Mapp V Ohio

Mapp v. Ohio

        Back in 1961, Dollree Mapp was convicted of keeping obscene materials after police conducted an illegal search of her home while trying to find a fugitive. At the trial, no search warrant was produced by the prosecution, nor had they explained or even accounted for the fact that they hadn’t produced one. Afterwards, she appealed her conviction based on freedom of expression granted by the First Amendment. The decision to be made was, can evidence gathered through a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment be admitted in a state criminal proceeding? In two previous court cases, the court upheld that even if the search were made without authority, or otherwise unreasonably, it is not prevented from using the unconstitutionally seized evidence at trial (Wolf v. Colorado, 1949). The Court also held "that in a prosecution in a State court for a State crime the Fourteenth Amendment [367 U.S. 643, 646] does not forbid the admission of evidence obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure." In Mapp v. Ohio, the Court held that the exclusionary rule was an “essential part” of the Fourth Amendment, and that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause (“No state shall…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”) intended that the federal exclusionary rule now applied to the states (Mapp v. Ohio).  The decision launched the Court on a bumpy path of figuring out how and when to apply the exclusionary rule.

Before the Mapp case became a landmark case, many other supreme court cases dealt with the application of the exclusionary rule. Exclusion of evidence as a solution for Fourth Amendment violations first developed in Boyd v. United States, which didn’t exactly involve a search and seizure, but instead an obligatory production of business papers, which the Court equated to a search and seizure. The court held that you didn’t need a physical invasion of one’s home to constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Invasion into a person’s private matters is enough to equate. This extends to the compulsory production of someone’s personal papers (Boyd v. United States). In the case of Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914), Weeks was convicted based on evidence seized from his home during two warrantless searches, which consisted of private papers like those in the Boyd case. with a unanimous decision, the Court held that the seizure of papers from Weeks' residence violated his constitutional rights. The Court also held that the government's refusal to return Weeks' possessions violated the Fourth Amendment. This decision was justified, as allowing private documents to be seized and held as evidence against citizens would mean that the Fourth Amendment, which declares the right to be secure against such searches and seizures, would be worthless. This was the first application of what eventually became known as the "exclusionary rule," (Weeks v. United States).

Because the Fourth Amendment does not technically restrict the actions of state officers, before the Mapp case there was no question about the application of the exclusionary rule in state courts as an order of federal constitutional policy. In Wolf v. Colorado (1949), a unanimous Court held that freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures was a fundamental right that should be protected against state violations according to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet, the Court also held that the right, while it was guaranteed, did not require the exclusionary rule to be applied in state courts (Wolf v. Colorado). By the time the Court issued its ruling on Mapp v. Ohio, twenty-four states allowed illegally obtained evidence in their criminal trials while twenty-four did not. Because the exclusionary rule increased the costs of police investigations, the police responded by avoiding activities that require a warrant. Now, the expected cost of a search procedure determines whether the police will start an investigation into certain crimes (Rubin & Atkins).

Today, the exclusionary rule is still in use, but there have been some changes to its rules. In the case of U.S. v. Leon, 468 US 897 (1984), the court held that evidence seized based on an incorrectly issued search warrant could indeed be used in a trial. The reason was that the exclusionary rule is not a right, but instead, it is a deterrent of illegal police conduct. The Leon case created an exception allowing evidence obtained by law enforcement who rely on a search warrant they think is valid to be used in a trial (United States v. Leon). This exception is known as the Good Faith Exception. Other exceptions, such as the Attenuation Doctrine, the Independent Source Doctrine, and the Inevitable Discovery Rule also changed the way the exclusionary rule is used. The Attenuation Doctrine allows evidence that was attained by very remote illegal means to be used in court. The Independent Source Doctrine allows evidence that was previously attained illegally to be used as long as an independent person hands it over legally. Finally, the Inevitable Discovery Rule allows evidence that would eventually be discovered legally to be used even if it was improperly obtained (Exclusionary Rule - Definition, Process, Examples and Cases).