Dollree Mapp, figure in landmark Supreme Court decision in 1961, dies at 91

Dollree Mapp, who challenged a police search of her home, leading to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1961 that extended the exclusionary rule protecting citizens from illegal searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment, died Oct. 31 in Conyers, Ga. She was 91.

Her death, which was confirmed to news outlets by her family, was not widely reported until this week. The cause was not disclosed, but she had dementia for many years.

Tough and street savvy, Ms. Mapp spent much of her life on the margins of society and had trouble with the law on several occasions.

On May 23, 1957, plainclothes police officers who were looking for a suspect in a bombing knocked on her door in Cleveland. The explosion a few days earlier had been at the home of a Cleveland gambling figure, Don King, who later went to prison for manslaughter and still later became a well-known boxing promoter.

Ms. Mapp refused to let the officers enter her house without a search warrant.

They returned three hours later. She demanded to see the warrant and then grabbed the paper from an officers hand and stuffed it inside her dress.

In the ensuing struggle, an officer retrieved the paper while Ms. Mapp shouted, Take your hand out of my dress!

The police searched and ransacked Ms. Mapps house, finding what they believed to be gambling paraphernalia and pornography. Ms. Mapp insisted that drawings of nude women and books with such titles as Memoirs of a Hotel Man and Affairs of a Troubadour belonged to a previous tenant. Nonetheless, she was arrested and taken away in handcuffs.

She was acquitted of the gambling charges but, after only 20 minutes of deliberation, a jury found her guilty of possession of lewd and obscene materials. She was sentenced to one to seven years in prison. A man suspected in the bombing case was set free.

Ms. Mapp lost several appeals before her case, Mapp v. Ohio, was argued before the Supreme Court in March 1961. Much of the legal debate was over whether Ohios obscenity law violated the First Amendment.

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Dollree Mapp, figure in landmark Supreme Court decision in 1961, dies at 91