Lynch v. Overholser’s Empirical Analysis
1962
Citation profile
467 federal appellate · 42 district · 300 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,042 later decisions (35 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2021 · most notably North Carolina v. Alford (1970), Santobello v. New York (1971)
467 federal appellate · 42 district · 300 state decisions — followed in 43 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedOverholser v. Lynch (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Glasser v. United States · Berger v. United States · Rector Etc of Holy Trinity Church v. United States · Quercia v. United States · Leland v. Oregon
Cited together with North Carolina v. Alford · Santobello v. New York · Baxstrom v. Herold · Jackson v. Indiana · Utah Junk Co. v. Porter
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 1,042 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"The criminal defendant who chooses to claim that he was mentally irresponsible when his offense was committed is in quite a different position. It is true that he may avoid the ordinary criminal penalty merely by submitting enough evidence of an abnormal mental condition to raise a reasonable doubt of his responsibility at the time of committing the offense. Congress might have thought, however, that having successfully claimed insanity to avoid punishment, the accused should then bear the burden of proving that he is no longer subject to the same mental abnormality which produced his criminal acts. Alternatively, Congress might have considered it appropriate to provide compulsory commitment for those who successfully invoke an insanity defense in order to discourage false pleas of insanity. We need go no further here than to say that such differentiating considerations are pertinent to ascertaining the intended reach of this statutory provision.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“repeatedly warned against the dangers of an approach to statutory construction which confines itself to the bare words of a statute [citations], `for literalness may strangle meaning.'”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“an absolute right to have his guilty plea accepted by the court.”
10 later decisions 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.