Commonwealth v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1970
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 71 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 74 later decisions — most recently October 2016 · most notably Commonwealth v. Mahnke (1975), Commonwealth v. Walker (1976)
3 federal appellate · 71 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 Witherspoon v. Illinois · Singer v. United States · Commonwealth v. Dascalakis · Commonwealth v. McHoul · Crocker v. Justices of the Superior Court
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 74 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““[A] court cannot direct a jury to return a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity even though the only evidence on the issue is that the defendant was insane at the time of the alleged crime, and the evidence is uncontroverted. [One] reason, as stated in Commonwealth v. Clark, 292 Mass. 409, 415 [(1935)], is that ‘although the burden of proof is on the Commonwealth to prove the defendant mentally responsible for crime ... the fact that a great majority of men are sane, and the probability that any particular man is sane, may be deemed by a jury to outweigh, in evidential value, testimony that he is insane.’ ... It is for the jury to decide in each case whether they draw that inference. ... If they draw that inference, it is for them to decide what weight they will give to it in the light of all of the evidence introduced on the issue. They may deem it to outweigh, in evidential value, psychiatric or other evidence that the defendant is insane. These are decisions to be made by the jury, and the court cannot direct the jury how they shall decide thereon.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage“The jury are ... the sole judges of the credibility and weight of all of the evidence on the issue of insanity.... The jury are not compelled to believe any such testimony or opinions, and the court cannot order them to do so by directing them to return verdicts of not guilty by reason of insanity.... The law should not, and does not, give the opinions of experts on either side of the issue the benefit of conclusiveness, even if there are no contrary opinions introduced at the trial.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“[t]he probability that any particular man is sane may be of slight if any weight in the face of unanimous psychiatric opinion to the contrary, where it is plainly apparent from the evidence that the act committed is not one that a sane person would have committed, there being no circumstances (anger, revenge, rejection, jealousy, hatred, insult, intoxication, or the like) to account for the murderous act by a sane person.”
1 later decision 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.