United States v. McCracken’s Empirical Analysis
488 F.2d 406 · 1974
Citation profile
77 federal appellate · 1 district · 20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 115 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2023 · most notably Shannon v. United States (1994), Watts v. United States (1976)
77 federal appellate · 1 district · 20 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 18 U.S.C. § 1111 · 18 U.S.C. § 4244 · 24 U.S.C. § 211
Relies on Chapman v. State of California · Glasser v. United States · Kotteakos v. United States · United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. · United States v. Atkinson
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 115 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“To inform the jury that the court may impose minimum or maximum sentence, will or will not grant probation, when a defendant will be eligible for parole, or other matters relating to disposition of the defendant, tend to draw the attention of the jury away from their chief function as sole judges of the facts, open the door to compromise verdicts and to confuse the issue or issues to be decided.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“The issue of insanity having been fairly raised, the jury may return one of three verdicts, guilty, not guilty, or not guilty by reason of insanity. Jurors, in common with people in general, are aware of the meanings of verdicts of guilty and not guilty. It is common knowledge that a verdict of not guilty means that the prisoner goes free and that a verdict of guilty means that he is subject to such punishment as the court may impose. But a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity has no such commonly understood meaning.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“although the issues of sanity at the time of the offense and competency to stand trial are indeed different, it does not follow 'that a psychiatrist investigating the competency of an accused to stand trial can never be qualified to express an opinion as to his sanity a few months earlier.'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.