| Mapp v. Ohio | ||||||||
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 Supreme Court of the United States | ||||||||
| Argued --- Decided --- | ||||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||||
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| Laws applied | ||||||||
| --- Exclusionary Rule, Fourteenth Amendment, Due Process |
Mapp vs. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961) was a landmark case in the area of U.S. criminal procedure, in which the United States Supreme Court decided that the exclusionary rule must be extended to the states as well as the federal government.
Facts
editWhen the Cleveland Police received news that Ms. Dollree Mapp and her daughter were hiding someone in question for a rescent bombing, they immediately went to the house to ask questions. Mapp called her attorney and under his advice she refused to give them entry because they didn’t have a warrant. Several hours later more officers came to her door and demanded again that they be permitted to enter her house. After Mapp refused, they forcibly opened the door and proceeded in. Mapp confronted them and demanded to see the search warrant. The police waved a piece of paper in the air (claiming it was the warrant) and Mapp grabbed it so the police handcuffed her. They searched her entire house and when they reached her basement they found a chest filled with pornographic material. The officers arrested Mapp for violating an Ohio law which prohibited the possession of obscene material. At her trial, Mapp was found guilty based on the evidence that was presented by the police. Mapp’s attorney questioned the police about the warrant but they could not show one, or even proven that one ever existed. This led Mapp to appeal to the Supreme Court of Ohio. Mapp’s attorney claimed that she should not have even been tried because the evidence that was used against her was obtained without warrant which is illegal. The Ohio Supreme Court agreed that this was a “reasonable argument” but they said the evidence was still permissible because the material was forced from the trunk and not the individual. Mapp’s conviction was upheld so she appealed to the Supreme Court of the U.S.
Issue(s) Before the Court
edit- “May evidence obtained by a warrant-less search in violation of the 4th amendment be used in state criminal proceedings?” I think Mapp shold have put a one million dollar lawsuit one Ohio police department
Holding
edit- The exclusionary rule, a judicial create remedy to enforce the Fourth Amendment's protections against "unreasonable searches and seizures
" must be extended to the states as well as the federal government.
Decision and Rationale
editThe fourth amendment protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures but the amendment does not include how to treat a search done without a warrant. In two previous cases (Boyd v. United States and Weeks v. United States) the court had determined that the federal government may not use such evidence due to the exclusionary rule which forbids evidence gathered without a warrant to be presented in court. However, this rule had never been applied to state courts. In Wolf v. Colorado the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th amendment made the 4th amendment apply to states but also that the states were not mandated to follow the exclusionary rule. Even though they had reached that decision the Supreme Court agreed to hear Mapp’s case and decide whether they should overturn their decision in Wolf v. Colorado by deciding whether the U.S. Constitution forbids state officials from using evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The case was decided in favor of Ms. Dollree Mapp with a vote of six to three. The court stated that the exclusionary rule also applies to states meaning that states can’t use evidence gained by illegal means to convict someone. This overturned the Wolf ruling. Justice Clark who wrote the majority opinion explains that the court’s rationale is based on the connection between the fourth and the fourteenth amendment when he says: “Since the Fourth Amendment's right of privacy has been declared enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth, it is enforceable against them by the same sanction of exclusion as is used against the Federal Government.” The court believed that if the right of privacy stated in the Fourth Amendment is valid to the states so should the exclusionary rule. Justice Clark also believed that this decision was clearly common sense and that the exclusionary rule was an important part of both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Justice Clark defends his decision against the argument that this rule allows criminals to go free just because a police officer made a mistake, stating “it is the law that sets him [the criminal] free” and that “Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws.”
The Court in reaching their opinion also disregarded the argument that the "exclusionary rule fetters law enforcement."
- "The Federal Courts themselves have operated under the exclusionary rule of Weeks for almost half a century; yet it has not been suggested either that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has thereby been rendered ineffective..."
Concurrence by Justice Black
editIn his concurring opinion, Justice Black expressed that he doubted that the Fourth Amendment alone can be used to prevent illegally obtained evidence from being used in state courts, because it is not explicitly stated with the text of the Amendment. He believes the command that no unreasonable searches or seizures be allowed is too little to infer such a large decision. With these differences is considered together with the Fifth Amendment's ban against compelled self-incrimination, a constitutional basis emerges which not only justifies but actually requires the exclusionary rule."
Dissent
editJustice Harlan delivered the dissenting opinion saying that he felt that the Wolf ruling shouldn't have been overruled when he says, "[I] can perceive no justification for regarding this case as an appropriate occasion for re-examining Wolf." He also felt the wrong question was brought up. He thought that the real question that should have been asked was,"not with the desirability of that [exclusionary] rule but only with the question whether states are Constitutionally free to follow it or
- "I do not believe that the Fourteenth Amendment empowers this Court to mould state remedies effectuating the right to freedom from "arbitrary intrusion by the police" to suit its own notions of how things should be done."