| Wolf v. Colorado | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Argued October 19, 1948 Decided June 27, 1949 | |
| Full case name | Julius A. Wolf v. State of Colorado |
| Citations | 338 U.S. 25 (more) 69 S. Ct. 1359; 93 L. Ed. 1782; 1949 U.S. LEXIS 2079 |
| Case history | |
| Prior | Defendant convicted, District Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado; affirmed, 187 P.2d 926 (Colo. 1947); rehearing denied, Supreme Court of Colorado, December 8, 1947; defendant convicted in separate trial, District Court of the City and County of Denver, Colorado; affirmed, 117 Colo. 321 (Colo. 1947); cert. granted, 333 U.S. 879 (1948) |
| Subsequent | None |
| Holding | |
| The Fourteenth Amendment does not require that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment be excluded from use by the states in criminal prosecutions. | |
| Court membership | |
| |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Frankfurter, joined by Vinson, Reed, Jackson, Burton |
| Concurrence | Black |
| Dissent | Douglas |
| Dissent | Murphy, joined by Rutledge |
| Dissent | Rutledge, joined by Murphy |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amends. IV, XIV | |
Overruled by | |
| Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961) | |
Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held 6—3 that, while the Fourth Amendment was applicable to the states, the exclusionary rule was not a necessary ingredient of the Fourth Amendment's right against warrantless and unreasonable searches and seizures. In Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914), the Court held that as a matter of judicial implication the exclusionary rule was enforceable in federal courts but not derived from the explicit requirements of the Fourth Amendment. The Wolf Court decided not to incorporate the exclusionary rule as part of the Fourteenth Amendment in large part because the states which had rejected the Weeks Doctrine (the exclusionary rule) had not left the right to privacy without other means of protection (i.e. the States had their own rules to deter police officers from conducting warrantless and unreasonable searches and seizures). However, because most of the states' rules proved to be ineffective in deterrence, the Court overruled Wolf in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). That landmark case made history as the exclusionary rule enforceable against the states through the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the same extent that it applied against the federal government.