| Litigants: | Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States |
| Arguedate: | December 12 |
| Argueyear: | 1919 |
| Decidedate: | January 26 |
| Decideyear: | 1920 |
| Fullname: | Silverthorne Lumber Co., Inc., et al. v. United States |
| Usvol: | 251 |
| Uspage: | 385 |
| Parallelcitations: | 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. |
| Majority: | Holmes, joined by McKenna, Day, Van Devanter, McReynolds, Brandeis, Clark |
| Dissent: | White |
| Dissent2: | 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.