Impact of Cases Law on Policing

Impact of Cases Law on Policing

Running head: IMPACT OF CASES LAW ON POLICING








Impact of Cases Law on Policing


Impact of Cases Law on Policing

Mapp v. Ohio
When the Cleveland Police received a tip that Dollree Mapp and her daughter were hiding a suspected bombing suspect, they immediately went to her house and demanded to be let in. Under the advice of her attorney she refused to give them entry because they did not have a warrant. Hours later, more officers came to her door and demanded that they be allowed to enter her house. They forcibly opened a door and proceeded to search her home and arrested her for materials found in the home. Mapp was convicted of possessing obscene materials, this conviction was later overturned when the Supreme Court declared that "all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by 4th amendment inadmissible in a state court." Mapp had been convicted on the basis of illegally obtained evidence. This was a historic and controversial decision. It placed the requirement of excluding illegally obtained evidence from court at all levels of the government. The decision launched the Court on a troubled course of determining how and when to apply the exclusionary rule.

Terry v. Ohio
Terry and two other men were observed by a plain clothes policeman in what the officer believed to be "casing a job, a stick-up." The officer stopped and frisked the three men, and found weapons on two of them. Terry was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and sentenced to three years in jail. In an 8-to-1 decision, the Court held that the search undertaken by the officer was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment and that the weapons seized could be introduced into evidence against Terry. Attempting to focus narrowly on the facts of this particular case, the Court found that the officer acted on more than a hunch and that a reasonably person would have been warranted in believing that the suspect was armed and presented a...