The Exclusionary Rule and its Discontents: State v. Rogers and the Good Faith Exception

Fourth Amendment rights are enforced primarily through the exclusionary rule, which provides that evidence derived from an unconstitutional search or seizure is generally inadmissible at trial. Under the good faith exception, however, evidence will not be suppressed when the investigating officer reasonably relied upon prior judicial authorization for the search, such as a subsequently invalidated search warrant. Until recently, under State v. Carter, 322 N.C. 709 (1988), the general warrants clause of the state constitution (Art. 1, § 20) also yielded an exclusionary rule but without any good faith exception. In State v. Rogers, No. 377PS22 (N.C. Oct. 17, 2025), the North Carolina Supreme Court explicitly overruled Carter, concluding that there is a good faith exception to any exclusionary rule arising from the state constitution. This post considers the opinion in Rogers. The Exclusionary Rule and The Good Faith Exception Bob Farb discussed the good faith exception in his first post about fifteen years ago, and Jonathan Holbrook revisited the topic in 2020. A brief refresher is provided below. Like many provisions of the Bill of Rights, the protections against searches and seizures were inspired by actual events: in the 1760s, general warrants had been used to harass John Wilkes and his associates in England, and writs of assistance (which functioned much like general warrants) issued to customs officers had famously and unsuccessfully been challenged in colonial Boston. Accordingly, the drafters of North Carolina’s first constitution (adopted 1776) included a provision specifically prohibiting the issuance of general warrants, whereby any officer “may [...]