Petitioner versus arizona. We hear arguments number 18 roe against wade. Quite often in many of our most famous decisions are ones that the court took that were quite unpopular. Lets go through a few cases that illustrate very dramatically and visually what it means to live in a society of 310 million different people who have helped stick together because they believe in a rule of law. Good evening and welcome to cspans landmark cases where weve been learning more about the cases of the Supreme Court that affected the court and the country. Tonight, 1961 case of mapp v. Ohio. An ohio woman refused to let the Police Search her house without a warrant. All this evolved into a case that was one of a series in the warren court that changed policing in america. We welcome you with us this program and hope youve been with us throughout the series as weve been learning so much about the Supreme Court. Let me introduce you to our two guests. I should tell you before i do weve actually been enjoying talking about the case itself a little onset. Meet carolyn long who literally wrote the book on the mapp v. Ohio case, guarding against unreasonable searches and seizures, shes based at Washington State university at vancouver where shes a professor of politics, philosophy and public affairs. Welcome to the series. Thank you for inviting me. Renee hutchins, Maryland University law school professor, codirector of the appellate and post conviction advocacy clinic and also a former federal prosecutor in the justice departments tax division. Shes working on a book called learning criminal procedure, a textbook. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Lets start with the basic decision in this what did this case ultimately become about . So what is really fascinating about the mapp case is what it started out as is not at all what it ended up as. It started as a case about obscenity and pornography and ended up as a case about whether evidence should be add mimitted state trials. Why is this a landmark decision . Well, what the decision did is it allowed the rule, called the exclusionary rule, to be extended to half the states in the union. So it had sweeping effect on police procedures, sweeping effect on how judges would be hearing cases, so it really hit a lot of potential cases over decades to come. I think just to build on that, another reason why it was a landmark is because it shifted the way we thought about policing. It shifted to professionalism of the police force is, it shifted the way we thought about warrants and whether the police could just come into our homes and search for evidence if they thought we were engaged in criminal activity. To get us started were going to listen to some audio of the oral argument in the Supreme Court. The court has begun recording all of its oral arguments. This is the first time we can actually let you listen in to the argument that mapps lawyer made before the court. Lets listen to a little bit and then well come back. This lieutenant came and showed a piece of paper, and mrs. Mapp demanded to see the paper and to read it, see what it was. Which they refused to do so she grabbed it out of his hand to look at it and then a scuffle started and she put this piece of paper into her bosom. And very readily the Police Officer put his hands into her bosom and removed the paper. And thereafter handcuff her. While the Police Officers started to search the house. Now the evidence in the case discloses that the state claims there were only seven Police Officers, some in uniform, mr. Green who was there and not permitted entrance to the house but was kept outside, says there were approximately 12 Police Officers in all. Now the evidence discloses that no search warrant existed. Kearns was her attorney all the way from the state of ohio through the Supreme Court. Well learn more about him and more in the case as the program proceeds. As we heard this deals with the Fourth Amendment of the constitution. So just as a refresher course, were going to put the text of the Fourth Amendment on the screen so you understand the principles at stake here. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. What little brief constitutional history, why is this even part of our constitution . For a couple of reasons. Prior to the founding of the nation, in england there had been general warrants that allowed the police a lot of discretion to search peoples houses and homes. We came over into colonial america and there were writs that allowed the police to do essentially the same thing. The founders did not want that kind of unfettered police discretion. They wanted to rein in what the police could do. The language you said said two things. It said we have the right to be free from illegal searches and seizures, and it says if youre going to get a warrant you have to base that warrant on probable cause and you absolutely have to say specifically where youre searching and who youre looking for and what youre going to seize and what things youre going to seize. Those two clauses are together. So for the most part in modern history, with some exceptions in more recent years, for the most part we have said that warrantless searches are unreasonable. So if the police dont have a warrant, they havent gone to a judge and sworn out an affidavit and said, this is where i want to search and this is what im looking for with some particularity, they cant search. That was the general rule. There are lots and lots, of and lots of exceptions to that rule, but that was what existed prior to mapp. In fact, as we learned it had been applied, you must have a warrant on federal offenses, but only half of the states said that it applies to them. So there was a discrepancy depending on what state you lived in whether or not a warrant was needed or not. So what the Supreme Court ended up doing was resolving it by making it apply to state cases as well, correct . They did. I did want to go back to writs of assistance to talk about how important they were in motivating the passage of the Fourth Amendment, but also passage also of provisions in state constitutions. People should understand that these were openended warrants. Anybody who they deputized could go into a place of business, they could go into your home looking for smuggled goods, which was serious in the colonies. It was egregious because customs officers would get money if they found smuggled goods. So they had an incentive to engage in illegal searches, and it motivated after independence the states to look at provisions in their state constitutions which closely mirror what we have in the Fourth Amendment, about the need for warrant but in all cases there be reasonableness involved in whether or not something engages in this search. So really motivated passage of this. Tonight people will be hearing a lot about the socalled exclusionary rule. What is that . At its most basic, the exclusionary rule says if the police break the law in finding the evidence, it cant be admitted in trial against you. Thats the most basic rule. Again, lots of exceptions to that rule, but thats it at the most basic. Because the court when it created it applied that rule only against the federal government, it didnt apply against the state. Thats what carolyn was talking about earlier, that the states were free to essentially violate the Fourth Amendment at will, the Police Officers in the states, and the evidence would still come in at trial. So we have a map of the states that did not have to have a warrant in 1957 when this first occurred. So suffice it to say if dollree mapp lived in one of the states where it was applied and you needed a warrant, this case would never have come to the court. Absolutely. Was the court looking for some reason to do this . Do you think in fact they would have found another vehicle . Thats a great question. I dont think at the time they were looking for it, because clearly it was a case about obscenity chrks, which we can talk about later, but i think the nature of the search was so egregious it motivated the court to use it as a vehicle to extend the exclusionary rules to the state. It was almost too good of an opportunity to pass up. Justice tom clark who wrote the decision had been maybe looking for a vehicle, because he had decided a case where he had a he had written a concurring opinion in a case that he didnt circulate where he was sort of feeling it out in his mind whether or not a case called wolf in colorado should be reversed. So a good vehicle was provided with mapp. It was something on the courts mind. So one of the purposes behind this series when we first thought about it was there are interesting people stories behind the cases that make their way to the Supreme Court. If you have been watching, you see it has been people of all kinds, from secretaries of state all the way through to just ordinary folks. I think dollree is definitely in the category of just ordinary folk. But one newspaper headline called her the rosa parks of the Fourth Amendment. You met dollree mapp in researching your book. Would you put her on the same plane as rosa parks . I would. I think she was a more colorful character than rosa parks, which is why i think that quote is so apt, but she was a fighter. She really was somebody who was very confident. She was described as arrogant by some, but she had been wronged by this extensive search of her home and that she had been targeted by the police and really wanted to fight this case in court. A lot of people say, im going to take my case all way to the Supreme Court, and very few make it. But in meeting dollree, you need she was going to make it. She had that confidence and she had something that the court would decide. So she was from shaker heights, ohio, a fairly affluent suburb east of cleveland. Tell us the basics of her story, the crime that was alleged to have been committed and how it got started. This is a young africanamerican woman, she has a single daughter. She was married and divorced, Jimmie Bivins who was a great boxer. He had defeated eight world champions but never had a title fight. She had been engaged to archie moore, who was a heavyweight fighter himself. So she was very familiar to the boxing scene, and part of that scene was illegal gambling operations. In cleveland, like in many cities, they had something called a policy gang where people would engage in almost daily lottery for small bits of money. Dollree was sort of on the periphery of that world and knew people who were involved in illegal gambling. So what led to the case actually was the fact that others involved in illegal gambling, most notably donald the kid king had his front porch bombed by people trying to shake him down because they were trying to get money from him as well as other people involved in the gambling business. What happened was there was a confidential informant who said somebody was involved in the bombing was in dollree mapps home as well as possibly evidence of gambling paraphernalia. So the police went to her house. First they gently requested she let them in and she said she wouldnt. She was yelling out of her window talking to them, saying they needed to have a search warrant. They went back and allegedly got a search warrant. After a couple of hours they came back, pried open the door of her home. At the time she was descending down her stairs, waved the piece of paper at her. And as was said earlier, there was a tussle, and she was handcuffed first to a bannister on the stairs and then to a Police Officer, and then they allegedly were looking for a bombing suspect, which they found within the first few minutes of the search, but then they engaged in the search for about three hours of her home and also her basement where she had borders and every room inside her house, inside compartments inside her house. Eventually they found gambling paraphernalia in her basement. They found some books allegedly ab obscene and pencil drawings that were allegedly obscene. They arrested her primarily on the gambling charge with the paraphernalia, and later it turned into a charge about the obscene material. Okay. So i want to make sure people have the connection. Donald the kid king, and many, Many Americans got to know him as don king, the guy with the crazy hair. And dollree was part of that whole boxing circle in ohio during that time. Now, the Cleveland Police department had a bureau of special operations investigations. Would you talk a little bit about 1967 and this unit within the Police Department and whether or not there was tension between it and the Africanamerican Community . It absolutely was. It is one of the things i want to build on. When we talk about what happened to dollree today, it ends up sounding a little removed. I think probably what would have been a very scary experience for a single mother at home, in her house, being laid siege upon by Police Officers. When the Police Officers first come, they do yell up to her very politely, we need to come in. She says, why. They dont tell her, but then they didnt go away. They actually laid wait around her house. She couldnt leave, she couldnt exit her home at all. Shes on the phone with her lawyer. Her lawyer shows up. They dont let her lawyer in the house. And then as she is coming down the stairs the police are breaking in her back door. When you think about what kind of an experience that must have been for this woman, and the bureau that was a special bureau of the police force that was coming into her house was a bureau that was sort of notorious for policing very aggressively members of the black community. It routinely went into homes without warrants. They routinely engaged in behavior that violated the Fourth Amendment with regard to the urban population in cleveland, as well as in shaker heights. I think that thats sort of an important piece of it to remember. You know, if you were in your home and a police force entered your home, doesnt allow your lawyer to talk to you and handcuffs you, reaches down your clothing, sort of goes into your clothing to get a supposed warrant which the police later admitted wasnt actually a warrant at all, so physically assault you and handcuff you to your bed, i think that the trauma she must have felt as a result of that experience has been underplayed. Did the police say that yes, she was a single mom with a child, but at the same time she was part of the boxing community, there was suspicion of numbers, running the policy game in her world . She already had a lawyer, so she has had some experience with the law. She had been married to a boxer. So was she someone, in fact, that was known to the police, that wasnt entirely a firsttime, innocent sort of situation . She was wellknown, not to say that excuses Law Enforcements behavior in this case, but she had been stopped and questioned by police before and she was wellknown as somebody who might be involved in illegal operations. So it probably was not a surprise to her that the Police Showed up. But i do think what renee said is really important, not only about how she felt individually, but what was happening in cleveland. That is this bureau of special investigations really was aggressive, and even years later when i spoke to a lead sergeant, he said, we were aggressive, that we constantly engaged in searches without a warrant, and it was commonplace. Right. And there was no reason for them not to, as well talk about, because that evidence that can be found can be excluded, but it also important to know that the bureau really did target communities of color. Because if you look at where the numbers end, where the policy game was happening, they were in communities of people of low socioeconomic status, and in cleveland at the time it was predominantly africanamerican communities. You have the targeting of those communities and the police using strategies like intimidation, giving them the third degree, arresting people so they then have to be in court which means theyre not engaging in illegal behavior, confiscating material. They used a number of strategies to try to attack what they saw as a pervasive problem in the community which was illegal gambling. Could i add one point . I dont want to paint dollree with too rosie a brush. But the lawyer she had was not a result of a criminal case. It was a civil lawyer she tried to help her with a civil matter. It is not at all clear to me she was sort of on the fringes of any criminal element. She knew them, certainly she was dating a couple of guys who wers dating a couple of guys who were involved. Were going to hear the next part of the story from the perspective of the Cleveland Police department. In this case in fact is part of their history. In the Cleveland Police museum they have a display about it. We went to visit it and well show you that, next. Youre currently looking at two documents, three pages, one is what we call our daily duty report, and it describes what the Police Officers working together on that particular date did during their tour of duty. The second document, consisting of two pages, is actually the arrest report of dalreymapp and virgil ogletree. Were looking at the arrest report of dollr eme mapp. The sergeant said he had received information from a confidential informant that there was someone inside the residence at 14705 milverton who was involved in a bombing taken at the residence of donald king. They went up to set surveillance at the address. While there they attempted to get into the