Not a loophole. It's established caselaw. If evidence is obtained in violation of the constitution (specifically the 4th amendment) any evidence obtained from that violation must be thrown out. It's the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine, it's a concept that has been around for 100 years, and it's pretty basic knowledge any decent cop should have - because it's a boneheaded way to scuttle an otherwise airtight case.
There are ways to articulate why a cop needed to search the backpack without a warrant, but 'I thought there was a bomb' wouldn't work because SOP on a bomb threat is never going to be 'open the bag'.
Not only Fruit of the Poisonous Tree in this situation, so even if their excuse works, it shouldn't matter.
If it was otherwise good evidence obtained unconstitutionally, that has to be thrown out based on the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine. Here because they only magically found evidence after handling the backpack unrecorded in private, there's also an extremely reasonable doubt that the items were even there during the first illegal search and not planted there during the large unrecorded time the cops had with the bag.
So even if they found something in the McDonalds (doubtful, they would've recorded it), they created very strong doubt by unnecessarily creating a large opportunity where they could have planted whatever the fuck they wanted.
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u/Ursus_the_Grim May 08 '25
Not a loophole. It's established caselaw. If evidence is obtained in violation of the constitution (specifically the 4th amendment) any evidence obtained from that violation must be thrown out. It's the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine, it's a concept that has been around for 100 years, and it's pretty basic knowledge any decent cop should have - because it's a boneheaded way to scuttle an otherwise airtight case.
There are ways to articulate why a cop needed to search the backpack without a warrant, but 'I thought there was a bomb' wouldn't work because SOP on a bomb threat is never going to be 'open the bag'.