Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held 6—3 that, while the Fourth Amendment was applicable to the states, the exclusionary rule was not a necessary ingredient of the Fourth Amendment's right against warrantless and unreasonable searches and seizures. In Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914), the Court held that as a matter of judicial implication the exclusionary rule was enforceable in federal courts but not derived from the explicit requirements of the Fourth Amendment. The Wolf Court decided not to incorporate the exclusionary rule as part of the Fourteenth Amendment in large part because the states which had rejected the Weeks Doctrine (the exclusionary rule) had not left the right to privacy without other means of protection (i.e. the States had their own rules to deter police officers from conducting warrantless and unreasonable searches and seizures). However, because most of the states' rules proved to be ineffective in deterrence, the Court overruled Wolf in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). That landmark case made history as the exclusionary rule enforceable against the states through the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the same extent that it applied against the federal government. Background of the case The appellant, Julius A. Wolf, was convicted in the District Court of the City and County of Denver of conspiracy to perform criminal abortions. On appeal, the convictions were affirmed by the Supreme Court of Colorado (187 P.2d 926, 928). Wolf appealed the conviction by a writ of certiorari and the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the appeal. Court's decision The essential question presented before the Court was whether states are required by the Fourth and the Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution to exclude illegally seized evidence from trial. Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter delivered the opinion of the court in this case, in which Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson and Associate Justices Stanley Forman Reed, Robert H. Jackson, and Harold Hitz Burton joined. Associate Justice Hugo Black wrote a separate concurring opinion. Writing dissenting opinions were Associate Justices William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy (in whose opinion Justice Rutledge joined), and Wiley Blount Rutledge (in whose opinion Justice Murphy joined). Frankfurter's opinion for the majority In its 6-to-3 decision, the Court affirmed the decision of the lower courts. It stated that although exclusion of evidence is