fruit of the poisonous tree

1. 1.

   a rule that once primary evidence is determined to have been illegally obtained any secondary evidence following from it may also not be used

   Broaderrule of evidence

Questions about fruit of the poisonous tree

What does fruit of the poisonous tree mean?

fruit of the poisonous tree means "a rule that once primary evidence is determined to have been illegally obtained any secondary evidence following from it may also not be used".

Is fruit of the poisonous tree a common word?

fruit of the poisonous tree is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.