Also known as: independent sources · independent source doctrine · independent source rule
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
An exception to the exclusionary rule that permits the admission of evidence obtained through a source unconnected to prior unconstitutional conduct. The prosecution must demonstrate that the evidence was acquired by means wholly independent of the illegality. Courts apply the doctrine to both physical evidence and identification testimony after assessing whether the lawful source supplied the information without exploitation of the violation.
Officers illegally entered Isabelle Inman's warehouse and observed burlap-wrapped parcels containing marijuana. They later obtained a valid warrant based solely on an anonymous tip received before the entry and seized the parcels under that warrant. The court admitted the evidence because the warrant rested on information entirely separate from the unlawful entry.
Ines Ibarra glimpsed the robber for several seconds under bright lights during a bank holdup and later described the suspect accurately to police. After an unconstitutional single-photo display, she identified Ivan Ivanov in court. The court allowed the in-court identification after weighing her opportunity to view the robber, degree of attention, description accuracy, certainty, and short time interval since the crime.
Police learned the location of a victim's body through an illegal interrogation of Ismael Ibrahim. Search parties operating on independent leads were already closing in on the same area when officers lawfully discovered the remains hours later. The court admitted evidence of the body's location and condition because the discovery occurred through a source independent of the 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.
India Inoue challenged a state law restricting contraceptive access as violating a claimed right to marital privacy. The court examined whether the asserted interest arose from an independent source such as existing state law or longstanding understandings rather than from the Constitution itself. Finding no such independent source created a protected property or liberty interest, the claim failed.
Estelle Griswold served as Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Dr. C. Lee Buxton served as the League's Medical Director and was a professor at Yale Medical School. Together they opened and operated a center in New Haven that was open from November 1 to November 10, 1961. At the center they gave information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception. They examined the wife and prescribed the best contraceptive device or material for her use. Fees were usually charged, although some couples were serviced free. The statutes involved were sections 53-32 and 54-196 of the General Statutes of Connecticut (1958 rev.). Section 53-32 made it a crime to use any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception. Section 54-196 punished accessories as principals. The appellants were found guilty as accessories and fined $100 each. The Appellate Division of the Circuit Court affirmed the convictions. The Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut affirmed that judgment in State v. Griswold, 151 Conn. 544, 200 A. 2d 479. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction. The appellants asserted standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married persons with whom they had a professional relationship. A criminal conviction for serving married couples removes doubts about case or controversy. The rights of husband and wife would be diluted unless considered in a suit involving those who have this kind of confidential relation to them.
Isaiah Ishikawa observed the perpetrator during a lengthy armed robbery under good lighting and provided a detailed description to police. After an unconstitutional post-indictment lineup conducted without counsel, he identified the defendant in court. The court admitted the in-court identification after finding it rested on the witness's original observation rather than the tainted lineup.
On September 21, 1964, a federally insured bank in Eustace, Texas, was robbed when a man wearing a small strip of tape on each side of his face entered the bank, pointed a pistol at the female cashier and the vice president, and forced them to fill a pillowcase with the bank's money before driving away with an accomplice waiting in a stolen car outside. On March 23, 1965, an indictment was returned charging respondent Billy Joe Wade with conspiring to rob the bank and with the robbery itself. Wade was arrested on April 2, 1965, and counsel was appointed to represent him on April 26, 1965. Fifteen days later, on May 11, 1965, an FBI agent arranged a lineup at the local county courthouse without notifying Wade's counsel; Wade stood with five or six other prisoners, each wearing strips of tape on his face, and each was directed to say words such as "put the money in the bag." Both bank employees identified Wade at the lineup. At Wade's subsequent trial in federal district court, the two employees identified him in the courtroom on direct examination; on cross-examination they testified about their prior lineup identifications, and an FBI agent who observed the lineup also testified. Wade's counsel moved to strike the courtroom identifications on Fifth and Sixth Amendment grounds, but the motion was denied and Wade was convicted. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the conviction, holding that the lineup violated Wade's Sixth Amendment rights, and ordered a new trial at which the in-court identification evidence would be excluded. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Integrity Partners offered expert statistical analysis linking a product to birth defects in a products-liability trial. The data underlying the opinion came from publicly available epidemiological studies obtained before any alleged discovery violation. The court admitted the testimony because the expert's conclusions rested on an independent source untainted by the procedural issue.
Two minors brought suit against Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, claiming they suffered limb reduction birth defects because their mothers had taken Bendectin, a drug prescribed for morning sickness to about 17.5 million pregnant women in the United States between 1957 and 1982. Limb reduction defects occur in fewer than one birth out of every 1000. Scientists do not know the mechanism by which any teratogen causes such defects. The plaintiffs offered testimony from three groups of experts. One group proposed to testify to a statistical link between Bendectin ingestion during pregnancy and limb reduction defects based on reanalyses of published studies that had reported no such association. A second group proposed to testify that Bendectin causes limb reduction defects in humans because it causes such defects in laboratory animals. A third group proposed to testify based on the similarity of Bendectin's chemical structure to other drugs suspected of causing birth defects. The district court granted summary judgment to Merrell Dow after excluding the plaintiffs' expert testimony. The Ninth Circuit affirmed that decision. The Supreme Court granted certiorari, reversed, and remanded for consideration under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. On remand, the Ninth Circuit examined the affidavits and prior trial testimony of the plaintiffs' experts. None of the experts had studied the effect of Bendectin on limb reduction defects before being hired to testify in this or related cases. None had published his work on Bendectin in a scientific journal. The only review their work had received was by judges and juries. Plaintiffs' epidemiological experts made vague assertions of a statistically significant relationship between Bendectin and birth defects but did not state that the relative risk exceeded two. With the exception of Dr. Palmer, the remaining experts were willing to testify only that Bendectin is capable of causing birth defects. Dr. Palmer alone was willing to testify that Bendectin did cause the limb defects in each of the children, based on his review of the plaintiffs' medical records and his conclusion that Bendectin is a teratogen.
The prosecution must show that the evidence was obtained through a source wholly unconnected to the prior illegality. This requires demonstrating that police possessed probable cause for a warrant independent of the unlawful conduct and that they actually secured and executed such a warrant. Courts examine whether the information supporting the warrant came from a separate line of investigation.
…Ninth Amendment is applied against the States by the Fourteenth. Nor do I mean to state that the Ninth Amendment constitutes an independent source of rights protected from infringement by either the States or the Federal Government. Rather, the Ninth Amendment shows a belief of the Constitution's authors that fundamental rights exist…
…unlikely that 50 people who have nothing in common except that they ate at the same restaurant would get food poisoning from independent sources. It is by such means that plaintiffs here seek to establish that Bendectin is responsible for their injuries. They rely on the testimony of three groups of scientific experts. One group…
…of counsel. I cannot agree, however, that the in-court identification must be excluded unless the Government can establish an independent source. The witnesses had an adequate opportunity to observe the robber at the time of the crime. Their identification at trial had an
…the information ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means. The doctrine is an extrapolation from the independent source doctrine
…that that scheme would, absent some other provision of law, preclude Hamdan’s invocation of the Convention’s provisions as an independent source of law binding the Government’s actions and furnishing petitioner with any enforceable right. For, regardless of the nature of the rights conferred on Hamdan, cf. United States v.…
A witness may give an in-court identification if it rests on an independent source untainted by an unconstitutional pretrial procedure. Courts weigh five factors: the witness's opportunity to view the perpetrator, degree of attention, accuracy of the prior description, level of certainty at the confrontation, and time between the crime and the identification.
Independent source requires proof that police actually obtained the evidence through a lawful means separate from the illegality. Inevitable discovery requires only a showing that the evidence would have been found by lawful means regardless of the violation. Both doctrines prevent automatic exclusion but rest on distinct factual showings.
No. A later warrant purges the taint only when it rests on information wholly independent of the illegality. If the warrant affidavit relies on facts learned during the unlawful search, the evidence seized under the warrant remains fruit of the poisonous tree and is inadmissible absent another exception.