Orndorff v. Com.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “As applied in Virginia, the defense of insanity provides that a defendant may prove that at the time of the commission of the act, he was suffering from a mental disease or defect such that he did not know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, he did not know what he was doing was wrong. . . . In addition, we have approved in appropriate cases the granting of an instruction defining an 'irresistible impulse' as a form of legal insanity. The irresistible impulse doctrine is applicable only to that class of cases where the accused is able to understand the nature and consequences of his act and knows it is wrong, but his mind has become so impaired by disease that he is totally deprived of the mental power to control or restrain his act.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 140 S. Ct. 1021 - Kahler v. Kansas