Exclusionary Rule

Question 1

Fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine - exception for Miranda rights

Answer 1

Under the Supreme Court’s exclusionary rule, evidence obtained in violation of a persons’s constitutional rights will generally be excluded from admission in to evidence at trial. Under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, the exclusionary rule generally applies to evidence derived from unconstitutionally obtained evidence. There is an exception to the doctrine if police obtain an unwarned confession from a suspect, warn the suspect, and then requestion the suspect if it appears there was no “question first, warn later” scheme to get around the Miranda.

Question 2

Attenuation doctrine - exception to exclusionary rule

Answer 2

Under the Supreme Court’s exclusionary rule, evidence obtained in violation of a persons’s constitutional rights will generally be excluded from admission in to evidence at trial. If the connection between unconstitutional police conduct and the evidence is remote or has been interrupted by some intervening circumstance, so that the causal link between the police misconduct and the evidence is broken, the evidence will not be suppressed. The court will consider:

1. the temporal proximity between the unconstitutional conduct and the discovery of the evidence (the closer the temporal proximity, the less likely the exception applies);
2. the presence of intervening circumstances; and
3. most importantly, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct.