''Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States'', 251 U.S. 385 (1920), was a U.S. Supreme Court Case in which Silverthorne attempted to evade paying taxes. Federal agents illegally seized tax books from Silverthorne and created copies of the records. The issue in this case is whether or not derivatives of illegal evidence are permissible in court. The ruling, delivered by

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.Holmes was Acting Chief Justice of the Un ...

, was that to permit derivatives would encourage police to circumvent the Fourth Amendment, so the illegal copied evidence was held tainted and inadmissible. This precedent later became known as the "

fruit of the poisonous tree Fruit of the poisonous tree is a legal metaphor used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the terminology is that if the source (the "tree") of the evidence or evidence itself is tainted, then anything gained (the "fruit") ...

doctrine,". and is an extension of the

exclusionary rule In the United States, the exclusionary rule is a legal rule, based on constitutional law, that prevents evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights from being used in a court of law. This may be consider ...

. Chief Justice White and Associate Justice Pitney dissented without a written opinion.

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* * United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the White Court United States Fourth Amendment case law 1920 in United States case law Forest products companies of the United States {{SCOTUS-stub

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