, however, on a claim that she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and, in a delusional state, believed Satan was inside her and was trying to save them from hell.

Another jury in 2002 had found Yates guilty of murder in the deaths of three of her children, but that verdict was overturned on appeal because of erroneous testimony. Prosecutors retried her on the same three counts of murder.