Weeks v. U.S eText - Primary Source

Primary Source

Supreme Court decision

By: William R. Day

Date: February 24, 1914

Source: Day, William R. Weeks v. U.S., 232 U.S. 383 (1914). Available online at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/us/232/383.html; website home page: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com (accessed January 22, 2003).

About the Author: William R. Day (1849–1923), born in Ravenna, Ohio, served briefly (and unwillingly) as U.S. attorney general in 1898. In 1899, he was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt (served 1901–1909) appointed him to the Supreme Court, where he served as an associate justice until his resignation in 1922.


Many Anti-Federalists opposed the U.S. Constitution because they believed it granted too much power to the federal government. To quiet their fears, and to protect the citizenry, the first Congress proposed twelve amendments to the Constitution in 1789. Ten, the Bill of Rights, were quickly ratified by the states and became part of the Constitution in 1791. The Bill of Rights protects both civil liberties and a defendant's rights when tried in a court of law. These provisions, however, are not self-enforcing, and the question quickly arose as to what would happen if they were violated. Because there were few federal criminal laws in the nation's early years, the Supreme Court had few chances to answer this question.

The Embargo Act of 1807 raised questions of what the federal government could search and seize, but the Supreme Court never ruled on this question. In an early case that finally addressed the issue, Boyd v. U.S., the Supreme Court prohibited the use of evidence seized without a warrant. The Court, however, did not explicitly state that all evidence seized without a warrant could not be used—an issue raised in Weeks. In Barron v. Baltimore, the Court again ruled that the federal government could not use evidence seized without a search warrant, but it specified no penalty for the government should it use such evidence in a trial until the Weeks case.


The penalty that the Supreme Court imposed in Weeks for using evidence obtained without a search warrant was a heavy one: the overturning of convictions. This ruling put teeth into the Fourth Amendment. As the Court noted, if illegally seized documents are allowed, "the Fourth Amendment … might as well be stricken from the Constitution." The prohibition on using illegally seized evidence has come to be known as the "exclusionary rule." Even with this decision, the issue was not settled, though, as the question remained whether the exclusionary rule applied not only to the federal government but also to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from violating a person's liberty without due process of law. If "liberty" included the Fourth Amendment right against search and seizure without a warrant, then the exclusionary rule applied. In 1937, the Supreme Court ruled that some of the Bill of Rights applied to the states, but only those amendments that were part of what the court called "ordered liberty." The Court held illegal those practices that violated what Justice Felix Frankfurter called "accepted notions of justice." In 1949, the Supreme Court applied this theory to refuse to overturn a state conviction based on evidence obtained by an illegal search. In 1952, the Court did find illegal evidence obtained by a stomach pump, even while allowing, five years later, a blood sample taken from an unconscious person. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, therefore, no clear standard emerged.

In 1961, the Warren Court finally set a clear precedent. In Mapp v. Ohio, it held that the Fourth Amendment did apply to the states and that the Supreme Court would hold them to the "exclusionary rule." The Court in Mapp noted that over half of the states already used the federal standard. Since Mapp, though, the Supreme Court has limited that ruling, allowing states to use some illegally seized evidence. The Court severely reformulated the Mapp formula in U.S. v. Leon (1984), deciding to weigh the benefit to society against a particular suspect's rights. Under the Rehnquist Court, the Fourth Amendment has continued to be narrowed. Thus, the width and applicability of the Fourth Amendment has varied significantly since the Weeks decision, but Weeks set the precedent for overturning convictions obtained through illegal search and seizure.

Primary Source: Weeks v. U.S. [excerpt]

SYNOPSIS: Day first lays out Weeks's claim that his Fourth Amendment rights had been violated. He next cites the Boydcase, which held that the federal government cannot use illegally seized evidence, as that would violate the Fourth Amendment. He goes on to say that the illegally seized evidence should not have been used, and thus Weeks was wrongfully convicted. He concludes by reversing the conviction.

Mr. Justice Day delivered the opinion of the Court.



The defendant assigns error, among other things, in the court's … permitting the papers to be used at the trial.




The Exclusionary Rule

The "exclusionary rule" does not just require a search warrant in order for seized property to be used against a defendant in court. It also requires probable cause for the search that produces the seizure. A drug raid in 1981 resulted in the arrests of four dealers, including Alberto Leon, who protested that the search warrant under which the paraphernalia had been seized had not been issued with probable cause. The Supreme Court heard the case but determined that, as the four plainly were guilty, the rights of society outweighed any rights Leon and his compatriots were asserting.



Further Resources


Adams, James A. Prosecutor's Manual for Arrest, Search, and Seizure. Charlottesville, Va.: Lexis, 1998.

McLean, Joseph Erigina. William Rufus Day, Supreme Court Justice from Ohio. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1946.

United States Congress, House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Taking Back Our Streets Act of 1995: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives. 104th Congress, 1st sess., H.R. 3, 1995. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996.

United States Department of Justice, Office of Legal Policy. Report to the Attorney General on the Search and Seizure Exclusionary Rule. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1988.

Wilson, Bradford P. Enforcing the Fourth Amendment: A Jurisprudential History. New York: Garland, 1986.