State v. Fair

Utah Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1960

Utah Supreme Court · decided 1960-07-01

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“[e]vidence, even though illegally obtained, is admissible.”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including State v. Larocco, State v. Rowan, George

Relies on State v. Aime

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1960-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently December 2017

6 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

CALLISTER, Justice.

¶1Defendant appeals from his conviction of unlawful possession of a narcotic drug,2 contending that certain evidence was erroneously admitted because illegally obtained.

¶2Two Salt Lake City police officers, acting upon information received from an informer, accosted the defendant in a local cafe, took him outside and searched him. They found two marijuana cigarettes in one of his pockets and placed him under arrest.

¶3It is not necessary to determine whether or not the search was legal, because this court has previously held that evidence, even though illegally obtained, is admissible.3

¶4Affirmed.

WADE and HENRIOD, JJ., concur.

¶5. 58-13a22, U.C.A.1953.

¶6. State v. Aime, 62 Utah 476, 220 P. 704, 32 A.L.R. 375.