Versus arizona. Number 18, roe versus wade. Quite often in many of our most famous decisions are ones that the court took that were 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 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 historic cases at the Supreme Court that have affected the court and affected the country. Tonight the 1961 case of mapp v. Ohio, involving dollree mapp. An ohio woman that refused to let the Police Search her house without a warrant a case that involves some back stairs intrigue at the security itself and all this evolved into a case that was one of a series in the warren courts that changed policing in america. We welcome with us this program and hope you have been with us throughout the series as weve been learning so much about the Supreme Court. Let me introduce you to our two guests and i should tell you before i do weve been enjoying talking about the case a little bit on the set itself and i think dollree mapp would like that because shes quite a colorful character. Meet carolyn long who literally wrote the book on the mapp v. Ohio case. Its guarding against unreasonable searches and seizures. Shes a professor of philosophy. Thank you for inviting me. Renee hutchins is Maryland University law school professor. Shes 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 tonight. Thank you. So lets start with the basic issue in this decision. What is this case what did it 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 up as a case about obscenity and pornography and it ended up as a case about whether evidence should be admitted in state trials. Was this a landmark decision . Well, what the decision did was not allowed this rule called the exclusionary rule which we will talk about, to be extended to half the states in the union. So it had a sweeping effect on police procedures, had a sweeping effect on how judges would be hearing cases and so it really hit a lot of potential cases over the decades to come and weve seen the snow. I think just to build on that, another reason why it was a landmark is because it shifted the way we thought about police it shifted the professionalism of Police Forces, 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, will listen to some audio from the oral argument to the Supreme Court, and this is the first case in our series and were two thirds of the way through it, where the court has begun recording all of its oral arguments, so this is the first time we can actually let you listen into the argument that argument that dollree 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 handcuffed her while the Police Officers started to search the house. Now, the evidence in this case discloses that the state claims there were only seven Police Officers, some in uniform. Mr. Green, who was there and was not permitted entrance to the house but was kept outside, says there was approximately 12 Police Officers in all. Now, the evidence discloses that no search warrant existed. Al kearns was her attorney from the time she began Legal Proceedings in the state of ohio all the way through the Supreme Court and well be learning more about him and his role in the case as our program proceeds. But 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. A little brief constitutional history. Why was this part of our constitution . So, for a couple of reasons. Prior to the founding of the nation in england, there have been these general warrants that allowed the police a lot of discretion to search peoples houses and homes. And when we came over into colonial america there were risks of assistance that allowed the police to essentially do the same thing and the founders did not want that kind of unfettered police discretion, right . They wanted to rein in with the police could do and so the language you just read says two things it says we have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. And it says that if youre going to get a warrant, you got to base that warrant on probable cause and you absolutely have to say specifically where you are searching, and who youre looking for, and what youre going to season what things are going to cease and those two closets have been reds 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 a general rule there are lots of exceptions to that rule, lots and lots and lots of exceptions to that rule, but that was the world that existed prior to mapp. As we learned, it had been applied, you must have a warrant for federal offenses, but only half of the states had said that this 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 this by making it apply to all states as well, correct . They did. Thats thats what mapp v. Ohio is about. I wanted to go back to writs of assistance to talk about how important they were in motivating passage of the Fourth Amendment but also passages of provisions in state constitutions. So people should understand that these were openended warrants where a Customs Officials and anybody who they deputized could go into a place of business, they can go into your home, looking for smuggled goods which was a very serious problem in the colonies, and it was such so it was egregious also because customs officers would get money if they found the smuggled goods, so they had an incentive to engage in these illegal searches and it motivated after independence the states to really look at provisions in their state constitutions which closely mirror what we have in the Fourth Amendment about the need for a warrant in some cases, but in all cases that there are reasonableness involved in whether or not somebody engages in the search. It really motivated passage of those provisions. Tonight people will also be hearing a lot about the socalled ex cluesary rule. What is that . So 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 at its most basic, and because the court in weeks when it created it applied that rule only against the federal government, it didnt apply against the states. Thats what carolyn was talking about earlier, is 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 trials. So he have with a map of the states that you did not have to have a warrant in 1957 when this first occurred. So suffice it to say if dollree mapp had lived in one of the states where it was applied and you needed a warrant, this case would have never come to the court. But was the court looking for some reason to do this and 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 it was clearly a case about obscenity, but i think the nature of the search was so egregious that it really motivated the court to use it as a vehicle to extend exclusionary rule to the states. And so it was almost too good of an opportunity to pass up. And Justice Tom Clark who wrote the decision had been maybe looking for a vehicle because he had decided a case where he had he had written a concurring opinion in a case he didnt circulate where he sort of was feeling it out in his mind about whether or not a case called wolf v. Colorado should be reversed. A good vehicle was provided with mapp, but it was something on the courts mind. So one of the premises behind this series when we first thought about it was that there are interesting people stories behind the cases that make their way to the Supreme Court. And if youve been watching, you see theyve 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 when she died, 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 shes a more colorful character than rosa parks which is why i think that quote is so apt, but she was a fighter. Somebody who was very confident. Described as arrogant by some but she knew she had been wronged by this extensive search of her home and she had been targeted by the police and she really wanted to fight this case in court. A lot of people say im going to take my case all the way to the Supreme Court and very few make it but in meeting dollree, you knew she was going to get to the Supreme Court. She just had that confidence and she knew that this was something that she had to really to see the courts decide. Okay. So she was from shaker heights, ohio, which is a fairly affluent suburb of cleveland, east of cleveland. Tell us the basic parameters of her story and the crime that was alleged to have been committed and how this case got started. So its important to note where she lived actually because this is a young africanamerican woman. She has a single daughter. She was married and divorced, jimmy bivins, who is a great boxer, he had defeated eight world champions but he never had a title fight. She had been engaged to archie moore, who was a heavyweight fighter himself. And so she was very familiar to the boxing scene, and part of that scene was illegal gambling gration operations, and in cleveland like many cities they had something called a policy game where people would engage in almost a daily lottery for small bits of money. And dollree was sort of in the periphery of that world and knew people who were involved in illegal gambling and so what led to the case actually was the fact that others who were involved in illegal gambling most not ably, donald the kid king, had his first porch bombed by people who were trying to shake him down because they were trying to get money from him as well as other people involved in the game business, and what happened was there was a confidential informant who said there was somebody who was involved in the bombing in bombing in dollree mapps as well home as well as possibly evidence of gambling paraphernalia. And so the police went to her house. First they gently requested she let them in. 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. I came back. They pride open the door of her home at the time she was descending her stairs. Way the piece of paper at the Police Officers and as current said in the piece we heard earlier, there was a tussle over that and she was handcuffed. Set on a bed, then i banister at one point handcuff to Police Officer and they were allege allegedly looking for bombing suspect, which they found within the first few minutes of the search, but then the engaged for a surge of three hours of her home in her basement where she had borders and every room of the house. Inside of compartments in her. House they eventually found some gambling paraphernalia in the basement and also found some books that were allegedly obscene and some pencil drawings in her bedroom that were also allegedly obscene so they arrested her primarily on the gambling charge with the paraphernalia and then later it turned into a charge about the obscene material. Okay. Just so people make sure they got the connection, donald the kid king says in later life, many, Many Americans got to know him as don king, the guy with the crazy here that was a big boxing promoter boxing promoter 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. They did. Would you talk a little bit about 1957 and this unit within the Police Department and whether or not there was tension between it and the Africanamerican Community in cleveland . There absolutely was. That was one of the things i wanted to build on when carolyn was talking is when we talk about what happened to dollree today, it ends up being a little bit sterile and a little bit removed from i think probably what would have been a very scary experience for a single mother at home in a house that is being laid siege upon by Police Officers. So when the Police Officers first come, they do sort of 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 shes coming down the stairs, the police are breaking in her back door, and when you think about what kind of an experience that must have been for this woman and the bureau that was the 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. They 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. So 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 enters your home, doesnt allow your lawyer to talk to you, and handcuffs you to a bed reaches down your clothing, sort of goes into your clothing to get a supposed warrant which the police later admit wasnt actually a warrant at all so they physically assault you and then handcuff you to your bed, its just i think that the trauma that she must have felt as a result of that experience ends up getting underplayed. 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 a suspicion of numbers, running the policy game in her world, she already had a lawyer so shes 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 . It wasnt entirely a firsttime, innocent sort of situation . It wasnt. She was well known, and not to say that it excuses, of course, Law Enforcements behavior in this case, but she had been stopped and questioned by police before, and she was well known 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. And that is this bureau of special investigations really was aggressive and even years later when i spoke to carl delau who was the 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 they found could be excluded, but its also important to know that the bureau really did target communities of color because if you looked at where the numbers game or the policy game was happening, they were in communities of people with lower socioeconomic status and in cleveland at the time it was predominantly African American communities. So you have the targeting of those, African American communities, and then you have the police using strategies like intimidation, giving them the third degree. Arresting people so that they then have to be in court which means that theyre not engaging in illegal behavior. Confiscating material. They used a number of strategies to try to attack what they saw as a real pervasive problem in the community, which was illegal gambling. Can i just add one point . Very briefly. I dont want to paint dollree with too rosy a brush, but the lawyer she had was not as a re