The Fruit Of The Poisonous Tree
The fruit of the poison tree refers to a legal concept that requires evidence to be ignored if it is acquired illegally or without a proper warrant. In other words, if the means are tainted, the ends or fruits of those means must likewise be poisonous.
Since all prohibitions have been created in a caldron of lies, ignorance, deceit and racism, legislations thereby derived are the Fruit of The Poison Tree cubed. ‘Tainted’ would be a mild way of describing the environment under which these legislations were born. Everyone knows the farce perpetrated on the American people in the mid 30’s culminating with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Yet the laws emanating from this collusion are still ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.
(pull)If the means used to enforce a law must be free of the Fruit of the Poison Tree, should not the laws themselves be subject to the same principle.(/pull) Clearly this is so, but it is not so. This is a frequent occurrence in the drug war where policy trumps reason. It is clear to me now that this government has no intention of justifying this policy with truth in the cold hard light of day. For seventy years the lies have gone undone. The falsehoods born in that period persist as petrified doctrine in the minds of Americans.
Therefore under the legal doctrine of The Fruit of the Poison Tree all prohibitions should be immediately repealed. The right of our government to practice prohibition should be challenged, be these prohibitions with or without popular vote. The Declaration of Independence clearly opposed the concept of prohibition when declaring our rights to be ‘unalienable’. This suggest quit clearly that a majority vote does not give our government the right to deny life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness to anyone without clear and compelling justification.
We see the Bill of Rights as the sole protector of the people, yet the Declaration of Independence is the foundation for the Constitution. It does not matter how you interpret the Bill Of Rights or the power of government under the Constitution, The Declaration of Independence created this country and imbued each of us with unalienable rights. We can vote for our representative, but neither they nor we have the legal right in this country to practice prohibition. The Declaration of Independence forbids prohibition as clearly as it could in a world then unfamiliar with this hideous concept.
Rick Wolfe
