State v. Julius, Round Two: Court of Appeals in Fractured Opinion Affirms Trial Court’s Determination that Good Faith Exception Applies

The North Carolina Supreme Court held in State v. Julius, 385 N.C. 331 (2023) (Julius I), that an officer’s warrantless search of a vehicle trapped in a ditch and partially submerged by water was not authorized by the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment. The state supreme court remanded the case to the trial court to determine whether exclusion of the evidence discovered as a result of that search was appropriate and whether any exceptions to the exclusionary rule applied. In his partial dissent in Julius I, the Chief Justice stated that were he to find a constitutional violation, he would agree with the majority’s decision to remand the case to the trial court to determine whether exclusion was appropriate. The Chief Justice concluded by stating: “Notably, since 1986, we have recognized the good faith exception is applicable to violations of the Fourth Amendment.” Id. at 350 (Newby, C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). When I wrote about the opinion shortly after it was decided, I said it was “an unlikely vehicle for teeing up reconsideration of the good faith exception – at least in its currently recognized form.” As it turns out, the trial court on remand did rely upon the good faith exception in determining that the evidence discovered during the search was not subject to the exclusionary rule. And before the appeal from that order was calendared for consideration by a three-judge panel of the court of appeals, another case, State v. Rogers, 388 N.C. 453 [...]