Mapp Exclusionary Rule Violations

Words: 963
Pages: 4

On the afternoon of May 23rd, 1957 police officers stormed the apartment of Dollree Mapp, an employee of illegal gambling rackets linked to Cleveland kingpin Shon Birns, after hearing from an anonymous tip that a suspect in a bombing and information on illegal betting documents and equipment were in her house. The illegal material was believed to be employed in a numbers racket maintained by Mapp’s boyfriend Edward Keeling. Police officers asked to enter Mapp’s home, but were refused after Mapp contacted her lawyer who advised her to not allow them without a warrant. Police officers later returned en masse and stormed the house by forcing themselves through the door of Mapp’s home, ignoring her protests. Mapp demanded to see a search warrant, and was presented with a piece of paper which was never presented in court. The police officers did not find the suspect, but instead found some paraphernalia linked to Keeling and sexually explicit pornographic material. After being cleared on the numbers racket paraphernalia, Mapp was charged with the violation of Ohio state law that prohibited “lewd, lascivious, or obscene material” (Bill of Rights Institute, n.d.). Mapp made an appeal based on the …show more content…
The exclusionary rule, which holds that evidence that is collected unlawfully and or in a manner that violated the rights of the defendant, was originally applicable only on the federal level. This was after the case known as Weeks v. United States (1914) which created the rule, but only on the federal level. Many of the states rejected this rule up until the rulings after Mapp’s case which enforced the rule down to the state level (FindLaw, n.d.). The gathering of evidence in violation of the Fourth Amendment by the Cleveland police officers in Cleveland led to the exclusionary rule being applied to the states as well by the Supreme