United States v. Lyons’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

6 federal appellate · 1 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 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[Tjhis Court has held that involuntary drug addiction may constitute a “mental disease or defect” bearing on the defendant’s criminal responsibility. United States v. Bass, 490 F.2d 846 (5th Cir. 1974). In Bass, a case strikingly similar to the case at bar, this Court concluded that evidence of involuntary drug addiction could, and did in the particular circumstances of that case, constitute relevant evidence on the issue of the defendant’s sanity. In Bass, as in the instant case, the defendant was charged, inter alia, with obtaining narcotics by misrepresentation, deception, fraud, and subterfuge. More importantly, Bass and the case sub judice both dealt with defendants involuntarily addicted to the narcotics they illegally obtained. In Bass, the defendant had- become involuntarily addicted to Demerol as a result of medical treatment aimed at alleviating the defendant’s regional enteritis, an acutely painful disease of the lower gastrointestinal tract. Bass, 490 F.2d at 849 . In the instant case, the defendant’s proffer indicates that Lyons became involuntarily addicted to pain medication, including Demerol, as a result of medical treatment designed to alleviate the barrage of illnesses suffered by Lyons during the three-year period prior to the commission of the charged offenses. No meaningful distinction between Bass and the case sub judice can be discerned. 3 In both cases, the defendant embarked upon a course of narcotics use not by choice, but pursuant to doctor’s order”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Lyons