Commonwealth v. Ostrander’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 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 16 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “We reject the defendant's narrow interpretation of the relevant case law, because it does not take into account that it is the defendant who is placing his mental state at issue, and the challenged mental state does not concern a collateral issue, but rather a defense set forth by the defendant. Furthermore, such an interpretation would be fundamentally unfair to the Commonwealth, permitting a one-sided presentation of expert evidence not only to the motion judge, but also to the jury who must find that the confession was voluntary beyond a reasonable doubt. Permitting only one party to introduce expert testimony on a crucial issue would have a `distorting effect on the fact finder's role,' and undermine `society's conduct of a fair inquiry.' It would be both `unfair and improper to allow a defendant to introduce favorable psychological testimony and then prevent the prosecution from resorting to the most effective and in most instances the only means of rebuttal: other psychological testimony. The principle also rests on `the need to prevent fraudulent mental defenses.'”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. State v. Verret