Wolf V. Colorado Case Brief

Before 1948 Julius A. Wolf had been arrested and tried for reasons not stated in the Supreme Court case, but the evidence that was used against Wolf was taken unlawfully, the police had no warrant for his arrest as well as no warrant to search his office. Wolf was able to get an appeal to be tried one more time. In 1948 the trial Wolf v Colorado Supreme Court had begun. It was a very controversial topic because the case was based on the violation of the Fourth Amendment right of protection from search and seizures. According to Wolf v Colorado (1949) wolf’s attorneys case was that since the evidence that was obtained and used against him in court was not lawfully obtained it should not be admissible due to the fact that if it was a federal case automatically it would not have been admissible. So it did not make sense that it would be different for the state courts. The case was controversial because the Fourth Amendment does not clearly state that the states must follow the due process law of the Fourth Amendment. “Unlike the specific requirements and restrictions placed by the Bill of Rights (Amendments I to VIII) upon the administration of criminal justice by federal authority, the Fourteenth Amendment did not subject criminal justice in the

The police violated Wolf’s rights and since there was no warrant for arrest or warrant to search his office the police was trespassing. The police officer who violated his rights was to be punished by his superiors. The judges decided that using such evidence goes completely against the Fourth Amendment which is a basic need to our freedom. States should follow this law but are not directly forced to. States using evidence that should be excluded in their “statute becomes a form, and its protection an illusion,”(Wolf v Colorado, 1949). This leads to some states including Virginia, penalizing illegal search and