Opinion ID: 275418
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the unlawful search and its fruits

Text: 11 After Wilson was taken to the Wake Memorial Hospital, police officers of the City of Raleigh returned to the vicinity of the motion picture theater, located Wilson's automobile, and searched it, finding an empty 38 Colt cartridge box and a partially empty pint bottle of whiskey. 4 Both items were received in evidence without objection. No question was raised at the trial as to whether or not the search was lawful. Neither the transcript of the trial nor the post-conviction hearing discloses whether or not a search warrant issued to authorize it — although the post-conviction hearing was a plenary one and Wilson was afforded the aid of counsel. 12 Since June 19, 1961, the date of the decision of Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), evidence obtained by a search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible, as a matter of due process, in a state court as it had been previously in a federal court. But despite the increasing tendency to put upon trial judges duties sua sponte, there remains a role for defense counsel thought to be indispensible in an adversary system. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963). Competent counsel may have preferred to have the whiskey bottle accompanied by the empty cartridge box than to have no whiskey bottle at all. We think receiving these items in evidence, without objection, if error at all, is not error of constitutional dimension. The same elements of waiver (discussed hereinabove in Part I) are present. We think Wilson deliberately bypassed the opportunity to make timely objection in the state court, and thus that the petitioner should be deemed to have forfeited his state court remedies. Henry v. State of Mississippi, supra, 379 U.S. at 450, 85 S.Ct. at 569. 13 Even if it should be said that the burden of proof is on the state to show the search lawful, surely the state need not shoulder such a burden unnecessarily — until it is suggested that the search was unlawful by objection to the evidence or otherwise. Professor Stansbury, in discussing the impact of Mapp v. Ohio on the law of North Carolina evidence, says: There is no reason to believe that the rules established to serve procedural convenience, such as the presumption of the legality of the search, will be disturbed by the decision   . Stansbury, North Carolina Evidence § 121(a), at 275 (2d ed. 1963).