CSI: NY Season 1 Episode 8

Buck v. Bell: The case mentioned in this episode took place in 1927. It upheld the practice of negative eugenics, which is the compulsory sterilization of people judged to be too "inferior" to be allowed to reproduce.

In 1924, the state of Virginia legalized the sterilization of anyone whom the state deemed too "feeble-minded" (in the language of the time) to reproduce. Carrie Buck, who had been raped and made pregnant by a relative of her adoptive family, was forcibly institutionalized, wrongly judged to have a mental age of 9 and scheduled that same year for involuntary sterilization. The case went to the supreme courts of both Virginia and the United States. The decision was handed down in 1927, with the vote 8-1 in favor of sterilization.

Carrie Buck, her mother, her sister Doris and her three-year-old daughter were all sterilized (Doris was never told about this; she finally learned about it in 1980). Eventually, Carrie was "paroled" from the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. Both she and Doris married, and to all appearences, turned out to be of normal intelligence.

The case of Buck vs. Bell encouraged the passage of eugenics laws in other states. The Virginia statute allowing compulsory sterilization was not repealed until 1974.

The words Mac quotes are from the actual 1927 US Supreme Court decision as written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, including the words: Three generations of imbeciles are enough, which supplied the title of the episode (somewhat abridged).

This case was dramatized in the 1994 TV movie Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story, starring Marlee Matlin as Carrie Buck.