Wolf v. Colorado
The Court ruled that the core privacy protection behind the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's due process guarantee, but held that states are not required to adopt the federal courts' rule of throwing out illegally obtained evidence.
The decision left states free to police their own officers through lawsuits, criminal charges, or internal discipline instead of excluding evidence, a gap the Court would later close in Mapp v. Ohio.
How it got here: The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the convictions despite the use of illegally obtained evidence, and the defendant asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A Colorado man was convicted of a state crime using evidence that state police had obtained through a search that would have been considered an illegal search under federal Fourth Amendment standards. He argued that using this evidence against him violated the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of due process, since federal courts would have excluded the same evidence under the rule from Weeks v. United States.
The question before the Court
If the police search your home illegally, does the Constitution force a state court to throw out the evidence they find, the way federal courts do?
Why it matters
For more than a decade after this ruling, evidence gathered by state and local police through illegal searches could still be used to convict people in state courts, even though the same evidence would be barred in federal court. Ordinary defendants in the many states that rejected the exclusionary rule had little practical remedy against police misconduct beyond a civil lawsuit.
What changes now
The ruling is a final decision on the merits, affirming the Colorado convictions. States remained free to admit illegally obtained evidence in criminal trials, though many chose not to. This arrangement continued until the Supreme Court's 1961 decision in Mapp v. Ohio required all states to adopt the federal exclusionary rule, effectively overturning the remedy-related portion of this ruling while leaving its incorporation holding on the underlying right intact.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Congress could pass a law overriding the federal exclusionary rule, nor whether Congress could try to force states to adopt that rule under its power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. It also did not resolve which remedies, short of exclusion, a state must actually provide.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Black
Justice Black agreed that the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches applies to the states, but for different reasons than the majority — he believed the entire Fourth Amendment, not just its 'core,' should apply through the Fourteenth Amendment. He agreed to affirm only because he read the exclusionary rule as a judge-made evidence rule rather than something the Fourth Amendment itself commands, so its absence in state courts did not violate the Constitution.
Dissent — Justice Douglas
Justice Douglas argued that the Fourth Amendment applies to the states and that, without the exclusionary rule, the Amendment has no real teeth. He agreed with Justice Murphy that the evidence here was improperly admitted and that the convictions should be reversed.
Dissent — Justice Murphy
“For the Court now allows what is indeed shabby business: lawlessness by officers of the law.”Murphy's objection to allowing illegally obtained evidence into state trials without an exclusion remedy.
Justice Murphy argued that recognizing a constitutional right without also requiring the only effective remedy for it renders the right meaningless. He surveyed alternative remedies — criminal prosecution and civil trespass suits — and found each too weak or impractical to deter police misconduct, concluding that exclusion of evidence is the sole effective sanction and that the convictions should be reversed.
Dissent — Justice Rutledge
Justice Rutledge argued that the entire Bill of Rights should apply to the states, and separately insisted that the Fourth Amendment's protection is meaningless without the exclusionary sanction, agreeing with Murphy's reasoning. He rejected any suggestion that Congress or states could permit use of illegally seized evidence and would have reversed the convictions.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court asked whether the right to privacy against arbitrary police intrusion — the core value protected by the Fourth Amendment — is 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,' the test from Palko v. Connecticut for deciding which rights bind the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.
- Applying that test, the Court found that freedom from arbitrary police searches is indeed basic to a free society and therefore is enforceable against the states through due process, separate from the question of whether the Bill of Rights as a whole applies to the states.
- The Court then separated the underlying right from the specific remedy of throwing out illegally obtained evidence, noting that the exclusionary rule from Weeks v. United States was a judge-made rule of evidence for federal courts, not something the text of the Fourth Amendment itself required.
- Surveying how most American states and English-speaking countries handled the problem, the Court found that the large majority did not use exclusion of evidence as their remedy, instead relying on private lawsuits against officers, criminal prosecution, or internal police discipline.
- Because reasonable people could disagree about which remedy best protects the underlying right, and because other methods could be equally effective if consistently enforced, the Court concluded that due process does not force states to adopt the exclusionary rule specifically.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Weeks v. United States (232 U.S. 383)
Confirms the federal exclusionary rule but declines to extend it as a requirement binding on the states.
Reaffirms Palko v. Connecticut (302 U.S. 319)
Relies on Palko's 'ordered liberty' test for deciding which rights bind the states through due process.