# Mathews v. United States

> Supreme Court of the United States · February 24, 1988 · 485 U.S. 58

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9431221

## Case

- **Full name:** Mathews v. United States
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** February 24, 1988
- **Citations:** 485 U.S. 58; 108 S. Ct. 883; 99 L. Ed. 2d 54; 1988 U.S. LEXIS 943
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Brennan
- **Judges:** Rehnquist, Brennan, Marshall, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, White, Blackmun, Kennedy
- **Cited by:** 1,120 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9431221

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that a valid entrapment defense has two related elements: government inducement and a lack of predisposition on the part of the defendant to engage in the criminal conduct (citing Sorrells, 287 U.S. 435 )
- holding that "even if the defendant denies one or more elements of the crime, he is entitled to an entrapment instruction whenever there is sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could find entrapment"
- holding that “a defendant in a federal criminal prosecution who denies commission of the crime may nonetheless have the jury instructed, where the evidence warrants, on the affirmative defense of entrapment”
- stating “that a valid entrapment defense has two related elements: government inducement of the crime, and a lack of predisposition on the part of the defendant to engage in the criminal conduct”
- holding a defendant may testify that he lacked intent while also arguing that, if the jury concludes otherwise, then it should consider whether his intent was the product of government inducement

## Opinion text

Justice Brennan,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion. I write separately only because I have previously joined or written four opinions dissenting from this Court’s holdings that the defendant’s predisposition is relevant to the entrapment defense. Hampton v. United States, 425 U. S. 484, 495 (1976) (Brennan, J., dissenting); *67 United States v. Russell, 411 U. S. 423, 436 (1973) (Douglas, J., dissenting); id., at 439 (Stewart, J., dissenting); Sherman v. United States, 356 U. S. 369, 378 (1958) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment). See also Sorrells v. United States, 287 U. S. 435, 453 (1932) (Roberts, J., concurring in judgment). Although some governmental misconduct might be sufficiently egregious to violate due process, Russell, supra, at 431-432 , my differences with the Court have been based on statutory interpretation and federal common law, not on the Constitution. Were I judging on a clean slate, I would still be inclined to adopt the view that the entrapment defense should focus exclusively on the Government’s conduct. But I am not writing on a clean slate; the Court has spoken definitively on this point. Therefore I bow to stare decisis, and today join the judgment and reasoning of the Court.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9431221. Public record. Not legal advice.