What was the precedent of mapp v Ohio?

Answer 1

Mapp v. Ohio, 367 US 643 (1961), was a Fourth Amendment case that had its procedural roots in a 1914 US Supreme Court decision protecting defendants' rights against illegal search and seizure in federal cases, but had never been extended to the States.

In 1914, in the case Weeks v. US, the Supreme Court held that evidence obtained as the result of an illegal search and seizure could not be used in court. This "exclusionary rule" originally applied only to the federal government, a decision upheld in Wolf v. Colorado, (1949). In a 6-3 decision in Mapp v. Ohio, the Warren Court overruled the Wolfprecedent and incorporated (applied) the Fourth Amendment to the states, holding that the security of "one's privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police . . ." is "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty."

Justice Tom C. Clark, who wrote the opinion of the Court, quoted from the opinion in Weeks v. US: "If letters and private documents can thus be seized and held and used in evidence against a citizen accused of an offense, the protection of the Fourth Amendment declaring his right to be secure against such searches and seizures is of no value, and, so far as those thus placed are concerned, might as well be stricken from the Constitution."

Clark noted that the decision not to incorporate the Fourth Amendment to the states in 1949 was predicated on Colorado's forceful argument that police abuse of power occurred too infrequently to merit federal government intrusion. Clark went on to quote later decisions in state courts that concluded Fourth Amendment abuses were so rampant, no other remedy worked to check unreasonable search and seizure except applying the "Weeks (exclusionary) rule."

[The purpose of the rule] "is to deter -- to compel respect for the constitutional guaranty [of privacy] in the only effectively available way -- by removing the incentive to disregard it."

In his concluding remarks, Clark acknowledged the potential for criminals to benefit from technical mistakes: "The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."

Answer 2

Wolf vs. Colorado (1949)

Olmstead vs. U.S. (1928)

Palko vs. Connecticut(1937)

Weeks vs. U.S. (1914)

Answer 3

No, never.