“Fruit of the poisonous tree.” Merriam-Webster.com Legal Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/legal/fruit%20of%20the%20poisonous%20tree. Retrieved September 27, 2022. Illegally obtained evidence is used by courts to ensure that the verdict is factually accurate, but the person receiving the illegal evidence usually faces independent consequences. [Clarification required] According to the court, Wong Sun`s narcotics were in fact “addressed” by Toy`s statements. In fact, Toy`s statements were the only evidence used to justify access to Yee`s room. Since Toy`s statements were impermissible, the narcotics in Yee`s possession were also impermissible, as the fruit of the poisonous tree. The court further ruled that Sun`s written statements about Toy should have been excluded as hearsay, and the court eventually overturned Toy`s conviction. Officers search the driver`s home and find a stolen lawn mower from a local park. According to the poison tree fruit doctrine, the lawn mower must be excluded from any theft trial, since the search of the house was based on evidence gathered during a previous illegal search. According to the High Court, the exclusion of Hennessey`s testimony was an error because enough time had elapsed to separate the unlawful search from the testimony. In addition, Hennessey`s testimony was not coerced by law enforcement due to the illegal search. An officer had questioned Hennessey four months after the search, without specifically referring to the illegal search, and Hennessey had voluntarily provided the incriminating evidence against Ceccolini.
The court overturned that decision, arguing that excluding testimony like Hennessey`s would not have a deterrent effect on law enforcement misconduct. English courts relied on an 1861 decision, R v Leathem, to admit evidence regardless of the legality of the source. That is the general attitude. To determine whether the evidence is the result of a poisonous tree, the trial judge must consider all the facts relating to the initial seizure of the evidence and the subsequent taking of the evidence. This decision is usually made by the judge at a pre-trial suppression hearing. At this hearing, the judge must first determine that an illegal search or seizure took place, and then decide whether the evidence was obtained as a result of the unlawful search or seizure. However, considerations of protection against self-incrimination – a constitutionally guaranteed right – will be taken into account, and evidence obtained under duress will be grounds for denying its validity, but not the legality of the source alone. [10] If the primary evidence was obtained illegally but is admissible except for good faith, its derivatives (or “fruits”) may also be permitted.
In overturning Nardone`s convictions, the court said that once a defendant had found that evidence had been seized illegally, the trial court “must give the defendant the opportunity to prove that a substantial part of the trial against him was a fruit of the poisonous tree.” The nardone opinion concluded that evidence obtained in violation of a law will be excluded if it is obtained in violation of a legal right. The government has put forward several theories in support of the proposition that Toy`s statements in his chamber were duly admitted to the court. The Court rejected all arguments. According to the court, the arrest was unlawful because the officers had no evidence other than the word of Way, an arrested person who had never been an informant for law enforcement. The agents didn`t even know if Toy was the person they were looking for. Moreover, Toys` escape gave the agents no likely reason to arrest Toy: Agent Alton Wong had initially posed as a customer, which made Toy`s theft ambiguous and not necessarily the product of a guilty mind. Therefore, according to the exclusion rule, Toy`s oral statements in his room should not have been admitted at trial. The court then turned to drug evidence seized from Yee. The court said for Nardone`s sake: “We don`t need to pretend that all the evidence is `poisonous tree fruit.`” Instead, in such a situation, the question was “whether the evidence .
was achieved by exploiting this illegality or, on the contrary, by sufficiently distinguishable means to be cleansed of the primary fault. On appeal, the Supreme Court overturned the contempt judgment. In its argument before the Supreme Court, the government acknowledged that the search was illegal and that the prosecutor`s office was not authorized to keep the documents obtained. However, the government felt that it had the right to copy the documents and to use the knowledge gained from these documents for future prosecutions. The Court rejected this argument. According to the Court, “the essence of the prohibition on taking evidence is, in a way, that. It should not be used at all. Silverthorne only concerned evidence obtained during the first unlawful search or seizure, but the wording of the report opened the door to the exclusion of evidence obtained during subsequent searches and seizures. In Wong Sun, a number of federal drug agents arrested Hom Way in San Francisco at 2:00 a.m. on June 4, 1959, on suspicion of drug-related activity. Although officers had been monitoring Way for six weeks, they did not have an arrest warrant. Way was searched and officers found heroin in his possession. After his arrest, Way said that the night before he bought an ounce of heroin from Blackie Toy, the owner of a laundry on Leavenworth Street.
n. in criminal law, the doctrine that evidence discovered on the basis of information found by unlawful search or other unconstitutional means (e.g. forced confessions) cannot be presented by a prosecutor. The theory is that the tree (original illegal evidence) is poisoned and thus spoils what comes out of it. For example, as part of a forced confession made without giving a prime suspect the so-called “Miranda Warnings” (Bill of Rights, including the right to remain silent), the suspect informs the police of the location of the stolen property. Since confessions cannot be presented as evidence at trial, this cannot be possible for stolen property either.
