Opinion : Insanity defense

Andrea Yates(drowned her 5 children) is again in court to plead innocent yesterday by reason of insanity. The insanity defense is something that has always bothered me. I believe that the criminal justice system needs some change in the area of dealing with mentally ill suspects. Specifically, I would change the verdict from "innocent" to "guilty" in these cases. To distinguish the mentally ill, simply change the sentencing from prison time to mandatory therapy. To say that a person is innocent, for whatever reason, is to say that they did not commit the crime. This is clearly not the case in theses type of insanity cases, the accused person did physically commit the crime, and this is unfair to people who are actually innocent (and of course, a crazy person can be innocent). The state of mind may be in question, but it is the person's physical being that is on trial. When a guilty verdict or plea is entered, a sentencing hearing or decision follows anyway, and this is a better opportunity to consider a criminal's mental state and whether they need punishment or therapy. I am also in favor of setting a number of years on the therapy, as on a jail sentence, so that people understand that there are still definitive consequences for actions, even if there were mitigating circumstances.
As a side note, I believe that this system would have two positive effects. First, it would restore a lot of people's faith in the legal system as they would see heinous crimes get "punished" (the killer got 25 years) as opposed to hearing that a criminal was found "innocent" (by reason of insanity) after his lawyer made a good argument. In that way, this would seem to be just a PR move, yet it would have another important effect. I believe that if mental illness were handled in a way similar to any other crimes, it would remove some of the stigma surrounding mental illness and may cause other criminals to seek psychological help. In my opinion, to commit a serious, brutal, crime a person must have at least some problem mentally. By separating the judgment on insanity (states of mind can be a tricky thing and is not logical) from the determination of guilt or innocence (must be beyond reasonable doubt), we would effectively lower the burden of proof needed to get a person committed for therapy. In addition, as long as definite sentences were handed down, (and for the same durations regardless of jail or therapy) this plan would make the criminals no more of a danger to society. In fact, giving more criminals psychological treatment would go a long way towards achieving the justice systems goals of rehabbing criminals. On that note, changing the way that insanity is treated by the legal system would benefit the public (fewer repeat offenders?), the legal system (better PR), and the criminals themselves.