Revise "Not Guilty/Insanity"

Here's a project for our State Legislators for the next session: create a "Guilty and Insane" category of crime.

I was watching The O'Reilly Factor the other night, and O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera were discussing the Andrea Yates re-trial for the drowning murders of her five children. O'Reilly and Rivera were both horrified that she was found not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI).

Now, there are some very serious problems with NGRI--which is why a number of states, in the last few years, have replaced NGRI with "guilty, but insane." You don't get out any sooner, but you end up in a hospital for the criminally insane--not a prison. But O'Reilly and Rivera were insisting that Yates was not insane, because of the level of premeditation involved. This shows that O'Reilly and Rivera have not the least understanding of the basis of NGRI, or paranoid schizophrenia.

HT and more discussion at Clayton Cramer's blog.