McCarty v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

22 state decisions

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 22 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““It must be the contention of appellant’s counsel, that any impulse that at the time may be irre sistible, will excuse homicide.. Happily for society, this is not the law; otherwise an ungovernable temper, or violent, brutish passion, or frenzy caused by indignation or anger, or drunkenness, or altercation, would excuse such one. Giily persons insane, or who have never reached years of discretion, are not accountable for the commission of crime. Even then the insanity that excuses is such as deprives the person committing the act of his reason or will in that particular transaction. The irresistible impulse recognized by the law is that only resulting from mental disease—from the derangement of the mind caused by a disease of the mind. It is not material how recently the derangement may have occurred. A person acts under an insane, irresistible impulse when, by reason of the duress of mental disease, he has lost the power to choose between right and wrong, to avoid doing the act in question, his free agency being at the time destroyed. ’ ’”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Howard v. Commonwealth