Guiteau's Case’s Empirical Analysis
10 F. 161 · 1882
Citation profile
20 federal appellate · 3 district · 3 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2008 · most notably Davis v. United States (1895), Fisher v. United States (1946)
20 federal appellate · 3 district · 3 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Reynolds v. States · Samuel Thurlow v. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts · State v. Pike · Life Insurance v. Terry · State v. Jones
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The crime, then, involves three elements, viz., the killing, malice, and a responsible mind in the murderer. But after all the. evidence is in, if the jury, while bearing in mind both these presumptions that I have mentioned — i.e. that, the defendant is innocent until he is proved guilty, and that he is and was sane, unless evidence to the contrary appears— and considering the whole evidence in the case, still entertain what is called a reasonable doubt, on any ground, (either as to the killing or the responsible condition of mind,) whether he is guilty’ of the crime of murder, as it has been explained and defined, then the rule is that the defendant is entitled to the benefit of that doubt and to an acquittal.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“Another man, whom you know to be an affectionate father, insists that the Almighty has appeared to him and commanded him to sacrifice his child. No reasoning has convinced him of his duty to do it, but the command is as real to him as my voice is now to you. No reasoning or remonstrance can shake his conviction or deter him from his purpose. This is an insane delusion, the coinage of a diseased brain, as seems to be generally supposed, which defies reason and ridicule, which palsies the reason, blindfolds the conscience, and throws into disorder all the springs of human action.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Lundgren v. Mitchell“A common instance is where he fully believes that the act he is doing is done by the immediate command of God, and he acts under the delusive but sincere belief that what he is doing is by the command of a superior power, which supersedes all human laws, and the laws of nature.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Lundgren v. Mitchell
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.