Mapp v. Ohio - Further Readings

Petitioner
Dollree Mapp
Respondent
State of Ohio
Petitioner's Claim
That the state is barred from using evidence at trial that was obtained through an unlawful search and seizure.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
A. L. Kearns
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Gertrude Bauer Mahon
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, William J. Brennan, Jr., Tom C. Clark (writing for theCourt), William O. Douglas, Potter Stewart, Earl Warren
Justices Dissenting
Felix Frankfurter, John Marshall Harlan II, Charles Evans Whittaker
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
19 June 1961
Decision
The Court held that the exclusionary rule, which prevents unconstitutionallyobtained evidence from being introduced at trial, applies to states as well as to the federal government.
Significance
After Mapp, state police as well as state courts, where most criminalprosecutions take place, were obliged to follow the Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure.
On 23 May 1957, officers from the Cleveland, Ohio, police department came tothe home of Dollree Mapp, seeking entry. They had information that a person wanted for questioning in connection with a bombing was hiding inside. They also believed that the house contained gambling equipment. After calling her lawyer, Mapp refused to let them in without a warrant.
Police continued to watch the house. Three hours later, they again sought entrance. When Mapp did not immediately come to the door, they forced their wayinside. Meanwhile, Mapp's lawyer had arrived, but the police, who had begun to search the premises, would not let him in and would not allow him to see his client. Encountering officers on the stairs, Mapp again demanded to see a warrant. She was shown a piece of paper (not a warrant), which she grabbed. She struggled as police tried to retrieve it, and as a result she was handcuffed because she had been "resisting arrest."
Police never did find what they supposedly were looking for, but in the course of their search they happened across some allegedly obscene books and photographs. Mapp was convicted of possessing obscene material and put in prison.The Ohio Supreme Court upheld her conviction, even while conceding that the search that had netted the evidence used against her was "unlawful." The state's highest court concluded that the evidence could be used against Mapp because of a 1949 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Wolf v. People of the State of Colorado. Although in Wolf the Court ruled that states are bound by the due process requirements of the Fourth Amendment, the majority opinion inthat case also stated that the exclusionary rule--preventing improperly obtained evidence from being introduced in court--need not be applied in state court proceedings.
When Mapp took her case to the U.S. Supreme Court, her lawyers appealed her conviction primarily on First Amendment grounds. They argued that the state ofOhio had violated Mapp's right to freedom of thought and expression by making the mere possession of obscene material illegal. However, the American Civil Liberties Union also filed an amicus ("friend of the court") brief in which it argued for a reconsideration of Wolf.
Court Applies Exclusionary Rule to States
The Court had long been looking for an opportunity to overturn Wolf. Just a year earlier, in Elkins v. United States (1960), the Court had found that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment afforded criminal suspects protections against unlawful searches and seizures at the state level that were equivalent to those that the Fourth Amendment made binding on the federal government. But because Elkins did not involve a state criminal prosecution, the Court could not use it as an opportunity to revisit Wolf. Now, with Mapp, the Supreme Court seized the opportunity todo so.
Writing for the Court, Justice Clark found ample reason to apply the exclusionary rule at the state level. Noting that without it the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure becomes merely "a form of words."In Elkins he went on to elaborate on the practical reasons for implementing the exclusionary rule across the board:

There are those whosay . . . that under our constitutional exclusionary doctrine `[t]he criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.' . . . The criminal goesfree if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy agovernment more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse,its disregard of the character of its own existence . . . Nor can it lightlybe assumed that, as a practical matter, adoption of the exclusionary rule fetters law enforcement. Only last year this Court expressly considered that contention and found that `pragmatic evidence of a sort' to the contrary was notwanting.

Stewart, who wrote the majority opinion in Elkins now refused to jointhe Court's opinion. Although he voted with the majority to reverse Dollree Mapp's conviction, he wrote his own opinion laying out his rationale for doingso. Because Mapp's lawyers had not, in his view, properly addressed the issue of overturning Wolf in their legal papers or in their oral argumentbefore the Court, the Court had no business using this opportunity to do so of its own volition.
In the end, the opinion of the Court expressed only a four-vote plurality that favored overturning Wolf. Justice Black turned out to be the swing vote. Although he joined the Court's opinion, he did so for his own reasons. Black was perhaps the most ardent supporter of the incorporation doctrine, making most of the guarantees of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states viathe Fourteenth Amendment. Now, however, he found that it was a combination of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments--rather than the Fourteenth Amendment--thatrequired state courts to honor the exclusionary rule. He wrote a separate concurring opinion that was not joined by any other justice.
The three dissenters, Harlan, Frankfurter, and Whittaker--all of whom had dissented in Elkins--continued to disapprove of the incorporation doctrine. Following that logic, they refused to apply the exclusionary rule to the states.
Despite the confused pattern of voting and opinions in Mapp, it soon became the law of the land--and remains so. State police and state courts continue to be required to observe Fourth Amendment guidelines when gathering andassessing evidence in criminal matters.
Related Cases

• Wolf v. People of the State of Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949).
  
• Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206 (1960).
  
• Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966).

The Exclusionary Rule
According to the exclusionary rule governing search and seizure, evidence obtained illegally cannot be used to convict a suspect in a criminal case. Thereare a number of exceptions to the exclusionary rule, not least of which is the "good faith" exception. Thus when officers conduct a search that turns outto be illegal but which they believed in good faith to be legal while they were doing it--e.g., with an expired warrant, as in United States v. Leon (1984)--the evidence is still permissible. Illegally obtained evidence maybe used to impeach the testimony of a defendant who testifies in their own defense; and a private citizen may use illegally obtained evidence, as long ashe or she did not obtain it on orders from law-enforcement personnel. Moreover, the exclusionary rule applies only to criminal trials: evidence obtainedillegally is not forbidden in civil cases, or in grand jury proceedings.
Sources
West's Encyclopedia of American Law. St. Paul, MN: West Group, 1998.