Supreme Court Case Of Weeks V. United States Essay

In the 1914 Supreme Court Case of Weeks v. United States, the defendant, Fremont Weeks, a resident of Kansas City, Missouri, was arrested by a police officer without a warrant. At the same time, other police officers entered Weeks’ home after using an extra key that a neighbor informed them of. Hoping to use any seized items as evidence, the police collected articles, documents, and letters from the bedroom of his house, also without a warrant. In a twice-denied petition, Weeks requested that his private items be returned to his home. Once the papers were introduced to the trial as evidence he objected once again to their presentation on the basis that they were obtained illegally through the unwarranted entering of his home, a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, securing him from unreasonable searches and seizures conducted without warrants. After appealing to the Supreme Court, a unanimous decision concluded that the seizure of the items that were to be used as evidence in Weeks’ case directly violated his constitutional rights. This became the first application of the Exclusionary Rule to

Wolf, a privately practicing doctor in Colorado, stood trial for conspiring with a woman to perform an abortion. As evidence, the prosecution aimed to introduce Wolf’s appointment book to illustrate that Wolf had been in contact with a specific woman who wanted an abortion. He argued that his book was seized in violation of Colorado law but his objection was overturned and Wolf was convicted. Appealing his case to the Supreme Court, Wolf relied on the 1914 decision made in the Weeks v. United States case that created the exclusionary rule and his Fourth Amendment rights. Under The Exclusionary Rule, illegally obtained evidence was not permitted in federal court and Wolf debated that the rule applied to state courts as well. The Supreme Court concluded that the Fourth Amendment does not exclude the use of illegally found evidence in criminal