The Retroactive Effect of an Overruling Constitutional Decision: Mapp v. Ohio

Abstract

The recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Mapp v. Ohio,l suddenly overruling Wolf v. Colorado,2 has created an interesting problem regarding the retroactive effect of an overruling decision. Wolf, decided in 1949, had held the Constitution does not impose upon the states the same obligation imposed upon the national government in Weeks v. United States 3 to exclude evidence from criminal trials when it is the fruit of an unreasonable search and seizure. Mapp holds instead that all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by same authority, inadmissible in a state court. 4 The case was one in which state police officers broke into defendant's home, used force to restrain her when she objected to their failure to display a warrant, and conducted an exhaustive search. Obscene material was found, for the possession of which defendant was convicted. Overruling Wolf and applying the new exclusionary rule, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction because it rested upon unconstitutionally seized evidence. Mapp, rather than Wolf, applies for the future. The problem of retroactivity is to determine which rule applies when trials predating the announcement of the new exclusionary rule are now challenged because of the admission of evidence-when trials which took place under one rule of constitutional law are challenged under a superseding and contrary rule. Mapp is explicitly a constitutional case. The ordinary, usually silent, assumption in the Supreme Court of the United States has undoubtedly been a decision determining the meaning of the Constitution must be retroactive, even if it is an overruling decision. The classic statement is in Norton v. Shelby County,5 refuting the argument a state statute, held unconstitutional, might nevertheless give validity to official conduct taken pursuant to it before the announcement