Lawrence v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1995
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 31 later decisions — most recently February 2020 · most notably Mincey v. Head (2000), Jenkins v. State (1998)
2 federal appellate · 27 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 Jackson v. Virginia · Leland v. Oregon · Hicks v. State · Brown v. State · Scherer v. Scherer
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.
“It is only in those instances where an individual, who is able to distinguish right from wrong, commits a criminal act while suffering under a delusional compulsion which leads him to believe his action is right, i.e., “justified,” that Georgia law accepts insanity as a defense. Hence, “if the delusion is as to a fact which would not excuse the act with which the prisoner is charged, the delusion does not authorize an acquittal of the defendant.” [Cit.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Woods v. State“The appropriate standard of appellate review ... is whether the evidence, when construed most favorably for the State, would be sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find that appellant failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that [he] was insane at the time of the [crimes]. [Cit.]”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Rodriguez v. State“Hicks ... stands for the position that a defendant who can distinguish between right and wrong and who commits a criminal act he recognizes is wrong but which he is compelled to commit by an uncontrollable impulse or compulsion, has no insanity defense under Georgia law.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Mincey v. Head
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.