Mapp v. Ohio · ¶16

Finally, the Court in that case clearly stated that use of the seized evidence involved “a denial of the constitutional rights of the accused.” At p. 398. Thus, in the year 1914, in the Weeks case, this Court “for the first time” held that “in a federal prosecution the Fourth Amendment barred the use of evidence secured through an illegal search and seizure.” Wolf v. Colorado, supra, at 28. This Court has ever since required of federal law officers a strict adherence to that command which this Court has held to be a clear, specific, and constitutionally required — even if judicially implied — deterrent safeguard without insistence upon which the Fourth Amendment would have been reduced to “a form of words.” Holmes, J., Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U. S. 385, 392 (1920). It meant, quite simply, that “conviction by means of unlawful seizures and enforced confessions...…

U. S. Reports, bound volume
U. S. Reports, volume 367, at 643 (Library of Congress) · transcription: Caselaw Access Project
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