Salinger v. Superintendent’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 federal appellate · 26 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 31 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““One found to have been and to be insane in a criminal proceeding, is committed not because he did the act which caused him to be brought into court, but because it is not safe for him or the community for him to be at large. The confinement is not punishment, it is custodial. The acts which preceded it merely served to bring about a judicial determination in a particular form of the need for custodial confinement. This essential fact is not changed because, to avoid the consequences of his act, the accused, under Maryland law, must be suffering from a mental illness or a disease of a kind and to a degree which brings him within the Spencer rule. Other kinds and degrees of mental illness and disease are, of course, well recognized by medicine and the law and some of them make the victim a menace to society and himself if he is at liberty. “Once a determination of insanity has been made in the Criminal Court, the status of the one insane is the same as if the determination had been made otherwise.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Keiner v. Superintendent

2. ““Any person confined in any State * * * institution for the care, custody or treatment of insane persons * * * may file a petition in the law courts of any county * * * either where he is confined, or from which he was committed, * * * requesting that the person so confined be brought before said court for the purpose of having the sanity of such person determined, and the court shall forthwith proceed to hear and determine the matter; provided, however, that if the person so confined, or anyone in his behalf, shall pray a jury trial, the court shall empanel a jury of twelve men * * *. If the * * * jury * * * shall determine that such person is insane or is suffering from a mental disease, the court shall order said person committed to the institution from which he immediately came, or to some other suitable institution * % * y>”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Durant v. Superintendent

3. ““We hold that one who has been found not guilty of the charge of crime, because of due determination of insanity in a Criminal Court, has the same status as one confined as insane by virtue of some other procedure established by law and, in order to obtain release, must satisfy a judge or jury of his sanity, not only under the Spencer rule but under the tests generally applied as justifying confinement. This being so, the basis of appellant’s original commitment did not alone control the answer to the question of whether he should be released.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 2 Md. App. 524 - Dubs v. State