Wolf v. Colorado

Wolf v. Colorado
Supreme Court of the United States
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
Prior history	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 history	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. amend. IV; U.S. Const. amend. 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 Fourth 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). This landmark case made 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.

The plaintiff, Julius A. Wolf, was convicted in the District Court of the City and County of Denver of conspiracy to perform criminal abortions. On appeal, the convictions were affirmed by the Supreme Court of Colorado (187 P.2d 926, 928). Wolf appealed the conviction by a writ of certiorari and the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the appeal.

The essential question presented before the Court was whether states are required by the Fourth and the Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution to exclude illegally seized evidence from trial.

Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter delivered the opinion of the court in this case, in which Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson and Associate Justices Stanley Forman Reed, Robert H. Jackson, and Harold Hitz Burton joined. Associate Justice Hugo Black wrote a separate concurring opinion.