Definition
Material objects acquired by means of, and in consequence of, the commission of a crime — and sometimes constituting the subject matter of the crime itself. In modern usage, the phrase encompasses both tangible property obtained through criminal activity (stolen goods, ransom money, proceeds of fraud) and, by extension, any benefit flowing directly from a criminal act.
The term operates across two related but distinct legal contexts:
1. Evidence law: As a category of physical evidence. Objects found in the possession of a defendant or at a crime scene that were obtained through criminal conduct are admissible as evidence of the crime, subject to constitutional constraints on how they were recovered.
2. Property and forfeiture law: As a basis for stripping a wrongdoer of ill-gotten gains. Courts and legislatures have long refused to permit a person to retain property acquired through crime. Civil forfeiture statutes operationalize this principle at scale.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Fruit" in ordinary English means the seed-bearing product of a plant, or more broadly, the result or reward of effort or action — as in "the fruits of one's labor."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Fruit" carries the same dual sense: literal botanical produce, and figuratively, any product, result, or consequence of action or condition.
The gap between common and legal meaning here is narrower than with many legal terms, but still worth noting. Ordinary usage of "fruits" is neutral or positive — one enjoys the fruits of labor. The legal phrase "fruits of crime" inverts this by treating the product of action as tainted by its criminal origin. The "fruit" is not simply a result; it is a result that carries legal consequences for its possessor and may be seized, forfeited, or used as evidence against its holder.
Common Confusion
FRUITS OF CRIME vs. FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE: These phrases share vocabulary but address different legal problems. "Fruits of crime" is an evidentiary and property concept focused on objects obtained through criminal conduct — the proceeds, instrumentalities, and subject matter of the crime itself. "Fruit of the poisonous tree" is a constitutional exclusionary doctrine focused on evidence obtained by law enforcement through unconstitutional means (an illegal search, an unlawful arrest). The "tree" in the latter phrase is the constitutional violation by the government; the "fruit" is the evidence derived from it. A bag of stolen cash is a "fruit of crime." If police find that cash through an illegal search, it may also be "fruit of the poisonous tree" — but the two labels address entirely different legal questions and have different remedial consequences.
FRUITS OF CRIME vs. INSTRUMENTALITIES OF CRIME: An instrumentality is a tool used to commit a crime (a weapon, a vehicle used in a getaway). Fruits are the products or proceeds gained from the crime. Both categories are subject to forfeiture, but courts and forfeiture statutes treat them as distinct, and historical sources sometimes conflate the two imprecisely.
Why It Matters in Research
The phrase appears with different emphasis depending on the legal context and era. In nineteenth-century evidence treatises — including the Burrill and Bouvier sources — "fruits of crime" is primarily an evidentiary category: a way of identifying admissible real evidence. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century sources should expect this narrow, evidence-focused usage.
In modern research, the term's gravity has shifted toward forfeiture law. Federal and state civil asset forfeiture regimes extensively codify what counts as proceeds or fruits of criminal activity, and the definition carries enormous practical stakes. Researchers tracing the statutory definition of "proceeds" in forfeiture statutes will find that modern legislation often defines the term explicitly, sometimes departing from the common-law baseline.
The constitutional dimension is the critical research trap. Because "fruits of crime" can overlap with "fruit of the poisonous tree," researchers must be careful not to conflate evidentiary admissibility questions (Fourth Amendment, exclusionary rule) with the separate question of whether an object constitutes a fruit of crime at all. These issues are analytically prior to each other: whether something is a fruit of crime is a factual and definitional question; whether it can be admitted into evidence given how it was obtained is a constitutional question.
Historical sources also do not address the money-laundering and proceeds-tracing problems that dominate modern fruits-of-crime analysis. The movement of criminal proceeds through financial systems — and the legal tools developed to trace, freeze, and forfeit them — has no meaningful counterpart in the Burrill or Bouvier entries. Researchers working on financial crimes, forfeiture litigation, or anti-money-laundering compliance will quickly exhaust what historical dictionaries can offer.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Burrill's, and Bouvier's are in near-identical agreement, and all trace to the same underlying sources: Burrill's Circumstantial Evidence and Bentham's Judicial Evidence. The shared language — "material objects acquired by means and in consequence of the commission of crime, and sometimes constituting the subject matter of the crime" — establishes the classical definition with precision.
The "sometimes constituting the subject matter" clause is worth attention. It captures a category of crime where the fruit and the corpus delicti overlap: stolen property is both what was taken (the subject matter) and what was acquired through the crime (the fruit). In forgery, the forged instrument is both the means and the fruit. Historical sources correctly identified this duality without fully theorizing it.
What all three historical dictionaries omit entirely: any treatment of forfeiture as a consequence, any discussion of tracing proceeds through transformations (cash converted to property, property sold for cash), and any engagement with the state's interest in the fruits beyond their evidentiary value. These omissions reflect the period's evidence-law orientation and should not be read as suggesting the forfeiture dimension did not exist — it did, in older attainder and forfeiture doctrine — but it was not integrated into the evidence-law framing these dictionaries employed.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Exclusionary Rule and Fruit of the Poisonous Tree (Mapp, Wong Sun) — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia. Essential for understanding how "fruits of crime" intersects with, and must be distinguished from, the constitutional exclusionary doctrine.