HOUSTON -- The state rested its case Friday in the trial of Andrea Yates, who's accused of drowning her five children, paving the way for the defense to begin its case.

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Yates' attorneys began their case shortly before noon Friday at the Harris County Courthouse downtown.

Andrea Yates moaned, cried and pulled at her hair the morning after she was arrested for drowning her five children in the family's bathtub, a jail psychiatrist testified Friday.

Dr. Melissa Ferguson, a psychiatrist at the Harris County Jail, said Yates had to be given a sedative while she was being assessed in the jail psychiatric unit June 21.

It was the day after Yates called police to her southeast Houston home, where officers found 7-year-old Noah floating face down in the bathtub. Her four younger children were dressed in pajamas on their parents' bed, the sheets soaked.

On the afternoon of June 20, Yates told an investigator she drowned her children because she "realized that it was time to be punished ... for not being a good mother." In a confession tape played for jurors Thursday, she said she'd thought about hurting the youngsters for at least two years.

Yates, 37, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, faces the death penalty if convicted.

Ferguson testified Friday that Yates, the day after her arrest, was slumped over, had a bleeding sore on her lip and kept picking at the top of her head. Yates' oily hair appeared as if it had not been washed in days, the psychiatrist said.

Yates answered some questions that day but then became emotional and was given Ativan, a drug prescribed to ease anxiety and given to people who are suicidal or are not talking, Ferguson said.

"During interview (patient) became very distraught and anxious, picking at her lip constantly, moaning and crying loudly," Ferguson wrote in her medical report shown to jurors Friday.

Defense attorneys say Yates suffered from a severe mental disease and did not know the difference between right and wrong at the time of the drownings.

Prosecutors finished their case Friday morning, on the fifth day of testimony, after calling to the witness stand Dr. Harminder S. Narula, an assistant medical examiner who performed autopsies on Noah, Paul, 3, and Luke, 2.

Narula said Noah's head, arms and legs had recent bruising likely caused by someone holding him down. Some autopsy photos were shown to jurors Friday but not to Yates or anyone else in the courtroom.

Yates Taped Confession

Yates had only one question for a police sergeant after she confessed to plunging each of her five children face down in a bathtub full of water until they drowned.

"She wanted to know when her trial would be," Sgt. Eric Mehl testified Thursday, on the fourth day of the 37-year-old woman's capital murder trial for the deaths of three of her five children in June.

In her taped confession to Mehl, played before the jury Thursday, Yates says her intent was to suffocate her children.

In the taped confession, Yates details for Mehl how she chased her oldest son, 7-year-old Noah, before forcing him into the same water she used to drown her four younger children.

"How long have you been having thoughts about wanting, or not wanting to, but drowning your children?" Mehl asked during the interview.

"Probably since I realized I have not been a good mother to them," Yates responded.

"What makes you say that?" the police officer asked.

"They weren't developing correctly," Yates said.

She recounted the details of the deadly morning to Mehl in a flat, monotone voice. Yates also told him that she had filled the tub two months earlier with the intention of drowning the children, but didn't go through with it.

Defense attorneys claimed during opening statements earlier this week that Yates filled the tub the first time while suffering a delusion that had caused her to become concerned about the family's water supply.

Unlike earlier Thursday, when Yates sobbed as photos of her dead children were shown to jurors, she showed no emotion as the tape was played.

Yates explains on the audiotape how she filled the tub 3 inches from the top and then began calling her children into the bathroom.

Six-month-old Mary was on the floor crying as three of her older brothers, one after the other, struggled to keep from being held beneath the water's surface.

Yates told Mehl she first called 3-year-old Paul into the bathroom. Once he was dead, Yates placed him on a bed in a back bedroom, covering him with a sheet.

She did the same with 2-year-old Luke, then 5-year-old John.

When she called her oldest child, Noah, into the bathroom, her infant daughter's body was still floating in the tub.

Noah struggled the most, gasping for air as his mother forced him beneath the surface.

Yates took Mary's lifeless body to the bed where her three brothers lay, leaving Noah floating face down in the tub.

Then she dialed 911.

Dr. Patricia J. Moore, a medical examiner who performed autopsies on John and Mary, testified the children's heads had small bruises, likely from someone holding them under water.

Moore said John had a long brown hair, likely one of his mother's, clutched in his fist.