'Fruit of the poisonous tree' refers to

• A. Evidence being excluded due to chain of custody issues
• B. Evidence being excluded due to unconstitutional acts
• C. Evidence being excluded due to lack of relevance
• D. Evidence being excluded due to improper documentation

Answer: (B)

The idea being tested is how the exclusionary rule applies to evidence that comes from illegal police action. Fruit of the poisonous tree means that if the initial search or seizure violates the Constitution, not only that evidence but also other evidence derived from that violation is typically not allowed in court. The rationale is to prevent police misconduct from yielding a usable trail of evidence and to deter unconstitutional behavior. There are known exceptions—if the link between the illegality and the evidence is sufficiently broken (attenuation), or if the evidence has an independent, lawful source, or if it would have been discovered anyway (inevitable discovery)—the derivative evidence may still be admitted.

The other options describe different problems: chain of custody issues deal with maintaining evidence integrity, lack of relevance concerns whether something is probative, and improper documentation involves administrative or evidentiary rules rather than constitutional taint.