Wolf v. Colorado

Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949), argued 19 Oct. 1948, decided 27 June 1949 by vote of 6 to 3; Frankfurter for the Court, Douglas and Murphy in dissent. Wolf was convicted of conspiracy to commit abortion in Colorado. The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the conviction against Wolf's challenge to the constitutionality of the seizure and the use of evidence in criminal proceedings. Granting certiorari, the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether the Fourth Amendment search and seizure protection was incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and thereby applicable to the states as well as the federal government. The Court also considered whether incorporation required the application of the exclusionary rule as defined and applied to federal courts in Weeks v. United States (1914). The Court responded in the affirmative to the first question but rejected the extension of the exclusionary rule to state courts.

Writing for the majority, Justice Felix Frankfurter argued that protection from arbitrary intrusion by law enforcement is implied in the “concept of ordered liberty” and thereby incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment and applicable to the states (p. 27). He rejected, however, the claim that illegally or unconstitutionally obtained evidence had to be excluded in state criminal proceedings. Frankfurter acknowledged that such a rule could deter police from unreasonable searches but stressed that there were other means of enforcing such a basic right and that state courts were resistant to the rule defined in the Weeks decision. Much the same arguments were offered by Justice Hugo Black in a concurring opinion in which he emphasized that incorporation did not require the application of a “judicially created rule of evidence” (p. 40).

Two dissenting opinions were filed in the case: one by Justice William O. Douglas and one by Justice Frank Murphy with Wiley B. Rutledge in agreement. Douglas observed that the Fourth Amendment protection is rendered ineffective without the exclusion of evidence seized in an unconstitutional fashion, while Murphy stressed that few states would devise practically efficient means of redressing Fourth Amendment violations.

Wolf has since been overruled by Mapp v. Ohio, (1961). The Supreme Court accepted the minority position in Wolf and required states not only to abide by Fourth Amendment provisions but to exclude evidence seized in violation of such protections.

See also Incorporation Doctrine; Silver Platter Doctrine.

Susette M. Talarico