Blocker v. United States’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

42 federal appellate · 2 district · 6 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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““On November 18, 1957, less than a month after this verdict was returned, the Assistant Superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital testified in another case * that he and the Superintendent of the Hospital were then agreed that people suffering from sociopathic personality disturbance should be 'labelled’ as diseased, as mentally ill, mentally sick, suffering from mental disease. Counsel for Blocker promptly moved for a new trial on the basis of this new medical evidence. The motion was denied. We think it should have been granted. Blocker, his life at stake, was entitled to a verdict based upon the most mature expert opinion available on an issue vital to his defense.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Blocker v. United States

2. ““The right-wrong and ‘irresistible impulse’ tests are criteria of causative insanity, that is, not only of insanity, but of causation as well. They are indeed the only true tests of causation. As I have heretofore suggested, it seems to me that one who knows right from wrong, but freely and deliberately chooses to do the wrong, cannot be heard to say that some mental disease or defect caused his criminal conduct. This is true even if the defendant’s mentality actually deviates from the normal to the extent that psychiatrists say he has a mental disease or even insanity itself, so long as there is no causation.” (Italics supplied.)”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Rawland