Durham v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
214 F.2d 862 · 1954
Citation profile
305 federal appellate · 16 district · 148 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 503 later decisions (11 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2021 · most notably Kent v. United States (1966), Foucha v. Louisiana (1992)
305 federal appellate · 16 district · 148 state decisions — followed in 42 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. § 10
Relies on Leland v. Oregon · Great Northern Ry Co v. Sunburst Oil & Refining Co · Davis v. United States · Funk v. United States · Fisher v. United States
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 503 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“an accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or mental defect.”
29 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““. . . under the law of this State an accused person must be found not guilty of the offense with which he is charged, if at the time of committing the act the person accused was laboring under such a defect of reason from a diseased 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 that what he was doing was wrong. Furthermore, you are instructed that under the law of this State a person may have sufficient mental capacity to know right from wrong and to be able to comprehend the nature and consequences of the act, and yet not be criminally responsible for his actions; for an irresistable impulse of a person accused is a lawful excuse for the commission of an act, otherwise a crime, where the person committing it, though he is capable of knowing right from wrong, lacks in consequence of a diseased state of mind, the will power to resist an impulse to commit crime.””
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““* -x- * in a certain sense it may be true that, where the defense is insanity, and where the case made by the prosecution discloses nothing whatever in excuse or extenuation of the crime charged, the accused is bound to produce some evidence that will impair or weaken the force of the legal presumption in favor of sanity. But to hold that such presumption must absolutely control the jury until it is overthrown or impaired by evidence sufficient to establish the fact of insanity beyond all reasonable doubt, or to the reasonable satisfaction of the jury, is in effect to require him to establish his innocence by proving that he is not guilty of the crime charged. * * * -X- * -X- “Strictly speaking, the burden of proof, as those words are understood in criminal law, is never upon the accused to establish his innocence or to disprove the facts necessary to establish the crime for which he is indicted. It is on the prosecution from the beginning to the end of the trial, and applies to every element necessary to constitute the crime. Giving to the prosecution, where the defense is insanity, the benefit in the way of proof of the presumption in favor of sanity, the vital question, from the time a plea of not guilty is entered until the return of the verdict, is whether, upon all the evidence, by whatever side adduced, guilt is established beyond reasonable doubt. If the whole evidence, including that supplied by the presumption of sanity, does not exclude beyond reasonable doubt the”
2 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.