HOUSTON -- A judge set a $200,000 bond Wednesday for Andrea Yates to leave jail for a state mental hospital where she will await her retrial on capital murder charges in the drowning deaths of her children.

The bond would be written on the condition that Yates be committed to Rusk State Hospital to await trial, bondsman Billy Pastor testified.

State District Judge Belinda Hill told Yates, 41, she couldn't order her to commit herself to the state hospital but set the bond amount based on her remaining there until her March 20 trial. She would be transferred to the Harris County Jail for the duration of her trial, which could last from four to six weeks.

Yates' attorney, George Parnham, asked for a $50,000 bond, which would require $5,000 in cash to release Yates from jail. With $200,000 bond, Yates would have to come up with $20,000. Parnham hopes to raise the money.

"I think that we will achieve our goal and we will have the necessary funds to post the bond in this case. It's not going to be done today. But the signs are looking very, very positive in that regard," Parnham said.

Parnham said he has not received any comment about help on the bond from Yates' ex-husband, Rusty.

Prosecutors had asked that bond be set at $1 million.

"The reality is this is a case about five dead children," prosecutor Kaylynn Williford said outside the courthouse.

Rusty Yates and Andrea Yates' mother, Karin Kennedy, attended the hearing but did not sit together. Karin Kennedy blotted her eyes with a tissue during the hearing.

"What we wanted for Andrea all along, you know, is for her to be in a mental hospital," Russell Yates told reporters. "I'm all in favor of her being given a bond so she can least be in a hospital a while before trial."

Prosecutor Joe Owmby said he was worried that the court and the bondsman would have no recourse if Yates left the state hospital.

"Do I believe Andrea Yates is a threat to the public? Yes, she is the only person I have ever come in contact with who has killed five people," Owmby said.

Parnham said that if Yates tried to leave, the hospital would notify him and he would pick her up and return her to the custody of the Harris County Sheriff's Department.

"She is severely mentally ill," he said. "She is on a heavy dosage to this day of antipsychotic medications."

Yates has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, the same plea she entered during her first trial.

She was convicted of two capital murder charges for the drowning of three of her five children: 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John and the youngest, 6-month-old Mary. Evidence was presented about the drownings of Paul, 3, and Luke, 2, but Yates was not charged in their deaths.

Psychiatrists testified in her first trial that Yates suffered from schizophrenia and postpartum depression, but expert witnesses disagreed over the severity of her illness and whether it prevented her from knowing that drowning her children was wrong.

The First Court of Appeals overturned Yates' convictions last January because the state's expert witness, forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, testified about a nonexistent episode on television's "Law & Order" series. Dietz said a show about a woman with postpartum depression who drowned her children aired shortly before Yates killed her five children.