Also known as: fruits of an unlawful search · fruit of unlawful search · fruits of unlawful search · fruit of the poisonous tree
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
Evidence obtained directly or indirectly through exploitation of an unconstitutional search or seizure. The doctrine requires exclusion of such derivative evidence unless the connection to the initial illegality has become sufficiently attenuated or an independent source or inevitable discovery exception applies.
Agent Perez hacked into Malik's home server without a warrant and obtained IP logs. Perez used those logs to secure warrants for NimbusCloud records. The emails seized under the warrants must be suppressed because they were derived directly from the initial unlawful intrusion.
Officers arrested Frederick Ferguson without probable cause and held him for two days. During that time Ferguson made a statement identifying a witness who later provided independent testimony. The witness testimony is admissible because intervening circumstances and the passage of time dissipated the taint of the unlawful arrest.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
Officer Lopez blocked Malik's path in a hotel lobby and told him he was not free to leave. Malik ran without submitting and dropped a pouch containing drugs. The drugs are admissible because no seizure occurred until after the pouch was abandoned.
Detectives questioned Flora Ford in violation of her Sixth Amendment rights and learned the location of a victim's body. Search teams already closing in on the same area would have found the body within hours. The body and its condition are admissible under the inevitable discovery doctrine.
Officers interrogated Fumiko Fujimoto without providing Miranda warnings and obtained a confession. The confession is inadmissible even though it was not the product of a Fourth Amendment violation. The violation of the Fifth Amendment prophylactic rule still requires suppression of the statement.
Federal agents conducted an unlawful wiretap of conversations involving Franklin Foundry executives. Farah Fox, a nonparticipant whose voice was never recorded, seeks to suppress the recordings. Fox lacks standing to challenge the evidence because she had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the intercepted calls.
A defendant must file a pretrial motion to suppress the evidence. The motion allows the court to determine before trial whether the evidence is tainted and whether any exception such as independent source or attenuation applies.
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A seizure occurs only when an officer applies physical force or the suspect submits to a show of authority. Property abandoned before submission is not the fruit of an unlawful seizure and need not be suppressed.
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No. A warrant obtained by using information from an unlawful search remains tainted. The evidence seized under that warrant is still fruit of the poisonous tree unless an independent source or other exception is shown.
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Courts consider the temporal proximity between the illegality and the discovery of the evidence, the presence of intervening circumstances, and the flagrancy of the official misconduct.
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…their outer clothing and discovered a pistol on Terry. The Ohio courts rejected Terry’s motion to suppress the weapon as the fruit of an unlawful search. The Supreme Court granted certiorari. Held: The Fourth Amendment permits a reasonable search for weapons when an officer has reasonable suspicion that a person is armed and presently…