Olmstead v. United States
The Supreme Court ruled that wiretapping phone lines outside a person's home or office is not a "search or seizure" under the Fourth Amendment, so evidence gathered from tapped conversations could be used at trial even though no warrant was obtained.
The decision meant a massive bootlegging conspiracy's leaders stayed convicted based largely on wiretap evidence, and it left the government free to eavesdrop on phone calls without constitutional restriction unless Congress stepped in to ban the practice by statute.
“The reasonable view is that one who installs in his house a telephone instrument with connecting wires intends to project his voice to those quite outside, and that the wires beyond his house and messages while passing over them are not within the protection of the Fourth Amendment.”
The majority's core reasoning for why phone wiretapping falls outside Fourth Amendment protection.
How it got here: Olmstead and others were convicted in federal district court in Washington; the Ninth Circuit affirmed; the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case limited to the wiretapping constitutional question.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Olmstead led a massive, highly organized bootlegging operation in Seattle during Prohibition, employing dozens of people, ships, warehouses, and a central dispatch office to sell millions of dollars of illegal liquor. Federal prohibition agents, without entering any of the defendants' homes or offices, tapped telephone wires running to their houses and business, listening in for months and recording incriminating conversations, which became key evidence at trial.
The question before the Court
Could the government use evidence from secretly tapping someone's phone lines, without ever entering their house or touching their property, as evidence in a criminal trial?
Why it matters
The ruling meant that, absent new legislation, government agents could tap anyone's telephone without a warrant and use what they overheard in court, so long as they didn't physically enter a home or office. This gave law enforcement broad surveillance power over phone conversations for decades, until later cases and statutes changed the rule.
What changes now
The convictions and sentences stood, finalized by the Ninth Circuit's affirmance. The ruling left telephone wiretapping unregulated by the Fourth Amendment, meaning federal agents could keep using it without warrants unless Congress passed a law making intercepted communications inadmissible. The decision remained the controlling rule on wiretapping and privacy until it was later reconsidered by the Supreme Court decades afterward.
What this does not decide
The Court's holding was limited strictly to the Fourth and Fifth Amendment question the certiorari grant allowed; it did not decide whether Congress could make wiretap evidence inadmissible by statute, nor whether state officials could prosecute federal agents for violating the state wiretapping law.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Holmes
Justice Holmes did not rest on the Fourth or Fifth Amendments directly but argued that, apart from the Constitution, the government should never use evidence that could only have been obtained through a criminal act by its own officers. He framed the choice as between letting some criminals escape and having the government play an "ignoble part," and would exclude the evidence on that ground alone, regardless of whether the underlying crime violated state or federal law.
Dissent — Justice Brandeis
“If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”Brandeis's warning about the consequences of government agents committing crimes to gather evidence.
Justice Brandeis argued the Constitution must be read to adapt to new technology, and that wiretapping is an even greater invasion of privacy than the physical searches the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were written to prevent, comparing a phone call to a sealed letter. He also argued independently that because wiretapping was a crime under Washington law, the federal government should not be allowed to prosecute using evidence obtained through its own agents' lawbreaking, invoking the doctrine that a court will not aid a party who comes before it with unclean hands.
Dissent — Justice Butler
Justice Butler, confining himself strictly to the constitutional question the Court had agreed to decide, argued that tapping wires while conversations passed over them was itself literally a "search" for evidence, and that the Fourth Amendment has always been construed liberally to reach evils equivalent to those it names, so wiretapping should be treated the same as the papers seizures condemned in Boyd v. United States.
Dissent — Justice Stone
Justice Stone joined the reasoning of both Holmes and Brandeis in full, and agreed with Butler's dissent to the extent it addressed the constitutional merits, without separately elaborating his own reasoning.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court read the Fourth Amendment's text narrowly, holding that it protects only tangible things — a person's body, house, papers, and physical belongings — from actual searches and seizures, not intangible conversations traveling over wires.
- Applying that reading to the facts, the Court found there was no trespass into any defendant's house or office: the wiretaps were placed on ordinary telephone wires in the street and in the basement of an office building, never touching the defendants' property.
- Because the agents only used their sense of hearing to capture voices projected voluntarily over wires that extend far beyond a person's house, the Court concluded there was no physical intrusion of the kind the Amendment was written to prevent.
- The Court distinguished this from Ex parte Jackson, which protected sealed letters in the mail, reasoning that the postal system's special legal relationship between sender and government does not extend to telephone wires, which the government does not similarly guard.
- Since no unlawful search or seizure occurred under the Fourth Amendment, the Court held the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination protection did not apply either, because the defendants spoke voluntarily and were never compelled to testify against themselves.
- The Court also rejected the argument that the evidence should be excluded merely because obtaining it violated a state wiretapping misdemeanor law, holding that under common-law evidence rules, courts admit relevant evidence regardless of how it was obtained unless a constitutional right was violated.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Gouled v. United States (255 U.S. 298)
The Court says Gouled's protection against unreasonable searches must be confined strictly to its own facts and not extended further.
Distinguishes Ex parte Jackson (96 U.S. 727)
The Court says mailed sealed letters are protected because of the postal system's special legal relationship, unlike ordinary telephone wires.
Reaffirms Weeks v. United States (232 U.S. 383)
The Court relies on Weeks' rule that evidence obtained by violating the Fourth Amendment cannot be used, while finding no such violation here.