Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States

Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 12, 1919 Decided January 26, 1920
Full case name	Silverthorne Lumber Co., Inc., et al. v. United States
Citations	251 U.S. 385 (more) 40 S. Ct. 182; 64 L. Ed. 319; 1920 U.S. LEXIS 1685
Holding
To permit derivatives would encourage police to circumvent the Fourth Amendment, so the illegal copied evidence was held tainted and inadmissible.
Court membership
Chief Justice Edward D. White Associate Justices Joseph McKenna · Oliver W. Holmes Jr. William R. Day · Willis Van Devanter Mahlon Pitney · James C. McReynolds Louis Brandeis · John H. Clarke
Case opinions
Majority	Holmes, joined by McKenna, Day, Van Devanter, McReynolds, Brandeis, Clark
Dissent	White
Dissent	Pitney

Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385 (1920), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which Silverthorne had attempted to evade paying taxes. Federal agents illegally seized tax books from Silverthorne and created copies of the records. The ruling, delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., was that any evidence obtained, even indirectly, from an illegal search was inadmissible in court. He reasoned that otherwise, police would have an incentive to circumvent the Fourth Amendment to obtain derivatives of the illegally obtained evidence.^[1] This precedent later became known as the "fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine,"^[2] and is an extension of the exclusionary rule.

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

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 251
• Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963)

Further reading

• Killian, B. J. (1982). "United States v. Crews: Fruit of the Poisonous Tree—A New Wrinkle?". Idaho Law Review. 18: 151. ISSN 0019-1205.

References

External links

• Works related to Silverthorne Lumber Company v. United States at Wikisource
• Text of Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385 (1920) is available from: CourtListener  Findlaw  Google Scholar  Justia  Library of Congress 

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