Unwarranted | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

On the morning of May 20th in 1957, a man named Don King was alone at home. Don King wasn't famous yet as a boxing
promoter. But in Cleveland, he was known as the numbers are. Don King was about 25, so fairly young.
He was starting to also become very active in the boxing community. This is Professor Carolyn Long.
When Don King was 10, his father was killed in an accident at his job at a steel factory.
Don King and his brother started running an illegal lottery known as the numbers.
They would sell peanuts to the gambling houses in town. Each bag of nuts contained a square
paper with lottery numbers on it. They would shout, "Get your hot roasted peanuts and your lucky number."
By the time he was 25, he was well-known for running illegal gambling in Cleveland.
At one point, he was making $15,000 a day from his gambling operation. The people who were involved were primarily
from the African-American community, and they were very much targeted by law enforcement because of the assumption
that it was connected to organized crime, which is why the vice squad always went after them.
In Cleveland, vice crimes were handled by a unit called the Special Bureau of Investigation.
One officer there was Sergeant Carl DeLau. He'd arrested Don King for illegal gambling in 1954.
But afterwards, Don King and Carl DeLau became friendly. And sometimes Don King told Carl about
rival gambling operations and that he had to pay money to local gangsters for protection.
And then, on the morning of May 20th, 1957, a bomb exploded under Don King's front
porch. It was not a big bomb, but it was enough to scare someone. So, it destroyed part of King's porch. It was
obviously intentionally set. And he believed that people who were involved in gambling had set the bomb as a
warning to him. And he immediately called Carl DeLau and this Bureau of Special Investigations
because he was concerned about his own safety. A few days later, Carl DeLau got an
anonymous tip about the bomb. The tip said that a man named Virgil Ogletree, another numbers game operator,
knew something about it. And that he was hiding at a house nearby. It belonged to someone Don King knew,
a woman named Dollree Mapp. Dollree Mapp was born on October 30th, 1923. She grew up in a small town in
Mississippi. Carolyn says that Dollree told her that she was strong-willed as a child.
She told her parents that, quote, she wanted to live her life her own way. When she was 10, they let her move in
with her aunt in Cleveland. When she was 15, she got pregnant and had a daughter.
She stayed in Cleveland and later dropped out of school. When Dollree was 21, she got engaged to
a boxer named Jimmy Bivins. Dollree said it was an abusive relationship. She told Carolyn,
"I had to leave him or kill him. And I wasn't ready to kill him." But she didn't want to say much else.
She said, "You know, I'm not going to talk about that. I I don't need to talk about that. He's a nonentity. He's
irrelevant to my life." Dollree later dated another boxer, Archie Moore. They got engaged when she was 31, but
broke up about a year later. So, she was really well-known in the community because not only of these
relationships, but because of who she was. She was socializing with people and and her name was well-known in the area.
What did she look like? Well, at the time she was strikingly attractive. Um she was in her early 30s. She was very
slender, high cheekbones, and an incredible fierce gaze that just captured you. You could You could tell
how confident she was as a young woman and also how defiant she was. Dolree Mapp was stopped often by the
police on suspicion of being involved in illegal gambling. She had not been arrested at this point,
but she certainly had been detained and questioned and and in her mind harassed by law enforcement. They They seemed to
look for ways to confront her. Carl Delau referred to her as his arch-enemy, and I think that was less because she
was some prominent criminal and more that she was a young black woman who really pushed back and was oftentimes
accusing them of of targeting her and the people she knew because of their race and that it was unnecessary and
that it was really brutal to her and to her friends to be under this constant scrutiny by police.
Um and you know, Carl Delau, he was unapologetic about his job. He had been tasked to look into illegal
gambling. I remember speaking to him and he said, you know, we were well-trained,
you know, we were aggressive, but we were doing what the community wanted. We had a lot of wins, meaning there were a
number of arrests that they were able to make to show their progress in cracking
down on this behavior. The dynamic between an all-white police force sort of going after people in these
communities who are predominantly black was not really of concern to them because they were so certain that what
they were doing was right. On May 23rd, 1957, 3 days after the bomb went off under Don
King's porch, Carl DeLau and two other officers went to Dollree Mapp's house. It was early afternoon and Dollree heard
her door knock and she looked out her second-story window and saw three officers sort of pounding on the door.
And she yelled out the window, you know, "What are you doing here?" And they said, you know, "We just want to talk to
you, Dolly." And she said, "Well, what do you want to talk to me about?" And they refused to
tell her. Uh and she said, "Well, I'm not going to let you in uh in my home." Dollree Mapp called her lawyer's office
and they told her she didn't have to let the police come in. And that if they wanted to speak to her
about anything, they would have to produce a warrant which granted them access to her house.
And so, after speaking to her attorney, she yelled out the window a second time that she wasn't going to speak to them
until they had a warrant. And then she closed the window and and hoped that they would leave.
The police officers went back to their car and drove a block away where Sergeant DeLau called his boss. And the
supervisor said, um you know, "Go back and and talk to her." And uh DeLau said that they needed to get a warrant. The
supervisor said, you know, "We'll look into it." Their lieutenant called Dollree Mapp.
She also told him she wouldn't let the officers in without a warrant. When she hung up, she saw Carl DeLau and
the other officers outside again. She called her lawyer's office again and asked if someone could come to her
house. A lawyer named Walter Green drove over. When he got there, it was around 4:30.
He saw several police cars and about 15 police officers all outside Dollree Mapp's house.
People next door were coming outside to see what was going on. Walter Green later said,
"It looked like something out of the movies." Her attorney, he noticed that three of
the officers were trying to pry open her door with some sort of a tool, an instrument, like a crowbar.
Walter Green asked if they'd gotten a search warrant. He said if they showed it to Dollree
Mapp, she would let them in. They wouldn't need to force their way in. Another officer arrived at the house,
and Carl Delau told Dollree's lawyer that now they had a warrant. Walter Green says he wasn't allowed to
see it. One of the officers got the screen door open and broke a glass pane in the door
to open it. And so right when they've broken into the house, broken the pane of glass, she
starts to walk down her staircase to confront the officers. And she asks for a warrant. She said, "Where's your
warrant?" And one of the officers sort of waved a piece of paper. Dollree Mapp asked to see the search
warrant. An officer named Lieutenant White showed her a piece of paper that he said was
the warrant. When she asked to read it, he refused. And so she grabbed it and then put it
down the front of her dress. The officer who had the alleged warrant said, "Well,
what are we going to do now?" And and Carl Delau said, "Well, I'm going after it." And then he
reached, you know, into the dress by her bosom and then retrieved the piece of paper. And at no point during this short
interaction did they show the piece of paper to Mapp. They just insisted that they had, you know, a search warrant.
Police handcuffed Dollree Mapp to an officer while about a dozen other officers continued to search her home.
She was calling out to her lawyer. Her lawyer had been denied access to see her or even speak to her.
Police went to the apartment in the basement that Dolly Map rented out to another woman.
Inside they found Virgil Ogletree, the man who the anonymous tip said was connected to the bombing at Don King's
house. And they found him and they arrested him because of course he had been named as a potential suspect in the
bombing and for all intents and purposes the search should have ended there. But they were already in the house. They
had a an enormous police presence in the area. So they looked at everything. They
looked in her basement. They looked in her kitchen drawers, her drawers of her bedroom dresser, the closet.
She said, "I had some diet pills and they were looking in the package of my diet pills." So it was a very intensive
search and and at that point I would suggest as would Map, they were looking for anything that might
implicate her in some sort of criminal activity. But why if they had found the man they
were there for? Um this Bureau of Special Investigations was explicitly formed by law enforcement
to go after vice crimes. And so I think that they used this as as an opportunity
to find whatever we can to pin on her. They also had done searches like this with other people. I mean they they had
searched other homes without police warrants. They had detained other people without, you know, just cause. So for
them it was just another day. Uh but for Map of course it was just a tremendous intrusion into her personal life.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. We'll be right back. To To without ads, join Criminal Plus.
What do they end up finding? Um they did find evidence of the numbers game. So, there were slips of paper. It
was in a trunk in the basement. Uh and then when they searched her bedroom, they said they had found other material
and they came to her with a paper bag and it had four books that they believed were obscene.
The books were titled London Stage Affairs, The Affairs of a Troubadour, Memories of a Hotel Man, and Little
Darlings. They also found a nude drawing. Dollree Mapp said that the officers, quote, "Seemed to enjoy them immensely."
Police took Dollree Mapp to the station. Carl DeLau questioned Dollree about the
bomb at Don King's house. Dollree Mapp said that she knew Don King. They were acquaintances,
but she didn't know anything about the bombing. Sergeant DeLau said Dollree was very
evasive in her answers and that she was not making an effort to help the police.
Police asked her about the four books they'd found at her home. Dollree said they belonged to a former
tenant who had moved out over a month earlier. Officers questioned Virgil Ogle Tree,
who told them he had arrived at Dollree Mapp's house just before the police. He said he had once been involved with a
gambling operation, but wasn't currently. He said he'd been at home when the bomb
went off at Don King's house and didn't know anything about it. Virgil Ogle Tree was eventually released
with no charges. Dollree Mapp was charged with possession of gambling paraphernalia.
She spent the night in jail, but the next morning a judge dismissed the charges, and Dollree Mapp went home.
A local newspaper ran a story on the front page about her arrest. Police told the reporter that Miss Mapp
was stubborn about letting them inside. And then, a few days later, police filed
new charges for possession of obscene materials. The law was written in such a way that
even if you did not know you had material that was potentially obscene, if it was in your possession, as in in
your house, law enforcement was able to make the argument that she had it in her
possession was therefore in violation of Ohio law. So, they rearrested her on violations of the obscenity statute,
which actually was a felony in the state of Ohio. You can get up to 7 years of prison.
The trial was scheduled for the next year, on September 3rd, 1958. You know, her interaction with law
enforcement was tense. She had some real concern about whether or not she would get treated fairly in the justice
system. As Dollree Mapp's lawyers were preparing for the trial, they requested to see the
warrant police had brought to Dollree's house multiple times. The prosecution never sent a copy.
Dollree Mapp's lawyers filed a motion to suppress the books found at Dollree Mapp's house.
They didn't think the search was legal. They believed that there was no warrant.
But a judge dismissed the motion. On the first day of the trial, an officer named Michael Haney testified
that he was there when Carl Delau found the books in Dollree's bedroom. And then Dollree Mapp's lawyers asked
him where the search warrant was now. Haynie said, "I don't know." Dollree's lawyer asked if he could
remember what the warrant said. Michael Haynie said he could not. He said that Dollree had voluntarily
welcomed the police inside. Carl DeLau testified next. He said that the police did break into
the house. He also said that another officer brought him the warrant right before
that. Dollree Mapp told the jury that she had grabbed the piece of paper that the
police had said was a warrant, but she had not been able to see or read it. The prosecutor questioned her about the
books and if they were really hers. Dollree said again they didn't belong to her.
At the end of the trial, the jury deliberated for 20 minutes. They found Dollree Mapp guilty of
possession of, quote, "certain lewd and lascivious books." She was facing a 1-to-7-year sentence
and she was devastated. She was living with her young teenage daughter and she was terrified that she'd been so easily
convicted. Dollree Mapp and her lawyers decided to try and appeal her conviction.
Her lawyers wrote in their appeal that they believed that the obscenity law in Ohio violated Dollree's constitutional
rights. The Supreme Court had just ruled the year before, in 1957, on how to define obscene material.
Before that, the standard had been to define something as obscene if even a part of it was considered lewd.
Now the court said that to be obscene, the material, taken as a whole, had to appeal to prurient interest.
Later that year, in the summer of 1957, two men were put on trial in San Francisco for obscenity.
They ran a bookstore and had been charged for selling Allen Ginsberg's book, Howl.
A judge found them not guilty. He wrote that he found the book had some, quote, redeeming social
importance. Dollree Mapp's lawyers also wrote to the Ohio Court of Appeals that she was never allowed to see the
police search warrant and that it was also never shown to her lawyers or shown in court.
Dollree was allowed to be at home while the court was considering her appeal. It went on for months and eventually
went to the Ohio State Supreme Court. She just felt like the Damocles sword was over her head that there was going
to come a point when she was going to have to serve a sentence and so she told me, you know, she had two plans and one
of the plans was to flee. She didn't want it to have to come to that, but she also, you know, refused to
be imprisoned for something that she did not do. On March 23rd, 1960, the State Supreme Court handed down
their decision on Dollree Mapp's case. Four of the seven justices said that Ohio's obscenity law was
unconstitutional and that Dollree's conviction should be reversed. But Ohio's Constitution required a
supermajority. Six of the seven judges had to agree to declare a law unconstitutional.
But all the justices had agreed that the search had been done without a warrant.
One wrote that after looking at the evidence and trial testimony that, quote, no warrant was offered in evidence.
There was no testimony as to who issued any warrant or as to what any warrant contained,
and the absence from evidence of any such warrant is not explained or otherwise accounted for in the record.
Her lawyers filed a petition to the US Supreme Court. A friend loaned her $8,000 to pay for
the legal fees. They believed that focusing their arguments on the illegal search could
help Dollree's case. In October of 1960, the Supreme Court agreed to hear her case.
And then, the American Civil Liberties Union contacted Dollree's lawyers. They asked to file an amicus brief, or
friend of the court brief. They said that they thought the police search had violated her Fourth Amendment
rights. So, the Fourth Amendment is the sort of the First Amendment in the Bill of
Rights that deals with criminal procedure. And the Fourth Amendment does two things. It has a clause that protects
individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. And then there's another clause, which requires that if police
are going to engage in a search, that they have to get a warrant based upon probable cause that is presented before
a neutral magistrate. The Fourth Amendment primarily applies to people, their homes, and their
effects, or their papers. And it is an amendment that the framers felt very strongly needed to be in the
Constitution because some of the abuses that happened during colonial times. In the 1700s, British officers would
frequently search people's homes looking for smuggled goods. They would say that they had the right
to enter because of a document called a writ of assistance. And a writ of assistance is nothing like a warrant.
It's actually far more alarming. A writ of assistance is essentially a general writ that allows custom officers
unlimited power to search people, their homes, and their effects. And it would stay in place, meaning that writ was
active until the sovereign who had issued the writ had died. And there was a lot of pushback because of the nature
of these searches. And there's a moment when an attorney in Boston, James Otis, he was giving these
fiery speeches about how they were really intruding upon, you know, our rights to be free from the government,
you know, engaging in these general pervasive searches. It sort of stirred the people in the audience. And one
member in the audience was John Adams. John Adams was a young lawyer at the time.
He later wrote that James Otis was a flame of fire, and that his speech was when American independence was then and
there born. Many years later, when John Adams was vice president, he would sign off on the
Bill of Rights. It included several amendments about your rights if you're arrested.
Over the past 140 years, the Supreme Court ruled on many cases about the Fourth Amendment. Like if evidence
collected on wiretaps needed a warrant or not, and whether copies made of illegally obtained evidence could be
used in court. Carolyn says the Fourth Amendment is sometimes known as one of the most
litigated provisions of the Bill of Rights. By 1914, the Supreme Court had ruled
that the federal government could not use evidence seized without a valid warrant.
But it wasn't until almost 1950 that the Supreme Court ruled on whether that should apply to state governments and
police. It really came to the attention, you know, of of the public in a case uh 1949
called Wolf versus Colorado. Julius Wolf was a doctor who'd been arrested for performing abortions.
At the time, it was illegal in Colorado. Police charged him based on patient records they found in his office.
But, they had taken the papers without a warrant. The case went to the Supreme Court, and
the justices all agreed that the search had been illegal. Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote that the
security of one's privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police is basic to a free society.
It was a tremendously important decision because he, as well as many, knew of the
abuses of power of law enforcement. And so, the declaration that it was now applied to state and local officials was
a really big deal. But, Carolyn says that Justice Frankfurter left open the question of
what to do with evidence if it was found in an illegal search. What happens when
law enforcement engages in an unreasonable or an illegal search? Um on that question, Frankfurter sort of
very much refused to say that the exclusion of that illegally seized evidence should be discarded. He said
that the states would have to decide on their own if they wanted to throw out evidence obtained in an illegal search,
known as the exclusionary rule. Dollree Mapp's case was in the news a lot. The newspapers were mostly interested
because of Ohio's obscenity law. It got a lot of attention. Mapp ended up having
a level of notoriety because people were were watching this case. Issues of obscenity were on people's minds. Nobody
thought that it would involve the exclusionary rule. Dollree Mapp drove to Washington for the
first day of oral arguments at the Supreme Court on March 29th, 1961, she arrived a day early and visited the
Supreme Court building. She met a bailiff there who answered her questions about how the Supreme Court
worked and later how she could find out when a decision had been made on her case.
Dollree Mapp's lawyer, Alexander Kearns, argued the case along with a lawyer from
the ACLU. Alexander Kearns began his oral arguments by going step-by-step over when police broke into Dollree's home.
He went on for more than 16 minutes before Justice Frankfurter interrupted him. Mr. Kearns, may I Yes, your honor.
May I trouble you to tell us What you deem to be the questions that are open before this court. As far as I read the
syllabi, I can't tell if any of these questions are about search and seizure. Unlawful search and seizure.
Are you asking us to overrule the Wolf case in this court? The lawyer from the ACLU said yes.
They wanted the court to reconsider Wolf v. Colorado, the case about the doctor whose papers had been taken without a
warrant. They thought that the evidence in Dollree's case, the four books, should
have been thrown out because the search was illegal. After the end of oral arguments, Dollree
Mapp went home. She asked the bailiff who she'd spoken to earlier if he would call her to let
her know if a decision had come down yet. So, he did. He called her every week for months.
We'll be right back. On June 19th, 1961, Dollree Mapp got a phone call from the bailiff at the Supreme Court.
He said, "You don't have to go to jail. It's all over." The Supreme Court had ruled that the
police search on Dollree Mapp's home had been illegal under the Fourth Amendment.
The evidence that they seized was ill-gotten because law enforcement had not had a warrant.
It meant that the arrest was invalid and any of the evidence, these dirty books,
would be excluded from trial. So, it meant that she was free. Dollree told Carolyn,
"It was a great relief that I didn't have to flee, that I didn't have to lose my daughter."
At the time, about half the states in the country allowed for illegally seized evidence in state trials.
The Supreme Court's decision made it so that every state in the country had to exclude illegally obtained evidence.
So, it was a very big deal. Judicial scholars call it as sort of the first shot across the bow in the incorporation
of criminal procedure protections because what we saw happening was the court starting to pay attention to
criminal procedure rights. It subsequently led to decisions like Miranda versus Arizona,
which are protection against the right to self-incrimination, exclusionary rules extended there, and so you had
this cascading effect where the court starts to see that some of these other constitutional protections are also
fundamental. Over the next decade, the court began ruling on several cases on the rights of
criminal defendants. Some legal scholars have called it the due process revolution.
You get decisions like the Fifth Amendment right to be protected against self-incrimination,
that if you are interrogated and you give a a confession that's been coerced, that that would be excluded
from trial. Later, you know, the constitutional right to confront your witnesses,
constitutional protections against double jeopardy. There's just a whole slew of cases that came after Mapp,
which just extended these protections. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel in Gideon versus Wainwright. All of
these decisions happened because Mapp v. Ohio paved the way by showing the court
that these protections need to be extended to protect against state and local law enforcement practices.
Carl Delau, one of the officers who had arrested Dollree Mapp in Cleveland, said
the decision was devastating. He told Carolyn that he thought the decision would tie our hands in law
enforcement. Part of their reaction was shock because they did not think they were doing
anything wrong because they had repeatedly engaged in these types of searches without a warrant. And there
was a quite an uproar of how it would coddle criminals, allow criminals to go free. There's a a a quote about, "Is the
criminal to go free because the constables have blundered?" The argument being, you know, why would we free
criminals because law enforcement made a minor mistake? Well, the reason, of course, is that uh they shouldn't be
engaging these types of searches in the first place. Decades after searching Dollree Mapp's
home, Carl Delau admitted to a law professor that he had not had a warrant when he
entered. Since the Supreme Court ruled on Dollree Mapp's case, they've also decided on cases that would
allow for police to do searches without warrants in certain circumstances. If somebody consents to a search, they
don't need to get a warrant. If there are exigent circumstances, meaning police don't have time to get a warrant
because maybe they're on a foot race chasing somebody, they don't need a warrant. That if you have a lower
expectation of privacy, for instance, in your car where you're at, you you don't
need a warrant. So, what happened subsequent to Mapp, you know, as some people have said, is is if the Fourth
Amendment looked like Swiss cheese. And so, that's sort of the where we are at now.
Where warrants are required in certain circumstances, as long as it doesn't fall into these
exceptions, and then in many other circumstances, law enforcement just has to behave reasonably, which of course is
a fairly subjective standard. Doll Ree Mapp eventually moved from Ohio to New York City.
She lived in Queens and ran a used furniture store in Harlem. She hired a man to manage it for her.
Police soon learned that they were selling drugs together. They were eventually arrested for
possession of heroin. It was a legitimate arrest. It was a legitimate search. She was ultimately
convicted, and it's important to note that at this time, New York was taking a very firm stance against drugs,
especially if you're trafficking drugs. And she was given a 20-year sentence in prison.
She spent a lot of time in the prison's law library. She helped other people get
their visitation rights. Doll Ree served almost 10 years before her sentence was commuted in 1980.
As she's leaving, you know, she's been released, one of the guards said, "You know, Ms. Mapp, I'll never forget you."
And her response was, "I've forgotten you already." When she got out, she worked for a
non-profit that gave legal assistance to people in prison. Carolyn Long wrote a book about Mapp v.
Ohio. When she interviewed Dollree Mapp for it, Dollree was in her 80s. She lived by herself in her home in
Queens, sort of a modest house. She took care of herself. She ate a vegetarian diet. You know, she was walking around
the neighborhood often, but she didn't sort of put herself out there as you know, the the champion of
the Fourth Amendment. She just sort of lived her own life. Dollree Mapp died in 2014
on Halloween, just after her 91st birthday. Her great niece said, "My great aunt was very, very, very
strong-willed. She didn't prepare for death. I think Aunt Dolly thought she was going
to live forever." Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer.
Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Zejico, Lily Clark, and Lena
Sillison. This episode was fact-checked by Katie Cedarburg. Our show is mixed and engineered by
Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of
Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter
at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter. Carolyn Long's book is Mapp v. Ohio: Guarding Against Unreasonable Searches
and Seizures. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program,
Criminal Plus. You can listen to Criminal, This is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without
any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and
Criminal co-creator Lauren Spore talking about everything from how we make our episodes to the crime stories that
caught our attention that week to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to
patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook at this is Criminal and Instagram and TikTok at
criminal_podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media
Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

On the morning of May 20, 1957, a bomb exploded under Don King’s front porch. Police got a tip that they should search the home of someone he knew – a woman named Dollree Mapp. But when they got there, she refused to let them in. Soon, her case would go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Carolyn Long’s book is Mapp v. Ohio: Guarding Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mapp_V_Ohio/nnmRAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0).

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Join Criminal Plus on Patreon for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, listener chat rooms, behind-the-scenes content, and more membership perks. https://www.patreon.com/Criminal

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://pod.link/809264944

Say hello on Twitter (https://twitter.com/criminalshow) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/criminal_podcast) Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/thisiscriminal) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@criminal_podcast)

Sign up for our occasional newsletter, which includes a note from Phoebe, behind-the-scenes photos, and things our team has been enjoying lately. https://thisiscriminal.com/newsletter

We also make the podcasts This is Love (https://pod.link/1337100398) and Phoebe Reads a Mystery (https://pod.link/1503921457).

Artwork by Julienne Alexander: http://www.yssrs.com/. Check out our online shop: https://shop.thisiscriminal.com/

Episode 361 originally published April 17, 2026. https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-361-unwarranted-4-17-2026/

Music in this episode: “Trusty” by Blue Dot Sessions “FasterFasterBrighter” by Blue Dot Sessions “Bogo” by Blue Dot Sessions “Kovd” by Blue Dot Sessions “Li Fonte” by Blue Dot Sessions “Throughput” by Blue Dot Sessions “Astrisx _ Minimal” by Blue Dot Sessions “Vdet” by Blue Dot Sessions “Noe Noe _ Naked Bass” by Blue Dot Sessions “Papercraft” by Blue Dot Sessions “Sprig Leaf” by Blue Dot Sessions “Dash and Slope” by Blue Dot Sessions “The Bittern” by Blue Dot Sessions “Willow Belle _ Minimal” by Blue Dot Sessions “Willow Belle” by Blue Dot Sessions

Brief Summary

Dollree Mapp's case against illegal police searches led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling on Fourth Amendment rights.

Key points

The Bombing Incident. A bomb explodes under Don King's porch, leading to a tense investigation.
Dollree Mapp's Defiance. Dollree Mapp refuses to let police enter her home without a warrant, asserting her rights.
Mapp's Arrest. Dollree Mapp is arrested for possession of gambling paraphernalia after a police raid.
Supreme Court Appeal. Dollree Mapp's lawyers appeal her conviction, challenging the legality of the search.
Historic Supreme Court Ruling. The Ohio Supreme Court declares the state's obscenity law unconstitutional, impacting Mapp's case.
The Fourth Amendment's Impact. The Supreme Court's ruling on Dollree Mapp's case changed the landscape of search and seizure laws.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I had to leave him or kill him. And I wasn't ready to kill him.

Dollree Mapp on her abusive relationship with boxer Jimmy Bivins

3:30WatchJul 31, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from Criminal | A Podcast About Crime

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.