Also known as: fruits of the poisonous tree · poisonous tree doctrine
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A rule of evidence that bars admission of evidence obtained directly or indirectly from an unconstitutional search or seizure. The doctrine extends the exclusionary rule to derivative evidence resulting from exploitation of the initial illegality unless an exception such as independent source, inevitable discovery, or attenuation of the taint applies.
Environmental officer Dana Cruz secretly placed a sampling device inside ChemTech Corporation's locked outfall pipe without a warrant. Using only data from that device, the agency obtained warrants and seized servers and records. ChemTech moved to suppress the seized materials because they flowed directly from the initial unlawful intrusion.
Agent Perez hacked Malik's home server without a warrant and viewed IP logs. Perez then used those logs to obtain warrants for NimbusCloud records and emails. Malik moved to suppress both the original logs and the later emails as products of the initial constitutional violation.
Investigators obtained incriminating information through an invalid wiretap on a suspect's phone. They used that information to establish probable cause for a later search warrant. The suspect moved to suppress the evidence seized under the warrant because it derived from the unlawful interception.
The United States charged Gary Feola and eighteen co-defendants in a first superseding indictment filed on March 27, 1986, with having operated a cocaine and marijuana trafficking ring, centered in Westchester County and Manhattan, which distributed narcotics during 1985. Count One charged nineteen defendants with conspiracy to distribute cocaine between January 1, 1985 and November 26, 1985, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846. Count Two charged four defendants with conspiracy to distribute marijuana during the same period. Additional counts charged possession with intent to distribute, firearms possession by a convicted felon, and forfeiture of real and personal property. Several principal defendants had prior encounters with the criminal justice system. A 1978 investigation led to John Farese's conviction for selling cocaine, and he implicated Gary Feola. Feola was arrested in a 1981 investigation of John Cercena and convicted in 1982 of conspiracy in the fourth degree in connection with an attempted sale of three kilograms of cocaine. The 1985 investigation began with pen register surveillance of Farese's telephone in April-May and June-August 1985, which revealed numerous calls to individuals with known criminal records or suspected of dealing in narcotics, including 64 calls to Cercena's phone and 47 to Feola's. Detective Robert Magaletti submitted affidavits relying on statements from named informants Dominic Carbone and Vincent James Tarantelli, as well as three confidential informants. CI #1 claimed to have lived in Farese's house for several years between 1977 and 1984, worked as a mule transporting cocaine from Florida to Westchester County, and provided details of transactions involving Feola, Farese, and Cercena. On the basis of these affidavits, New York Supreme Court Justice Dachenhausen issued Order A on August 14, 1985, authorizing interception of communications over John Farese's telephone. Wiretap interceptions continued until November 26, 1985. On November 21 and 22, 1985, search warrants were executed at fifteen residences. The searches uncovered nearly two kilograms of high purity cocaine, 48.2 grams of marijuana, and $82,730 in currency from Noemi Fernandez's apartment in New Jersey; $35,000 in currency, 4.3 grams of cocaine, and explicit drug records from Gary Feola's apartment at 300 East 54th Street in Manhattan; three firearms and narcotics paraphernalia from Steven Gallo's residences; $119,002 in currency and cocaine from Edmund Rosner's apartment; and similar quantities of drugs, cash, diluents, and records from the homes of other defendants including Daniel Wall, Ralph Feola Sr., Ira Neuringer, John Cercena, Arthur McGuire, and John Farese. Defendants were arrested on November 26, 1985. They filed numerous pre-trial motions that became fully submitted on December 23, 1986, including motions to suppress the fruits of the eleven eavesdropping orders on grounds of lack of probable cause, staleness, informant unreliability, inadequate minimization, improper sealing, and other procedural defects; motions to suppress physical evidence seized in the searches; motions for severance of counts and defendants; motions for a Franks hearing; and extensive discovery requests. The court issued its memorandum and order resolving the motions on January 7, 1987.
Detective Leaming questioned Williams without counsel and obtained the location of a child's body. Police later recovered the body at that location. Williams moved to suppress evidence of the body's condition and location as the product of the Sixth Amendment violation.
On December 24, 1968, ten-year-old Pamela Powers disappeared from a YMCA building in Des Moines, Iowa, where she had accompanied her parents to watch an athletic contest. Williams was seen leaving the YMCA carrying a large bundle wrapped in a blanket. A fourteen-year-old boy who helped open his car door reported seeing two skinny white legs inside it. Williams' car was found the next day 160 miles east in Davenport, Iowa. Items of the child's clothing along with an army blanket were recovered at a rest stop on Interstate 80 near Grinnell between Des Moines and Davenport. A warrant issued for Williams' arrest. On December 26 the Iowa Bureau of Criminal Investigation organized a search with two hundred volunteers divided into teams that began twenty-one miles east of Grinnell and moved westward through Poweshiek County into Jasper County. Searchers checked all roads, ditches, culverts, abandoned farm buildings, and other places where a small child's body could be hidden. The search area was marked off in grids on highway maps. Williams surrendered to police in Davenport and was arraigned. After his attorneys arranged for no questioning during transport, two Des Moines detectives took him into custody for the return drive. During the trip Detective Leaming spoke to Williams about predicted snow and the parents' right to a Christian burial. Williams then directed the officers to the child's shoes, the blanket, and ultimately the body itself. The body lay next to a culvert in a ditch beside a gravel road in Polk County. It was roughly two and one-half miles from where one search team had stopped when the search was suspended at 3 p.m. Williams was indicted for first-degree murder. At his first trial the evidence of the body was admitted over objection. He was convicted. The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed. The United States Supreme Court reversed in Brewer v. Williams on the ground that the statements were obtained in violation of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. At the second trial in 1977 the prosecution introduced evidence of the condition of the body, articles and photographs of clothing, and autopsy results without offering Williams' statements or showing that he had directed police to the body. The trial court found by a preponderance of the evidence that the body would have been discovered within a short time in essentially the same condition by the continuing search. The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed. On federal habeas corpus the District Court denied relief after an independent review. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Officers questioned a suspect without Miranda warnings and obtained an initial statement. A later properly warned statement followed. The defense moved to suppress the second statement as derivative of the initial constitutional violation.
Petitioner Dickerson was indicted for bank robbery, conspiracy to commit bank robbery, and using a firearm in the course of committing a crime of violence. Before trial, Dickerson moved to suppress a statement he had made at a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office on the grounds that he had not received Miranda warnings before being interrogated. The District Court granted his motion to suppress, and the Government took an interlocutory appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. That court reversed the District Court's suppression order. It agreed that petitioner had not received Miranda warnings before making his statement but held that 18 U.S.C. § 3501 governed the admissibility of the statement. The Fourth Circuit concluded that Miranda was not a constitutional holding and that Congress could therefore have the final say on admissibility. Two years after Miranda was decided, Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. § 3501, which provides that a confession shall be admissible in evidence if it is voluntarily given and directs the trial judge to consider specified factors in determining voluntariness. Because of the importance of the questions raised by the Court of Appeals' decision, the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View casePolice obtained an initial confession from Fulminante through coercion by a government informant. Six months later Fulminante made a second confession to the same informant under different circumstances. The defense moved to suppress the second confession as fruit of the earlier violation.
In September 1982, Oreste Fulminante reported his eleven-year-old stepdaughter Jeneane Michelle Hunt missing from Mesa, Arizona. Two days later her body was discovered in the desert east of Mesa, having been shot twice in the head at close range with a ligature around her neck. Fulminante became a suspect due to inconsistencies in his statements to police but left Arizona when no charges were filed against him. Fulminante was later convicted of a federal firearms violation in New Jersey and incarcerated at the Ray Brook Federal Correctional Institution in New York. There he became friends with another inmate, Anthony Sarivola, then serving a 60-day sentence for extortion. Sarivola, a former police officer, had been involved in loansharking for organized crime but then became a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. While at Ray Brook, he masqueraded as an organized crime figure. In October 1983, while walking on the prison track, Sarivola told Fulminante he had heard rumors that Fulminante was suspected of killing a child and offered to protect him from other inmates in exchange for the truth about the murder. Fulminante then admitted to Sarivola that he had driven Jeneane to the desert on his motorcycle, where he choked her, sexually assaulted her, and made her beg for her life, before shooting her twice in the head. After his release from prison in May 1984, Fulminante was rearrested in Arizona and indicted for the murder in September 1984. He also confessed the crime to Donna Sarivola, Anthony's fiancée and later wife, following his May 1984 release from prison. Both confessions were introduced at Fulminante's December 1985 trial in Arizona state court, resulting in his conviction and death sentence. The Arizona Supreme Court held that the confession to Sarivola was coerced under the totality of the circumstances, that the second confession was its fruit, and that the admission of the first confession was not harmless error. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.
The doctrine originated with Fourth Amendment violations but extends to other constitutional violations that trigger exclusionary rules, such as Sixth Amendment right-to-counsel violations during lineups. Courts apply the same exploitation analysis to determine whether later evidence must be suppressed.
…discovery exception to the exclusionary rule. Williams contends that evidence of the body's location and condition is "fruit of the poisonous tree," i. e. , the "fruit" or product of Detective Leaming's plea to help the child's parents give her "a Christian burial," which this Court had already held equated to interrogation. He…
…by police conduct which overcame his will to resist," id. , at 654.) The next year, the Court again declined to apply the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine
…In its initial opinion, the Arizona Supreme Court had determined that the second confession, to Donna Sarivola, was not the "fruit of the poisonous tree," because it was made six months after the confession to Sarivola; it occurred after Fulminante's need for protection from Sarivola presumably had ended; and it took place in the course of…
…invalid warrants ( see supra discussion of the wiretap issues and standards for lawful search). Seeking application of the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine
Courts examine the temporal proximity between the illegality and the discovery of evidence, the presence of intervening circumstances, and the flagrancy of the official misconduct. When these factors show the evidence was obtained by means sufficiently distinguishable from the primary illegality, the taint dissipates and the evidence becomes admissible.
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No. A warrant does not cleanse the taint if the probable-cause affidavit rests solely or primarily on information obtained through the prior constitutional violation. The independent-source exception applies only when the government can show an untainted basis for the warrant that existed apart from the illegality.
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Property is not fruit of an unlawful seizure when no seizure has yet occurred because the suspect did not submit to a show of authority and fled before any physical restraint. The abandoned item is then treated as discarded property discovered during a lawful pursuit rather than as derivative evidence.
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