35 Ala. App. 18 - Fitzhugh v. State’s Empirical Analysis
1949
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 51 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 53 later decisions — most recently August 2013 · most notably Mims v. United States (1967), Dennison v. State (1953)
2 federal appellate · 51 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 McNabb v. United States · Von Moltke v. Gillies · Lisenba v. People of State of California · Lyons v. State of Oklahoma · Anderson v. State
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 53 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"In face of the settled doctrines reflected in the above cases we are unwilling, indeed we think without the power or authority, to accord to appellant's counsel's insistence that the very fact that a young mother would kill her infant son is so contrary to all laws of maternal instinct and to the laws of nature as to establish, by its terrible enormity, the insanity of the mother. Even though a trial judge, or the members of an appellate court may have reached a conclusion different from that of the jury had a case been presented to him or them for an original decision, such does not warrant a reversal of a cause in which a jury, exercising their solemn prerogative to determine the issues has rendered a verdict which is supported by substantial evidence, and which verdict cannot rationally be said to be arbitrary."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“"`Opinions of experts in the field of mental disorders as to an accused's sanity or insanity are of course admissible and certainly should be carefully considered by a jury. Such opinion evidence is not, however, conclusive on the jury. The responsibility is upon the jury to weigh all the evidence, expert and lay, pertaining to the issue of the accused's mental competency. The weight to be accorded all such evidence is solely within the jury's province. They may reject it all even though it is without conflict.' " Fitzhugh v. State , 35 Ala. App. 18 , 26 , 43 So.2d 831 , 838 , cert. denied, 253 Ala. 246 , 43 So.2d 839 (1949), cert. denied, 339 U.S. 986 , 70 S.Ct. 1007 , 94 L.Ed. 1388 (1950). . . .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.