State v. Phillips’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

3 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 3 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Automatic commitment of an insanity acquittee provides the state with an in-depth opportunity to assess the defendant’s current mental status and to determine whether he poses a potential danger upon his release. We agree that the fact that the trial court found a reasonable doubt as to the defendant’s sanity at the time of the offense provides sufficient reason for further examination. Moreover, the sixty-to-ninety-day period between the defendant’s acquittal and the healing to appraise his then existing mental condition is necessaiy to provide the medical experts with a reasonable opportunity to observe him. Without an evaluation, a trial court would be forced prematurely to evaluate the potential danger an insanity acquittee poses to himself or others. “The United States Supreme Court has recognized that in light of the uncertainty of diagnosis in [the mental health] field and the tentativeness of professional judgment,’ the ‘courts should pay particular deference to reasonable legislative judgments.’ Jones, 463 U.S. at 364 n.13, 103 S. Ct. at 3050 n.13. The Tennessee legislature has provided mentally ill defendants with the right to an absolute insanity defense and, thus, has the prerogative to impose conditions on those who successfully rely upon such a defense. We do not think that the legislature acted unreasonably in allowing a definite period of sixty to ninety days for examination and diagnosis. . . . “Significantly, the defendant in the present case admitted that ”

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