United States v. Webster’s Empirical Analysis
649 F.2d 346 · 1981
Citation profile
78 federal appellate · 14 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 101 later decisions — most recently November 2008 · most notably United States v. Jannotti (1982), United States v. Alvarez (1985)
78 federal appellate · 14 state decisions
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
Relies on Ohio Bureau of Employment Services v. Hodory · Abney v. United States · United States v. Russell · Sorrells v. United States · Sherman v. United States
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 101 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“a substantial risk that the offense would be committed by a person other than one ready to commit it.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"Our creation of a rule that allows gross hearsay evidence to be used to prove predisposition has resulted in the very evils that the rule against hearsay was designed to prevent. The jury is free to believe the unsworn, unverified statements of government informants, sometimes unidentified, whose credibility is not subject to effective testing before the jury and whose motivations may be less than honorable. We are hard pressed to envision a situation where the disparity between the probative value and prejudicial effect of evidence is greater.... [W]e hold that hearsay evidence is never admissible for the purpose of proving the defendant’s predisposition. All prior decisions of this Court to the contrary are hereby overruled.” 11 (Footnotes omitted.)”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[I]t is clear that when entrapment is at issue the focal point of the inquiry is on the predisposition of the defendant .... Once the defendant has carried this burden [of showing that the government’s conduct might induce an innocent person to act], the government must, if it is to prevail, prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was predisposed to commit the crime charged.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.