342 U.S. 165 (1952)
Rochin v. California is a foundational criminal procedure and constitutional law case in which the U.S.
Does forcibly extracting evidence from a suspect's body by stomach pumping—following a warrantless entry and physical struggle—violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, thereby requiring reversal of a conviction based on that evidence?
Under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, a state may not secure a conviction through methods that offend fundamental fairness and human dignity; official conduct that "shocks the conscience"—that is, methods so brutal or offensive as to be akin to the "rack and screw"—violates due process, and evidence obtained by such methods cannot constitutionally support a conviction.
Yes. The police conduct in forcibly extracting the capsules from Rochin's stomach "shocks the conscience" and violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; the conviction must be reversed.
Rochin is a cornerstone of the "shocks the conscience" doctrine, limiting extreme police methods through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. It prefigures later incorporation and exclusionary rule developments, most notably Mapp v. Ohio, which applied the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule to the states. After Mapp, many unlawful search-and-seizure questions are resolved under the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness framework, but Rochin remains vital when assessing egregious, coercive conduct that implicates bodily integrity or substantive due process. The case informs later bodily intrusion decisions, such as Schmerber v. California (permitting a medically reasonable blood draw under the Fourth Amendment) and Winston v. Lee (prohibiting surgical bullet removal), and it resurfaces in executive conduct cases evaluating whether government action "shocks the conscience" (e.g., County of Sacramento v. Lewis). For law students, Rochin is critical for understanding the interplay between due process, bodily integrity, coerced evidence, and the evolution of constitutional criminal procedure before and after the Warren Court.