Mapp v. Ohio

Mapp v. Ohio, case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on June 19, 1961, ruled (6–3) that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures,” is inadmissible in state courts. In so doing, it held that the federal exclusionary rule, which forbade the use of unconstitutionally obtained evidence in federal courts, was also applicable to the states through the incorporation doctrine, the theory that most protections of the federal Bill of Rights are guaranteed against the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (which prohibits the states from denying life, liberty, or property without due process of law). The Mapp ruling also overturned in part the Supreme Court’s decision in Wolf v. Colorado (1949), which recognized the right to privacy as “incorporated” but not the federal exclusionary rule. Because of the inherent vagueness of the Fourth Amendment, the scope of the exclusionary rule has been subject to interpretation by the courts, including the Supreme Court, which since the 1980s has gradually narrowed the range of circumstances and the kinds of evidence to which the rule applies.

The case arose in 1957 when police in Cleveland forcibly entered the home of Dollree Mapp and conducted an apparently warrantless search for a bombing suspect. Although no suspect was found, officers did discover certain allegedly “lewd and lascivious” books and pictures, the possession of which was prohibited under Ohio state law. Mapp was convicted of violating the law on the basis of this evidence. Hearing the case on appeal, the Ohio Supreme Court recognized the unlawfulness of the search but upheld the conviction on the grounds that Wolf had established that the states were not required to abide by the exclusionary rule. The Supreme Court granted certiorari, and oral arguments were heard on March 29, 1961.

In a 6–3 ruling issued on June 19, 1961, the Supreme Court reversed the Ohio court’s decision. Writing for the plurality, Justice Tom C. Clark first dismissed the main argument of Mapp’s attorneys, that the Ohio law constituted an infringement of freedom of speech, as moot in light of the court’s view that the exclusionary rule is incorporated. Following Weeks v. United States (1914), which established the federal exclusionary rule, Clark argued that the Fourth Amendment strictly implies that the use of evidence obtained in violation of the amendment is unconstitutional. Without the deterrent effect provided by the rule, the Fourth Amendment would be reduced to a mere “form of words” (Silverthorne Lumber Co., Inc. v. United States [1920]) and “might as well be stricken from the Constitution” (Weeks). In Wolf, furthermore, the Supreme Court had found that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against “police incursion into privacy” is incorporated. If the right to privacy is incorporated, however, then so too must be the “only effectively available way” of compelling respect for it, as the court characterized the exclusionary rule in Elkins v. United States (1960). “To hold otherwise is to grant the right but, in reality, to withhold its privilege and enjoyment,” according to Clark. In response to then district judge (later Supreme Court justice) Benjamin Cardozo’s objection (in People v. Defore [1926]) that “[t]he criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered,” Clark replied, “The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free.”

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Clark’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice Earl Warren, William O. Douglas, and William Brennan. Douglas also filed a separate concurring opinion, as did Hugo Black. Potter Stewart concurred solely on free-speech grounds.

In his dissenting opinion, which was joined by Felix Frankfurter and Charles E. Whittaker, John Marshall Harlan faulted the plurality for a lack of judicial restraint for deciding a constitutional question that had not been properly briefed and argued. The “pivotal” issue in the case, according to Harlan, was whether the Ohio law was “consistent with the rights of free thought and expression assured against state action by the Fourteenth Amendment.” He also argued that the plurality had misconstrued the Wolf ruling as incorporating the specific command against unreasonable searches and seizures rather than merely the core right to privacy, the safeguarding of which did not require the imposition of a federal rule of evidence upon the states.