Emily Walton's List: Supreme Court Case

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  • 367 U.S. 643 (1961)
  • Vote: 6-3
  • For the Court: Clark
  • Concurring: Black, Douglas, and Stewart
  • Dissenting: Harlan, Frankfurter, and Whittaker
•    On May 23, 1957, police officers forced their way into the home of Dollree Mapp, whom they suspected of criminal activities. The police claimed they had a search warrant, which is required under the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, but they never proved it.
• During their unwarranted search of Mapp's house, the police seized obscene pictures, which under an Ohio law were illegal objects for someone to have. Mapp was convicted of possessing obscene pictures and sentenced to prison. Her lawyer appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
•   The Issue The police obtained evidence of Dollree Mapp's illegal behavior through actions that violated the 4th Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. Can evidence obtained through an illegally conducted search be used to convict a person of violating a state law?
•  Opinion of the Court The Court overturned Dollree Mapp's conviction. Justice Tom Clark wrote that evidence obtained in violation of the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution must be excluded from use in state as well as federal criminal trials. The Court thus applied the exclusionary rule for the first time in ruling against a state government.
•  Dissent The dissenting opinions were based on opposition to the incorporation doctrine, by which the exclusionary rule associated with the 4th Amendment was applied to a state government through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. The dissenting justices believed that the 4th Amendment guarantees of individual rights were applicable only to the federal government.
• Significance The exclusionary rule was created by the Court in Weeks v. United States (1914). Before the Mapp case, however, this rule had never been used against a state government.

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• Facts of the Case: 

   

  Dolree Mapp was convicted of possessing obscene materials after an admittedly illegal police search of her home for a fugitive. She appealed her conviction on the basis of freedom of expression.
• Question: 

   

  Were the confiscated materials protected by the First Amendment? (May evidence obtained through a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment be admitted in a state criminal proceeding?)
• Conclusion: 

   

  The Court brushed aside the First Amendment issue and declared that "all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by [the Fourth Amendment], inadmissible in a state court." Mapp had been convicted on the basis of illegally obtained evidence. This was an historic -- and controversial -- decision. It placed the requirement of excluding illegally obtained evidence from court at all levels of the government. The decision launched the Court on a troubled course of determining how and when to apply the exclusionary rule.

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• Her conviction was obtained on the basis of evidence taken by the police when they entered (1957) her boardinghouse without a search warrant while looking for gambling materials.
• The Supreme Court, in overturning her conviction, declared that the exclusionary rule (based on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution), which prohibits the use in federal court of evidence obtained through an illegal search and seizure, extended also to state courts.
• The ruling provoked a good deal of controversy; while proponents of the exclusionary rule claim that it is the only means of assuring freedom from illegal searches, opponents argue that a criminal should not go free because of a police officer's violation of the Constitution.

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• Historical Background
• The Warren Court left an unprecedented legacy of judicial activism in the area of civil rights law as well as in the area of civil liberties—specifically, the rights of the accused as addressed in Amendments 4 through 8.
• In the period from 1961 to 1969, the Warren Court examined almost every aspect of the criminal justice system in the United States, using the 14th Amendment to extend constitutional protections to all courts in every State.
• This process became known as the “nationalization” of the Bill of Rights. During those years, cases concerning the right to legal counsel, confessions, searches, and the treatment of juvenile criminals all appeared on the Court's docket.
• The Warren Court's revolution in the criminal justice system began with the case of Mapp v. Ohio, the first of several significant cases in which it re-evaluated the role of the 14th Amendment as it applied to State judicial systems.
• Circumstances of the Case
• On May 23, 1957, police officers in a Cleveland, Ohio suburb received information that a suspect in a bombing case, as well as some illegal betting equipment, might be found in the home of Dollree Mapp.
• Three officers went to the home and asked for permission to enter, but Mapp refused to admit them without a search warrant. Two officers left, and one remained. Three hours later, the two returned with several other officers. Brandishing a piece of paper, they broke in the door.
• Mapp asked to see the “warrant” and took it from an officer, putting it in her dress. The officers struggled with Mapp and took the piece of paper away from her. They handcuffed her for being “belligerent.”
• Constitutional Issues
• The question before the Court involved 4th Amendment protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures” and the “nationalization” of the Bill of Rights under the 14th Amendment.
• Was the search of Mapp's home legal and the evidence admissible under State law and criminal procedure? If the State criminal procedure code did not exclude the evidence as having been illegally gained, did Ohio law fail to provide Mapp her 4th Amendment protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures”?
• Arguments
• For Mapp: The police, who possessed no warrant to search Mapp's property, had acted improperly by doing so. Any incriminating evidence found during the search should, therefore, be thrown out of court and her conviction overturned. If the 4th Amendment did not limit the prerogatives of police on the local and State level, local law enforcement would have a mandate to search wherever, whenever, and whomever they pleased. The exclusionary rule that applied in federal courts should also be applied to State court proceedings.
• For the State of Ohio: Even if the search was made without proper authority, the State was not prevented from using the evidence seized because “the Fourteenth Amendment does not forbid the admission of evidence obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure.” In other words, Ohio argued, the 14th Amendment does not guarantee 4th Amendment protections in the State courts. Furthermore, under the 10th Amendment, the States retain their right to operate a separate court system. The Bill of Rights only restricts and limits the actions of the National Government.
• Decision and Rationale
• In a 6-3 decision, the Court overturned the conviction, and five justices found that the States were bound to exclude evidence seized in violation of the 4th Amendment. In the majority opinion, Justice Tom Clark declared: “We hold that all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution [is] inadmissible in a state court…. Were it otherwise…the assurance against unreasonable…searches and seizures would be [meaningless].”
• Clark explained that “Only last year [Elkins v. United States, 1960] the Court…recognized that the purpose of the exclusionary rule 'is to deter—to compel respect for the constitutional guarantee in the only effectively available way—by removing the incentive to disregard it.'”
• The Court thus ensured that “in either sphere [State or federal]…no man is to be convicted on unconstitutional evidence.”
• The 4th Amendment sets the standards for searches and seizures by law enforcement officials in the United States, the Court noted, and the 14th Amendment requires judges to uphold those standards in every State.
• Evidence gained by an illegal search became inadmissible in State courts as a result of the decision.

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• Prior history Defendant convicted, Cuyahoga County, Ohio Court of Common Pleas; affirmed, Ohio Court of Appeals; affirmed, 166 N.E.2d 387 (Ohio 1960)