Mapp v. Ohio
Issues: Exclusionary Rule, Due Process
Background:
- Dollree Mapp lived in Cleveland, Ohio. One day, the police broke into Mapp's house to look for a suspected bomber. Mapp had refused to let the police into her house earlier because they did not have a search warrant. When the police broke in, they showed Mapp a piece of paper. They said the paper was a search warrant, but they did not let her see it.
- The police searched Mapp's house without her permission. They looked in her room, her daughter's bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, and the basement. In the basement they found a trunk. Inside the trunk were obscene pictures, photographs, and books. The police did not find the bomber, but they arrested Mapp anyway. They said she broke the law by having obscene pictures.
- The court found her guilty. Mapp then appealed her case to the Supreme Court of Ohio. She said that her rights were violated in the search. The Supreme Court of Ohio said that the actions of the police were probably illegal. However, they also said that the evidence (the illegal pictures) the police found could be used against Mapp, even though the search itself may have been illegal. Mapp then appealed her case to the Supreme Court of the United States.
- The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects people from unreasonable searches by the government. In Mapp's case, the Supreme Court of the United States had to decide when a search is legal and whether evidence from an illegal search could be used in a criminal case. In 1961 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case of Mapp v. Ohio.
- In a 5-3 decision,* the Court ruled in favor of Mapp. The majority opinion, written by Justice Clark, applied the exclusionary rule to the states. That rule requires courts to exclude from criminal trials evidence that was obtained in violation of the constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches and arrests. Justice Harlan wrote a dissenting opinion. The majority opinion was based on several earlier decisions that had begun the process of applying federal constitutional protections to state criminal justice systems.
- In one of those earlier decisions, the Supreme Court had ruled that the states must be bound by the Fourth Amendment because its guarantees were part of the “due process of law” required of states by the Fourteenth Amendment. That decision essentially required the Fourth Amendment’s provisions, which previously had only applied to the federal government, to apply to the states as well. The justices ruled that since the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment applied to both the federal and state governments, they should be enforced the same way in both federal and state courts. Evidence obtained unlawfully is not admissible in federal court, so it should not be admissible in state courts either.
- The justices reasoned that requiring states to obey to the exclusionary rule created “no war between the Constitution and common sense.” They responded to the argument that the exclusionary rule would make it possible for criminals to go free due to police error by pointing out that “the criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free.” The justices stated that the exclusionary rule was necessary to make state authorities abide by the requirements of the Fourth Amendment, for “nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws.” Thus, the Court decided that “the exclusionary rule is an essential part of both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.”
- In his dissent, Justice Harlan argued that the majority had confronted the wrong issue in its decision. Because Ms. Mapp was convicted under an Ohio statute criminalizing the possession of obscene material, Justice Harlan believed that the “new and pivotal issue” was whether this statute “is consistent with the rights of free thought and expression assured against state action by the Fourteenth Amendment.” Thus, he concluded that the majority had ignored the principles of judicial restraint and stare decisis, and had “’reached out’” to consider the exclusionary rule issue. According to Justice Harlan, this was a First Amendment case and not an appropriate case for extending the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule to the states. He also concluded that it was wrong to impose the exclusionary rule, designed for the federal criminal process, on the states which, in his view, bore quite different responsibilities in this area of law.
- *Justice Stewart wrote a separate opinion that did not address the issue of the exclusionary rule. He voted to reverse Mapp’s conviction solely on First Amendment grounds.
Case # & Citation:
- Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961)
- Landmark Cases of the U.S. Supreme Court. (n.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2015, from http://www.streetlaw.org/en/landmark/cases/mapp_v_ohio