Court Opinion

ID: 9594379
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:29:31.982149+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:23.063664
License: Public Domain

Justice Exum
dissenting.
I vote to affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals for the reasons stated in that court’s majority opinion. I disagree with this Court’s conclusion that defendant waived his right to challenge the neutrality of the magistrate because he did not attach an affidavit to his motion to suppress as required by N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-977(a).
Had the trial court summarily dismissed the motion for this procedural default, the ruling would have been correct. But defendant would then have been in a position to reassert his motion with an attached affidavit and to have it heard on the merits.
As the case stands, the trial court with the state’s acquiescence heard the motion and ruled on its merits. No question was raised regarding the lack of a supporting affidavit by either the trial court or the state. Undoubtedly this was because an affidavit would probably have asserted no more, substantively, than the motion itself asserted. The lack of a supporting affidavit was raised for the first time by the state in this Court. Under these circumstances I would hold the state waived its right to have the motion summarily dismissed at trial by failing to raise defendant’s procedural default at that stage of the proceeding.
Under the majority’s holding defendant is forever precluded from having a court properly address the substance of his motion because of a procedural default which could have been cured in the trial court had either the trial court or the state then relied on it. Having not then relied on it, the state should not be permitted to avoid defendant’s motion by asserting the procedural default for the first time in this Court. If the shoe were on the other foot, and defendant had failed to object at trial to a similar procedural default on the state’s part, the Court, I am satisfied, would have no difficulty holding that defendant had waived his right to object on appeal.
I note, too, that whether a magistrate issuing a search warrant is neutral and detached is an issue more crucial than ever in light of United States v. Leon, — U.S. —, 52 U.S.L.W. 5155 (decided 5 July 1984). Leon holds that evidence seized pursuant to *580a warrant issued by a “detached and neutral magistrate but ultimately found to be unsupported by probable cause” is admissible under the Fourth Amendment. Gone is the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause requirement insofar as it protects a citizen from being convicted on the basis of evidence seized in its absence pursuant to a warrant. Now under the Fourth Amendment when a warrant is required all that stands between the state’s ability to search for and seize evidence and use it in court and the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures” is a “detached and neutral magistrate.”
Justices COPELAND and FRYE join in this dissenting opinion.