Also known as: taints · tainted · tainting · tainted evidence
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A connection between evidence and an unconstitutional search, arrest, or interrogation that renders the evidence subject to exclusion under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine. The connection dissipates when intervening circumstances, the passage of time, or the absence of flagrant police misconduct purge the taint, allowing admission of the evidence despite its indirect derivation from the illegality.
Officer Ramirez stopped Tyrone Tran on a hunch without reasonable suspicion and learned of an unrelated valid arrest warrant minutes later. The officer arrested Tran on the warrant and found drugs during a search incident to arrest. The court admitted the drugs because the warrant's discovery constituted an intervening circumstance that attenuated any taint from the initial stop.
Police stopped Tabitha Taylor without reasonable suspicion and discovered an outstanding arrest warrant from another jurisdiction during the encounter. Officers arrested Taylor on the warrant and recovered narcotics from her person. The court held the warrant's discovery and the officer's merely negligent conduct attenuated the taint, rendering the drugs admissible.
Officers arrested Theodore Tucker without probable cause and obtained a statement from him hours later at the station. Tucker later returned voluntarily and gave a second statement after receiving Miranda warnings. The court admitted the second statement because the voluntary return and the passage of time sufficiently attenuated the taint of the unlawful arrest.
Police conducted a suggestive lineup without counsel for Tiffany Torres, who was later identified by the victim. At trial the victim identified Torres again. The court permitted the in-court identification after finding the victim's extended opportunity to view the perpetrator at the crime scene and the accuracy of her prior description purged the taint of the improper lineup.
Tamara Tan received use immunity and testified before a grand jury about corporate records. Prosecutors later introduced the same records obtained from a separate subpoena issued before her testimony. The court admitted the records because the government proved an independent source wholly unconnected to the compelled testimony.
In February 1971 petitioners were subpoenaed to appear before a United States grand jury in the Central District of California investigating violations of federal gambling and related laws. The government believed that petitioners were likely to assert their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Prior to the scheduled appearances, the government applied to the District Court for an order directing petitioners to answer questions and produce evidence before the grand jury under a grant of immunity conferred pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 6002-6003. Petitioners opposed issuance of the order, contending that the scope of the immunity provided by the statute was not coextensive with the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination and therefore was not sufficient to supplant the privilege and compel their testimony. The District Court rejected this contention and ordered petitioners to appear before the grand jury and answer its questions under the grant of immunity. Petitioners appeared but refused to answer questions, asserting their privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. They were brought before the District Court, and each persisted in his refusal to answer the grand jury's questions notwithstanding the grant of immunity. The court found both in contempt and committed them to the custody of the Attorney General until either they answered the grand jury's questions or the term of the grand jury expired. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the contempt findings. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve whether testimony may be compelled by granting immunity from the use of compelled testimony and evidence derived therefrom or whether transactional immunity is necessary.
Titan Industries made independent expenditures supporting a candidate. A later decision addressed whether those expenditures could taint subsequent judicial rulings involving the same candidate. The court evaluated the expenditures under independent constitutional standards without treating them as automatically disqualifying the later proceeding.
Citizens United is a nonprofit corporation with an annual budget of about $12 million. Most of its funds come from donations by individuals, though it accepts a small portion from for-profit corporations. In January 2008, Citizens United released a 90-minute documentary film entitled Hillary: The Movie. The film mentions Senator Hillary Clinton by name and depicts interviews with political commentators, most of them critical of her. Hillary was released in theaters and on DVD, but Citizens United wanted to increase distribution by making the film available through video-on-demand. In December 2007, a cable company offered to make Hillary available on a video-on-demand channel called Elections '08 for a payment of $1.2 million. The proposal was to make the film available to viewers free of charge. To promote the video-on-demand offering, Citizens United produced two 10-second ads and one 30-second ad. Each ad includes a short statement about Senator Clinton followed by the name of the movie and the movie's website address. Citizens United desired to promote the offering by running the advertisements on broadcast and cable television within 30 days of primary elections. Before the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, federal law prohibited corporations from using general treasury funds to make independent expenditures that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate in connection with certain federal elections. BCRA §203 amended the law to prohibit any electioneering communication. An electioneering communication is any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication that refers to a clearly identified candidate for federal office and is made within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election when publicly distributed so that it can be received by 50,000 or more persons in a relevant state. Concerned about possible civil and criminal penalties for violating 2 U.S.C. §441b, Citizens United filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in December 2007. It sought declaratory and injunctive relief, arguing that §441b is unconstitutional as applied to Hillary and that BCRA's disclaimer, disclosure, and reporting requirements are unconstitutional as applied to Hillary and the ads. The District Court denied Citizens United's motion for a preliminary injunction and granted the Federal Election Commission's motion for summary judgment. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction. The case was reargued after the Court requested supplemental briefs addressing whether Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the relevant portion of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission should be overruled.
Courts weigh the temporal proximity between the illegality and the discovery of evidence, the presence of intervening circumstances such as a valid arrest warrant, and the flagrancy of the police misconduct. When the officer's conduct is merely negligent and a preexisting warrant supplies an independent basis for arrest, the taint is ordinarily attenuated.
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…reasoned, would enable Bullcoming’s counsel to ask “questions designed to reveal whether incompetence . . . or dishonesty” had tainted the results. Id. , at , (slip op., at 2, 12). Repeating the refrain of Melendez-Diaz , we held that “[t]he accused’s right is to be confronted with” the actual analyst, unless he…
…in the way they influence the outcome of a race, the way they are interpreted by the candidates and the public, and the way they taint the decisions that the officeholder thereafter takes. Caperton is illuminating in several additional respects. It underscores the old insight that, on account of the extreme difficulty…
…wrongly] assumes that the balance struck by [Renton] officials is deserving of deference so long as it does not appear to be tainted by content discrimination.” Id. , at 315. Under a proper application of the relevant standards, the ordinance is clearly unconstitutional. A The Court finds that the ordinance was…
…215, 241, 242. Unfairness in competition has been predicated of acts which lie outside the ordinary course of business and are tainted by fraud, or coercion, or conduct otherwise prohibited by law. Id. , p. 258. But it is evident that in its widest range, "unfair competition," as it has been understood in the…
…States , 405 U. S. 150 (1972); Santobello v. New York , 404 U. S. 257 (1971). The Court today sets out a loose net to trap tainted evidence and prevent its use against the witness, but it accepts an intolerably great risk that tainted evidence
No. A subsequent confession may be admissible if the connection to the illegal arrest has become sufficiently attenuated through the passage of time, intervening events, or the defendant's voluntary return to the station. The prosecution must show the evidence was not obtained by exploitation of the primary illegality.
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The prosecution may introduce the identification if it establishes by clear and convincing evidence an independent source based on the witness's opportunity to observe the perpetrator, degree of attention, accuracy of prior description, level of certainty, and time between the crime and confrontation.
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Suppression is not automatic. Courts consider the culpability of the police conduct and whether exclusion would meaningfully deter future violations. Isolated or negligent misconduct ordinarily does not justify suppression when the deterrent value is low relative to the cost of excluding reliable evidence.
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