What did Palko v Connecticut decide?

Palko v. Connecticut (1937) was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not incorporate the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination against the states. The Court ruled that the states were not required to provide the same level of protection for individual rights as the federal government, and that the Due Process Clause only prohibited states from depriving individuals of life, liberty, or property without a fair and impartial process.

In the case, Frank Palko was convicted of second-degree murder in a Connecticut state court based on his confession, which he had made to the police after being questioned for several hours without being advised of his right to remain silent. Palko appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, arguing that his confession had been coerced and that his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent had been violated.

The Supreme Court rejected Palko's argument and upheld his conviction. Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote the majority opinion, stating that the Fourteenth Amendment did not incorporate all of the provisions of the Bill of Rights, and that the Due Process Clause only protected individuals from "those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions." Cardozo argued that the right against self-incrimination was not one of these fundamental rights and that states were free to adopt their own rules regarding self-incrimination.

Palko's ruling limited the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause and allowed states to provide lesser protections for individual rights than the federal government. The decision was later criticized by Justice Felix Frankfurter, who wrote in his dissenting opinion that the right against self-incrimination was a fundamental right and that states should not be allowed to disregard this right.

The Supreme Court's decision in Palko v. Connecticut was eventually overruled in 1964 by the case of Mapp v. Ohio, which held that the exclusionary rule from the Fourth Amendment was incorporated into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This ruling extended the protection of the Bill of Rights to state proceedings and ensured that individuals would be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures at the state level.