Mapp v. Ohio - Significance, Court Applies Exclusionary Rule To States, The Exclusionary Rule, Further Readings

Mapp v. Ohio - Further Readings

Mapp v. Ohio - Significance

After Mapp, state police as well as state courts, where most criminal prosecutions 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 to the home of Dollree Mapp, seeking entry. They had information that a person wanted for questioning in connection with a bombing was hidi…

Mapp v. Ohio - 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 be…

Mapp v. Ohio - 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. There are 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 out to be illegal but which they believed in good faith to be legal while they were doing it--e…