Blocker v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
288 F.2d 853 · 1961
Citation profile
114 federal appellate · 2 district · 23 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 158 later decisions (9 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2011 · most notably Addington v. Texas (1979), Eddings v. Oklahoma (1982)
114 federal appellate · 2 district · 23 state decisions — followed in 12 states
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
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 2255 (Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996)
Relies on Dusky v. United States · Chas Steward Mach Co v. Davis · Davis v. United States · Fisher v. United States · Mastro Plastics Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board
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 158 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * * the case is left in the hands of the jury only if there is disagreement among the psychiatrists or if the expert testimony supports guilt; if the psychiatrists all agree that the defendant has a ‘disease’ and the act was its ‘product,’ then the issue is taken from the jury”. 3”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Now with respect to the matter of insanity, Members of the Jury, I charge you that insanity is a valid defense, and under our law a person charged with an offense who is insane at the time of the offense charged is not guilty, and would not be guilty by reason of insanity. ***** “Now we come more specifically to what is meant by insanity. The term insanity as used in this case means such a perverted and deranged condition of the mental and moral faculties as to render a person incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, or unconscious at tbe time of the nature of the act he is committing; or where, though conscious of it and able to distinguish between right and wrong and know that the act is wrong, yet his will, by which the law means the governing power of his mind, has been otherwise than voluntary so completely destroyed that his actions are not subject to it but are beyond his control. “To state it differently, the accused should not be regarded as criminally responsible where because of his mental defect or disease, if you find he has any, he either cannot distinguish right from wrong, that is does not know the difference between right and wrong, or, if able to make the distinction, cannot choose between them, that is, is unable to refrain from doing wrong. “You will see that there are two conditions, either one of which, if it exists at the time of the offense, if the offense was committed, would make the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity. First, if,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“"In conclusion of this branch of the subject, that we may not be misunderstood, we think it follows very clearly from what we have said, that the inquiries to be submitted to the jury, then, in every criminal trial where the defense of insanity is interposed, are these: "First. Was the defendant at the time of the commission of the alleged crime, as matter of fact, afflicted with a disease of the mind, so as to be either idiotic, or otherwise insane? "Second. If such be the case, did he know right from wrong, as applied to the particular act in question? If he did not have such knowledge, he is not legally responsible. "Third. If he did have such knowledge, he may nevertheless not be legally responsible if the two following conditions concur: "(1) If, by reason of the duress of such mental disease, he had so far lost the power to choose between the right and wrong, and to avoid doing the act in question, as that his free agency was at the time destroyed; "(2) And if, at the same time, the alleged crime was so connected with such mental disease, in the relation of cause and effect, as to have been the product of it solely. " Id. at 596, 2 So. at 866-867.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.