Lord v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

4 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 4 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “An example of a person who could successfully establish the elements of the revised insanity defense is the defendant who, as a result of a mental disease or defect, is unable to realize that he is shooting someone with a gun when he pulls the trigger on what he believes to be a water pistol, or a murder defendant who believes he is attacking the ghost of his mother rather than a living human being.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lane v. Ballot

2. “The doctrines of actus reus, mens rea, insanity, mistake, justification, and duress have historically provided the tools for a constantly shifting adjustment of the tension between the evolving aims of the criminal law and changing religious, moral, philosophical, and medical views of the nature of man[.]”

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

3. “lacked ... the substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of [the criminal] conduct or to conform that conduct to the requirements of law,”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lane v. Ballot