Marcus v. Search Warrants of Property at 104 East Tenth Street Kansas City Missouri/Concurrence Hugo Black
United States Supreme Court
Marcus v. Search Warrants of Property at 104 East Tenth Street Kansas City Missouri
No. 225. Argued: March 30, 1961. --- Decided: June 19, 1961
Mr. Justice BLACK, whom Mr. Justice DOUGLAS joins, concurring.
The warrant used to search appellants' premises made no attempt specifically to describe the "things to be seized," as the Fourth Amendment requires. As the historical summary in the Court's opinion demonstrates, a major purpose of adopting that amendment was to bar the Federal Government from using precisely this kind of general warrant to support "unreasonable searches and seizure" of the "papers" and "effects" of persons having possession of them. See especially Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell's State Trials 1029, at 1073-1076; Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 624-630; Frank v. State of Maryland, 359 U.S. 360, 374 (dissenting opinion). It is my view that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Fourth Amendment applicable to the States to the full extent of its terms, just as it applies to the Federal Government. See Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 68 (dissenting opinion). Only last Term we said that in Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, "it was unequivocally determined by a unanimous Court that the Federal Constitution, by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures by state officers." Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 213. And in Mapp v. Ohio, ante, p. 643, it is said that "[s]ince the Fourth Amendment's right of privacy has been declared enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth, it is enforceable against them by the same sanction of exclusion as is used against the Federal Government." Since the State has used a general warrant in this case in violation of the prohibitions of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, I concur in reversal of the judgment.