Describe the circumstances leading to Mapp v. Ohio. What significance does this case have regarding the exclusionary rule?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Three Cleveland police officers went to the apartment of Miss Dollree Mapp looking for a person suspected in a bombing. Miss Mapp refused to allow them in without a search warrant. Three hours later and after four more officers arrived, the police forcibly gained entry. At the trial no search warrant was produced by the prosecution, nor was the failure to produce one explained or accounted for. The state said that even if the search were made without authority, it is not prevented from using the unconstitutionally seized evidence at trial, citing Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949), in which the Court had held “that in a prosecution in a State court for a State crime the Fourteenth Amendment does not forbid the admission of evidence obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure.” The Supreme Court concluded that the Fourth Amendment does apply to the states, and evidence obtained in an unreasonable search could not be used against the suspect. Mapp was the case in which the Supreme Court first applied the Exclusionary Rule to the states.