Fruit of The Poisonous Tree

Fruit of the poisonous tree is a legal metaphor in the United States used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the terminology is that if the source of the evidence (the "tree") is tainted, then anything gained from it (the "fruit") is tainted as well. The term fruit of the poisonous tree was first used in Nardone v. United States in the opinion by Justice Felix Frankfurter.

Such evidence is not generally admissible in court. For example, if a police officer conducted an unconstitutional (Fourth Amendment) search of a home and obtained a key to a train station locker, and evidence of a crime came from the locker, that evidence would most likely be excluded under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine. The discovery of a witness is not evidence in itself because the witness is attenuated by separate interviews, in-court testimony and his or her own statements.

The doctrine is an extension of the exclusionary rule, which, subject to some exceptions, prevents evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment from being admitted in a criminal trial. Like the exclusionary rule, the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine is intended to deter police from using illegal means to obtain evidence.

The doctrine is subject to four main exceptions. The tainted evidence is admissible if:

  1. it was discovered in part as a result of an independent, untainted source; or
  2. it would inevitably have been discovered despite the tainted source; or
  3. the chain of causation between the illegal action and the tainted evidence is too attenuated; or
  4. the search warrant not based on probable cause was executed by government agents in good faith (called the good faith exception).

The fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine stems from the 1920 case of Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States.

Famous quotes containing the words fruit of the, fruit of, fruit, poisonous and/or tree:

    “The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled “a contemplative man’s recreation,” introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist’s observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man’s recreation.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.”
    —Louis Pasteur (1822–1895)

    “Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit;Mnot to be reckoned one character;Mnot to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south?”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Let him
    Who was love’s teacher teach you too love’s cure;
    Let the same hand that wounded bring the balm.
    Healing and poisonous herbs the same soil bears,
    And rose and nettle oft grow side by side.”
    —Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)

    “A tree that can fill the span of a man’s arms
    Grows from a downy tip;
    A terrace nine stories high
    Rises from hodfuls of earth;
    A journey of a thousand miles
    Starts from beneath one’s feet.”
    —Lao-Tzu (6th century B.C.)