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It's called spoilation of evidence: > The spoliation of evidence is the intentional, reckless, or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, fabricating, or dest
by ihsw 10y ago
It's called spoilation of evidence:
> The spoliation of evidence is the intentional, reckless, or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, fabricating, or destroying of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence
And an illegitimate evidence chain is called "fruit of the poisonous tree."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree
That said, the proof of a "poisonous tree" is itself difficult/impossible to obtain through legal means. Generally the message they send to anyone attempting to reveal the illicit nature of the evidence is told "even if you try, your proof will guaranteed to be inadmissible."
- themartorana 10y agoWhy would a judge throw out evidence of illicitly gained information? Doesn't that lead to exactly where we land here with this article? Edit: thanks for the definitions, nonetheless!
- ihsw 10y agoWell, that's the idea behind "parallel construction" -- a clean evidence chain is built up in parallel. That one isn't exactly inadmissible and there is no proof linking one chain to the other. Furthermore, there are protective policies where public prosecutors are given the discretion to exclude evidence gained from "confidential" sources (eg: undercover cops) and that revealing such evidence to the public would negatively impact current/future investigations. Such evidence can be revealed privately to the necessary parties (eg: judges), but I'm not familiar with these procedures.
- jonathankoren 10y agoWhy throw out illegally gained evidence? Because it's pretty much the only censure a judge can do, and it's a damn powerful one. Yes, evidence laundering is a problem when it come to warrantless surveillance, but simply throwing up your hands and saying "Well, I guess anything taken from any method and without court approval is okay. I guess judicial oversight is an antiquated 18th century idea," isn't the answer.
- themartorana 10y agoI think you misread me. Parent to my original post said information indicating evidence was ill-gotten would be thrown out, not the evidence itself. That makes it impossible to argue the evidence was obtained illegally. As far as I can figure it would lead to what you're talking about, which is madness, so I was asking why a judge would not allow proof evidence was obtained illegally. (Basically, I totally agree with you and am confused as to why a judge would not be.)
- ghkbrew 10y agoI think what he meant was that proof that a particular piece of evidence was illegally obtained is likely to necessarily be illegally obtained as well. Thus it will be thrown out itself before it can used to get the original evidence thrown out. Or at least that's my interpretation of the comment in question. I have no idea how true it is.
- jonathankoren 10y agoYeahs don't understand what that means. Part of the introducing evidence into court is to describe its provenance. If the chain of custody breaks, then the defense can easily attack it as being tampered with. The only way evidence of a coverup could be illegally obtained would be if the defense somehow placed an illegal wiretap on the police department or prosecutor's office, which seems really implausible.
- jonathankoren 10y agoNo. The evidence itself, and all evidence derived from that evidence is thrown out. You conduct an illegal search that finds the murder weapon at the suspects house, you don't get to enter the murder weapon into evidence. You don't get to introduce that the weapon had the victims blood on it, because the only way you know that is that you got the weapon illegally. You don't get to introduce that the weapon had the suspectms fingerprints on it for some the same reason.