Significance: This ruling was the first Supreme Court decision on whether wiretapping evidence could be used against a defendant without violating the defendant’s constitutional rights.
Background: Roy Olmstead was convicted of illegally selling and transporting liquor during Prohibition. The evidence against him, however, had been obtained from an illegal wiretap of his telephone. Olmstead appealed the conviction, claiming that this wiretap violated his Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure and Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
Decision: This case was argued on February 20­21, 1928, and decided on June 4, 1928, by a vote of 5 to 4. Chief Justice William Howard Taft spoke for the Court, which found that conversations were not protected by the Fourth Amendment and that the wiretapping had not involved any unlawful entry into the defendant’s house. Thus, Olmstead’s conviction was upheld. Justice Louis Brandeis, who wrote the dissenting opinion, argued that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments apply to general privacy, not just protection of property.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “The [Fourth] Amendment itself shows that the search is to be of material things—the person, the house, his papers, or his effects. The description of the warrant necessary to make the proceeding lawful, is that it must specify the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized. . . .
“The Amendment does not forbid what was done here. There was no searching. There was no seizure. The evidence was secured by the use of the sense of hearing and that only. There was no entry of the houses or offices of the defendants. . . .
“We think, therefore, that the wire tapping here disclosed did not amount to a search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”
