Thompson v. Commonwealth’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 2 district · 55 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 73 later decisions — most recently April 2010 · most notably 5 Va. App. 188 - Evans-Smith v. Commonwealth (1987), Nathan Thomas v. W. K. Cunningham, Jr., Superintendent of the Virginia State Penitentiary (1963)
3 federal appellate · 2 district · 55 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 State v. Roy · State v. Moore · Commonwealth v. Clark · Dejarnette v. Commonwealth · Bell v. Commonwealth
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 73 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The irresistible impulse doctrine is applicable only to that class of cases where the accused is able to understand the nature and consequences of his act and knows it is wrong, but his mind has become so impaired by disease that he is totally deprived of the mental power to control or restrain his act.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““In 14 Am. Jur., Criminal Law, sec. 35, p. 793, irresistible impulse is defined to be ‘an impulse induced by, and growing out of some mental disease affecting the volitive, as distinguished from the perceptive, powers, so that the person afflicted, while able to understand the nature and consequences of the act charged against him and to perceive that it is wrong, is unable, because of such mental disease, to resist the impulse to do it. It is to be distinguished from mere passion or overwhelming emotion not growing out of, and connected with, a disease of the mind. Frenzy arising solely from the passion of anger and jealousy, regardless of how furious, is not insanity.’ ######### “Judge Staples, in Dejamette v. Commonwealth, 75 Va. 867, 878 , approved a similar definition, and said: ‘Certainly no sound exception can be taken to this definition of homicidal mania or irresistible impulse, as it is sometimes termed; a diseased state of the mind, the tendency of which is to break out in a sudden paroxysm of violence, venting itself in homicide or other dangerous and violent acts upon friend and foe indiscriminately.’ ######### “* * * The irresistible impulse doctrine is applicable only to that class of cases where the accused is able to understand the nature and consequences of his act and knows it is wrong, but his mind has be come so impaired by disease that he is totally deprived of the mental power to control or restrain his act.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The test in a criminal case is not whether the jurors were actually prejudiced by the extraneous matter, but whether they might have been so prejudiced. If they might have been prejudiced, then the purity of the verdict is open to serious doubt and the verdict should be set aside and a new trial awarded.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.