The law, such as it is

While we're on the criminal justice system, we've been using the wrong terms for adjudicating crimes. The end of a trial currently gets you two or (rarely) three outcomes: not guilty, guilty, and (sometimes, like Andrea Yates) not guilty by reason of insanity.

The common viewer of a trial assumes, and all defense lawyers assert, that not guilty is the same as innocent.

The O.J. Simpson and Enron trials should have proven that nothing could be further from the truth.

Innocent should be equivalent to "I was an astronaut and everybody saw the live video of me standing on Mars at the time the crime occurred". Or, perhaps, "the perpetrator was seven feet tall, weighed three hundred pounds, and was, as proven by DNA samples from beneath the victim's fingernails, a woman, while I am four foot eight, weigh ninety three pounds, and am a man".

So, we should have five outcomes of a trial:
Innocent, as above
Not Proven, a long-used and very useful Scottish verdict, "an acquittal used when the judge or jury does not have enough evidence to convict but still thinks the defendant probably committed the crime". (While O.J. Simpson might well have gotten this, the guilty bastard, from that stacked jury, why, oh why didn't they try the case where it happened, the sumbitch might've actually been gassed by now...)
Guilty, with the usual consequences
Guilty But Not Responsible, if the criminal is crazy, a child under the age of comprehension, whatever; this area of the law has its own difficulties, but it evolves
and a new verdict:
Responsible But Not Guilty, which allows for self-defense, the victim needed killing (a traditional Southern defense), and similar pleas; the perpetrator might still be liable for civil damages, but that's a subject for another rant

As for punishment, well, see the post below for my thoughts on that...