Mapp v. Ohio Totally Explained

Everything about Mapp V Ohio totally explained

Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), was a landmark case criminal procedure, in which the United States Supreme Court decided that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures", may not be used in criminal prosecutions in state courts, as well as federal courts.

Overview

When the Cleveland Police received an anonymous tip that Dollree Mapp and her daughter were harboring a suspected bombing fugitive, they immediately went to her house and demanded entrance. Mapp called her attorney and under his advice she refused to give them entry because they didn't have a warrant. Several hours later, more officers came to her door and demanded that they be permitted to enter her house. After Mapp refused, they forcibly opened a door to the house and proceeded in. Mapp confronted them and demanded to see the search warrant. The police waved a piece of paper in the air (claiming it was the warrant) and Mapp grabbed it and put it down her shirt. One officer reached down her blouse and grabbed it. The officers then handcuffed her. They searched her entire house and when they reached her basement they found a chest filled with pornographic photos and objects. Mapp claims she was holding the trunk for a friend and wasn't aware of the contents inside. The officers arrested Mapp for violating an Ohio law which prohibited the possession of obscene material. At her trial, Mapp was found guilty based on the evidence that was presented by the police. Mapp's attorney questioned the police about the warrant but they couldn't show one. Upon her conviction, Mapp appealed her case to the Supreme Court of Ohio. Her attorney argued that she should never have been brought to trial because the material evidence resulted from an illegal, warrantless search. Because the search was unlawful, he maintained, the evidence was illegally obtained and must also be excluded. In its ruling, the Supreme Court of Ohio recognized that "a reasonable argument" could be made that the conviction should be reversed "because the 'methods' employed to obtain the [evidence]. . . were such as to 'offend' a sense of justice." But the Court also stated that the materials were admissible evidence. The Court explained its ruling by differentiating between evidence that was peacefully seized from an inanimate object (the trunk) rather than forcibly seized from an individual. Based on this decision, Mapp's appeal wasn't accepted and her conviction was upheld. She then appealed to the Supreme Court of the U.S.

Supreme Court decision and Rationale

The Fourth Amendment protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures but the Amendment doesn't include how to treat a search done without a warrant. In two previous cases (Boyd v. United States and Weeks v. United States), the court had determined that the federal government may not use such evidence due to the exclusionary rule which forbids evidence gathered illegally to be admissible in court; this rule hadn't been applied to state courts before. In Wolf v. Colorado the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment made the Fourth Amendment apply to states but also that the exclusionary rule didn't apply to states. Even though they'd reached that decision the Supreme Court agreed to hear Mapp’s case and decide whether they should overturn their decision in Wolf v. Colorado by deciding whether the U.S. Constitution forbade state officials from using evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The case was decided in Mapp's favor by a vote of six to three. The court stated that the exclusionary rule also applies to states, meaning that states can't use evidence gained by illegal means to convict someone. This overturned the Wolf ruling. Justice Clark, who wrote the majority opinion, explained that the court’s rationale is based on the connection between the fourth and the Fourteenth Amendment when he says: "Since the Fourth Amendment's right of privacy has been declared enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth, it's enforceable against them by the same sanction of exclusion as is used against the Federal Government." The court believed that if the right of privacy stated in the Fourth Amendment is valid with regard to action by the states, so too should be the exclusionary rule. Also, Justice Clark believed that this decision was clearly common sense, and that the exclusionary rule was a very important part of both the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Clark defended his decision against the argument that this rule allows criminals to go free just because a police officer made a mistake, writing that "it is the law that sets him [thecriminal] free" and that "Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws."
In the concurring opinion written by Justice Black, Black expresses doubt that the Fourth Amendment alone can be used to prevent illegally obtained evidence from being used in state courts because it isn't explicitly stated. He believes the command that no unreasonable searches or seizures be allowed is too little to infer such a large decision. With these differences aside he feels that along with previous court decisions that the "Fourth Amendment's ban against unreasonable searches and seizures is considered together with the Fifth Amendment's ban against compelled self-incrimination, a constitutional basis emerges which not only justifies, but actually requires the exclusionary rule."

The dissenting opinion

Justice Harlan's dissenting opinion argued that the majority had wrongly "reached out" to overrule Wolf, saying "[I] can perceive no justification for regarding this case as an appropriate occasion for re-examining Wolf" and complaining that the issue hadn't been properly briefed. He also felt the wrong question was brought up. He thought that the real question that should have been asked was, "not with the desirability of that [exclusionary] rule but only with the question whether states are Constitutionally free to follow it or not as they themselves determine."

Don King involvement

Boxing promoter Don King was the informant who reported the bombing that led to the Mapp case. (See,
According to the book "The Devils Advocates" by Michael C. Lief, Don King was the victim of a fire-bombing because of his involvement in the illegal numbers rackets and his cooperation with the police in attempting to "shut down" a local mobster who was extorting Hernando Tenjo Ortiz King.
On a related note, Richard Cortner's 1981 book, "The Supreme Court and the Second Bill of Rights," relates that Dolly Mapp had been the girlfriend of light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore. (p. 179)

Notes and references

General references:

Zotti, Priscilla H. Machado. Injustice for All: Mapp v. Ohio and the Fourth Amendment. New York: Peter Lang, 2005.Further Information

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