State v. Worlock’s Empirical Analysis
1990
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 90 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 103 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2020 · most notably State v. Hinton (1993), 28 Cal. 4th 313 - People v. Bland (2002)
5 federal appellate · 90 state decisions — followed in 12 states
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
Applies 18 U.S.C. § 17
Relies on Strickland v. Washington · Wong Sun v. United States · Brown v. Illinois · Dunaway v. New York · Rawlings v. Kentucky
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 103 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A person is not criminally responsible for conduct if at the time of such conduct he was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know what he was doing was wrong.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. State v. Winder · State v. Handy“a defendant intentionally shoots at one victim but kills another, his punishment should be consistent with his intent and not his bad aim.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrencee.g. Ochoa v. State · State v. Smith“[i]n the vast majority of cases, if the defendant was capable of understanding that he was acting contrary to law, he would also have sufficient capacity to understand that he was acting contrary to the morals of society. Law is largely the crystallization of societal morals. Rarely would an allegedly illegal act not also be wrongful morally. Thus, “wrong” as used in the insanity defense will generally incorporate notions of both legal and moral wrong. [Id. at 609-10, 569 A.2d 1314 .]”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.