HOUSTON -- After less than an hour of deliberations, a jury spared Andrea Yates from death row Friday and sentenced her instead to life in prison for drowning her children in the bathtub.

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Earlier this week, Yates was convicted of capital murder.

The 37-year-old housewife will have to serve at least 40 years before becoming eligible for parole.

In a note she passed to one of her lawyers, Yates said she regretted that her illness made her capable of killing her own kids. She also thanked her family for standing by her during her murder trial.

Lawyer George Parnham said Yates wrote that she regretted that her illness had brought her to a place where she was capable of killing her own children.

And she wrote of her love for each of the five children she drowned. The note speaks of first-born son Noah, who loved to hatch monarch butterflies, and daughter Mary with her "big blue eyes." It speaks of one son as "nurturing and loving," and of another as "enthusiastic."

Parnham said Yates thanked God that she was "blessed with such a precious family."

Meanwhile, Russell Yates said he doesn't know if he and his wife will stay married now that she's been sentenced.

Yates said he misses having a companion, and might like more kids.

Despite his ambivalence about the future of his marriage, Yates says he will always support Andrea. He calls her the "kindest, sweetest, gentlest person" he's ever met.

Jury Reaches Sentencing Decision

Yates stood while the verdict was read, her attorney's arm around her. Her attorneys smiled, but there was no apparent reaction from her.

Yates' attorneys had asked the panel to spare her life -- saying she is not a danger to society.

Prosecutors argued there were reasons to send Yates to death row for killing her children but said they could accept a life prison term.

The same jury that took less than four hours to reject her claim of insanity and convict her of murder Tuesday returned the sentence with similar swiftness, after prosecutors made a less-than-forceful push for the death penalty.

Closing arguments got under way shortly after 10:30 a.m. with State District Judge Belinda Hill giving the jury its instructions before deliberating Yates' fate.

Prosecutors waived their right to begin their final arguments, so the defense began addressing the jurors.

"Although I may disagree with your verdict, I know your verdict was based on what you perceive the law to be," defense attorney Wendell Odom said.

Odom said one question before the jury was whether or not Yates posed a future danger to the public.

"I believe that the law is quite clear that unless you know beyond a reasonable doubt this woman would be a future danger to society ... you cannot answer that question, 'yes.'"

Yates' other defense attorney, George Parnham, followed Odom.

"I want her to live," Parnham said.

The defense wrapped up at about 11:15 a.m., at which time the prosecution began its final arguments. The prosecution was seeking the death penalty.

"The crime itself can be sufficient for the jury to come back and answer special issue No. 1, 'yes,'" prosecuting attorney Kaylynn Williford said. "It's an appropriate answer, because this crime is of horrific proportions.

"This crime is a crime of the ultimate betrayal," Williford said. "The ultimate betrayal of a mother to her children, and that is exactly why this law was created to protect the children, because those children never had a chance."

Yates Prison Stay

Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials said Yates would be delivered to the Mountain View Unit just outside Gatesville, which is about 180 miles northwest of Houston and 35 miles west of Waco.

"She will be in a single cell and she'll remain in administrative segregation for several months," prison spokesman Larry Todd said.

Administrative segregation means she would be isolated from other inmates.

Mountain View can house 645 inmates.

"We do not allow conjugal visits in any of our prisons," said Larry Fitzgerald with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Psychiatric treatment is available at Mountain View and Yates will continue to receive any medications she has been given before she was imprisoned.

"If a female inmate needs psychiatric attention, she can receive it at the unit level or at one of the psychiatric hospitals," Todd said.

The nearest psychiatric prison hospital is the Skyview Unit at Rusk, about 150 miles to the east.

Yates Family Testifies

Relatives pleaded for Yates' life Thursday, calling her a wonderful mother. Yates' mother-in-law says she's a "beautiful person inside." The defense contends that Yates was deeply psychotic when she killed the children.

Prosecutors chose to let their earlier evidence dealing with the horror of the drownings speak for itself. They presented no additional witnesses during the sentencing phase Thursday.

But a legal expert in Texas said that doesn't mean prosecutors didn't want Yates to get the death penalty. He said it may be that they didn't want to look "bloodthirsty."

Another law professor thinks they couldn't prove she will present a future danger. Under Texas law, in order to impose the death penalty, the jury has to decide unanimously that a defendant still poses a danger to society.

Human Rights Group Files Complaint

A human rights group has filed a complaint with Texas regulators, over what it said has been the "shoddy" treatment given to Andrea Yates.

The Texas branch of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights said her botched psychiatric treatment left her in the psychotic state that led her to drown her five children.

CCHR Texas said her doctor used inappropriate treatment and stopped it too soon. He acknowledges he took her off an anti-psychotic drug less than a month before the killings, but said she was fine when he checked her just two days before the drownings.

The group's president told the Houston Chronicle that Yates sought help and -- in his words -- "We know what the outcome was."