Howell v. Todhunter’s Empirical Analysis
1930
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 16 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 1995
13 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 Hall v. Bledsoe · Ex parte Dame
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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““This brings us to a consideration of the question, whether the facts alleged in the petition call for the exercise of jurisdiction by the circuit court. It will be observed that * * * when the custodian of the prisoner is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the defendant is insane, he may summons a jury of twelve persons to inquire into the present insanity of the defendant. This does not mean that there shall be such an inquisition merely on the suggestion of the insanity of the defendant. If it were true that a suggestion of insanity, after the death sentence had been pronounced, created on the part of the convicted person an absolute right to an inquisition for insanity, it would be within the power of the convicted person, or his friends, to indefinitely delay the execution of the sentence of death by repeated suggestions of insanity, followed by inquisitions in each instance. Hence the statute has given the custodian of the prisoner a discretion in the matter, and he is only required to act when he thinks there are reasonable grounds for believing the prisoner to be insane.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Leggett v. Henslee
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.