Not Guilty by reason of Insanity

Well the Andrea Yates jury returned a verdict of "Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity". Well duh, any mother that MURDERS her five children is insane. That does ** NOT ** mean that she is not guilty.

This trial got me thinking about how the insanity defense is inappropriately used and how it is confusing to a jury. I have a better idea.

There is no doubt that some people just are not aware of what they are doing when they commit a crime; that does not mean they should be exonerated, just that the punishment should be matched to their mental state and capacity at the time of the crime.

So, to solve the issue of potentially letting a guilty person go free, we should no longer consider insanity as a defense to the crime itself; rather, it should be used as a mitigating circumstance during the penalty phase of the trial.

Case in point with Andrea Yates. The trial should simply determine where or not Andrea Yates committed the crim of murder, which is the intentional killing of another human being. On that point, there is no question, she is guilty.

However, it is possible that her mental condition at the time was such that she should not be placed in prison for the rest of her life. So, during the penalty phase the defense can use her mental awareness and capacity as a mitigating factor.

This way we allow a judge to more appropriately determine the sentence and penalty and allow the jury to do their job correctly, which is to determine innocence or guilt.

Everyone wins; howevere, I would suspect that the ABA would oppose this proposal, which only goes to show you their level of stupidity.