Flowers v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

21 federal appellate · 3 district · 129 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 155 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “(1) That the accused could know and comprehend the nature and consequences of his act. The nature of the act embraces knowledge on his part that the act was wrong, for if the accused be unable to distinguish right from wrong he would not know the nature of his act. (2) That the accused had sufficient power to control his impulse to commit the act charged.”

   4 later decisions quote this exact passage
   e.g. Berry v. State · Burton v. State

2. ““While it has been recognized that the science of psychiatry has made tremendous strides since that test was laid down in M’Naghten’s Case, its progress has not reached a point where its learning would require elimination of the test on constitutional grounds. Moreover, it must be recognized that choice of a test of legal sanity involves not only questions of scientific knowledge but questions of basic policy as to the extent to which that knowledge should determine criminal responsibility. However, much criticism of the rule by psychiatrists, physicians, and jurists has been noted, based in part on recognition of the fact that there are persons suffering from mental disease who, although having the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong are unable to control their actions, and a number of courts have rejected the right and wrong test as an exclusive criterion of criminal responsibility. A few courts have rejected it in favor of the rule discussed supra § 58, that accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act was the product of mental disease or defect, but a larger number of courts have rejected it as an exclusive test by adopting the volitional or irresistable impulse test discussed infra § 61. Where the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong has been rejected as an exclusive test, while such capacity is no longer the earmark of legal sanity, lack of such capacity remains one of the earmarks of legal insanity and is a proper subject of inquiry.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Hashfield v. State

3. ““. . . 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.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Hill v. State