Also known as: taints · tainted · tainting · tainted evidence
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see 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.
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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.
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.
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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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.
…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
…wrongly] assumes that the balance struck by [Renton] officials is deserving of deference so long as it does not appear to be tainted
…215, 241, 242. Unfairness in competition has been predicated of acts which lie outside the ordinary course of business and are tainted
…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
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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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