HOUSTON (AP) —Texas’ highest criminal court on Wednesday let stand a lower court ruling that threw out a woman’s murder convictions for drowning her children in a bathtub in 2001.

Harris County Assistant District Attorney Alan Curry said Andrea Yates’ case would be retried or a plea bargain considered. Jurors rejected Yates’ insanity defense in 2002 and found her guilty of two capital murder charges for the deaths of three of her five children.

A lower court ruling in January had thrown out the convictions because of erroneous testimony that prosecutors used to suggest that Yates had gotten the idea for the killings from an episode of the television show Law & Order.

Curry had asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider the appellate ruling, but the high court refused.

Curry said if the case goes back to trial, he is confident Yates would be convicted again.

“Andrea Yates knew precisely what she was doing,’’ Curry said. “She knew that it was wrong.”

Yates’ attorney, George Parnham, did not immediately return a phone call to The Associated Press. Yates’ ex-husband, Russell Yates, who stood by her throughout the trial but later divorced her, also did not immediately return a phone message.

The lower court, the First Court of Appeals in Houston, agreed with Yates’ attorney that erroneous testimony from forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz could have swayed jurors who otherwise might have found Yates was insane.

Dietz consulted for the television show and testified at the trial that shortly before Yates’ crime occurred, a Law & Order episode ran about a woman who drowned her children and was found innocent by reason of insanity.

But it turned out that no such Law & Order episode existed.

On June 20, 2001, Yates allegedly drowned her five children one by one, then called police to her Houston home and showed them the bodies of Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2 and 6-month-old Mary.

Prosecutors say it is not unusual in multiple death cases to file charges in only some cases.

Yates, 41, pleaded insanity, and according to testimony at the trial, she was overwhelmed by motherhood, considered herself a bad mother, suffered postpartum depression, had attempted suicide and had been hospitalized for depression.