Derivative Evidence and the Fourth Amendment: Fruit of the Poisonous Tree
Go deeper into the exclusionary rule with a discussion of the derivative evidence rules, which allow admission of evidence indirectly derived from unconstitutional behavior if the connection to the constitutional violation is sufficiently attenuated to purge the taint.
Transcript
Up until now, in discussing the exclusionary rule, we have mainly focused on situations where there are no meaningful intervening events in the causal chain between a constitutional violation and the discovery of evidence. These are “direct cause” scenarios. What about “indirect cause” scenarios, where there are intervening events in the causal chain? The “derivative evidence” rules that we are about to discuss are designed to deal with these latter scenarios.
Suppose the police arrest Bruno...