Court Opinion

ID: 9854359
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:06:23.639222+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:02.418712
License: Public Domain

Justice Mitchell
dissenting.
By refusing to permit the introduction of evidence seized by officers acting in the honest belief that a court order authorizing its seizure was lawful, this Court gives much greater protection to criminal defendants than they have been given by the Supreme Court of the United States. In fact, the Supreme Court has specifically stated in a similar situation, “[W]e refuse to rule that an officer is required to disbelieve a judge who has just advised him, by word and by action, that the warrant he possesses authorizes him to conduct the search he has requested.” Massachusetts v. Sheppard, 468 U.S. 981, 989-90, 82 L.Ed. 2d 737, 744 (1984). We should take the same position as to the court ordered search in this case.
In its failing effort to strike a proper balance between the guarantee against unreasonable searches and the public safety, the majority has chosen to place such a heavy thumb on the scales of justice that they will always weigh in favor of the crim*725inal defendant. The inflexible exclusionary rule the majority has selected for North Carolina will not advance the right to be free from unlawful searches, but it will prevent trial courts from reaching the truth and convicting the guilty in a substantial number of cases. The majority should recognize a good faith exception to our exclusionary rule similar to that applied by the Supreme Court under the Constitution of the United States. To do otherwise serves no valid purpose, substantially interferes with enforcement of the criminal law and diminishes the integrity of the judicial branch of government. Therefore, I dissent.
I recognize that our State Constitution, like the Constitution of the United States, requires the exclusion of evidence obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure. State v. Reams, 277 N.C. 391, 178 S.E. 2d 65 (1970), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 840, 30 L.Ed. 2d 74 (1971). I even agree with the majority that in the past the exclusionary rule may have been the only practical remedial device for preventing unreasonable searches and seizures. But see United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 918, 82 L.Ed. 2d 677, 696 (1984). Even the majority seems to recognize, however, that conditions causing the Supreme Court of the United States to first adopt the exclusionary rule have largely ceased to exist.
One need only read any daily newspaper on a regular basis to know that civil judgments against law enforcement officers for violations of constitutional rights are no longer unusual. Indeed, it is now quite possible for evidence unlawfully seized to be excluded in a criminal case against an accused, while the accused receives additional or double relief in the form of a civil judgment for the same violation of rights. The decision of the majority here greatly increases the likelihood of cases in which criminals will be set free while, at the same time, public officials who have made honest mistakes in good faith are required to pay them damages. It is obvious beyond any need for further discussion that such cases will not further the majority’s goal of promoting the integrity of the judiciary, but will result, instead, in the judiciary being subjected to well-deserved ridicule by the general public.
The majority has devoted several pages of its opinion to noble and stirring quotations of legal luminaries of the past, such as former Justices Holmes and Brandéis and our own Sam J. Ervin, Jr., former United States Senator and former Justice of this *726Court. Although I agree with almost everything contained in those quotations from decades past, it appears that their scope and grandeur have blinded the majority to the obvious fact that they have almost no relevance to the present case.
The high-minded quotations relied upon by the majority warn against permitting courts to be used to further the designs of law enforcement officers who intentionally break the law to gather evidence against criminals. All courts have taken those warnings to heart, and evidence seized by intentionally unlawful methods has been excluded under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States for decades. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 6 L.Ed. 2d 1081 (1961). Further, evidence seized by such intentionally unlawful means is not rendered admissible by the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. See United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 82 L.Ed. 2d 677 (seizure under defective search warrant); State v. Welch, 316 N.C. 578, 342 S.E. 2d 789 (1986) (under non-testimonial identification order). The majority simply has chased a constitutional rabbit which was caught and skinned long ago.
By definition, the “good faith exception” to the exclusionary rule applies only in situations in which law enforcement officers have acted under the objectively reasonable belief that their actions were lawful and correct. Although the majority implies that by choosing a rule which excludes such evidence seized in good faith it somehow protects our privacy from invasion — by police, not by criminals — the majority completely fails to tell us how exclusion of evidence seized by officers in good faith reliance upon a court order will further this noble purpose. This failure of the majority is quite understandable, since exclusion of evidence in such cases will serve no valid purpose and will greatly harm the innocent public. See generally United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 82 L.Ed. 2d 677.
Only in recent years have researchers begun to study the effects of the exclusionary rule. At least one study indicates that the rule results in either a failure to prosecute or a failure to convict as much as 2.35% of all those arrested for felonies. Id. at 907-09 n.6, 82 L.Ed. 2d at 688-89 n.6 (citing California study). The same study suggests that the exclusionary rule is an even greater impediment to prosecutions for particular crimes such as drug *727crimes which are unusually dependent on physical evidence. Id. Thus, it has been estimated that the exclusionary rule results in the failure to prosecute or the failure to convict in as much as 7.1% of felony drug charges. Id. Additionally,
the small percentages . . . mask a large absolute number of felons who are released because the cases against them were based in part on illegal searches or seizures. “[A]ny rule of evidence that denies the jury access to clearly probative and reliable evidence must bear a heavy burden of justification, and must be carefully limited to the circumstances in which it will pay its way by deterring official unlawfulness.” Illinois v. Gates, 462 US at 257-258, 76 L Ed 2d 527, 103 S Ct 2317 (White, J., concurring in judgment).

Id.

Even the terribly undesirable result of preventing criminal prosecutions by denying “the jury access to clearly probative and reliable evidence” would be an acceptable price to pay in cases such as this, if it would have any substantial deterrent effect on violations of constitutional liberties. Rejection of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule, however, “can have no substantial deterrent effect in the sorts of situations under consideration in this case . . . [and] cannot pay its way in those situations.” Id. The majority’s calculated choice to reject the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule under our state constitution simply will not make our people more secure in their right to be free from unreasonable searches.
In the present case, officers relying in good faith upon a written judicial order took a sample of the defendant’s blood for analysis and use as evidence. It should be obvious to anyone that excluding this evidence will not deter other officers from making similar mistakes in good faith as to the legal validity of court orders upon which they rely. When following judicial orders in the future, the officers still will not know they are doing anything wrong. Therefore, unlike punishment of intentionally unlawful conduct by officers, which the exclusionary rule arguably deters, punishment of an officer’s good faith reliance on a judicial order cannot deter future similar conduct.
Certainly, a refusal to recognize a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule will have no significant “deterrent” effect on *728judges and magistrates. As the Supreme Court of the United States has correctly pointed out:
To the extent that proponents of exclusion rely on its behavioral effects on judges and magistrates . . . , their reliance is misplaced. First, the exclusionary rule is designed to deter police misconduct rather than to punish the errors of judges and magistrates. Second, there exists no evidence suggesting that judges and magistrates are inclined to ignore or subvert the Fourth Amendment or that lawlessness among these actors requires application of the extreme sanction of exclusion.
Third, and most important, we discern no basis ... for believing that exclusion of evidence seized pursuant to a warrant will have a significant deterrent effect on the issuing judge or magistrate. . . . And, to the extent that the rule is thought to operate as a “systemic” deterrent on a wider audience, it clearly can have no such effect on individuals empowered to issue search warrants. Judges and magistrates are not adjuncts to the law enforcement team; as neutral judicial officers, they have no stake in the outcome of particular criminal prosecutions. The threat of exclusion thus cannot be expected significantly to deter them. Imposition of the exclusionary sanction is not necessarily meaningful to inform judicial officers of their errors, and we cannot conclude that admitting evidence obtained pursuant to a warrant while at the same time declaring that the warrant was somehow defective will in any way reduce judicial officers’ professional incentives to comply with the Fourth Amendment, encourage them to repeat their mistakes, or lead to the granting of all colorable warrant requests.
Id. at 916-17, 82 L.Ed. 2d at 694-95 (footnotes omitted). The same common sense reasoning is applicable to cases such as this, in which the search has been conducted pursuant to a nontestimonial identification order. State v. Welch, 316 N.C. 578, 342 S.E. 2d 789. Further, the reasoning of the Supreme Court is not made any less compelling by virtue of the fact that this issue arises under our State Constitution rather than the Constitution of the United States. The exclusionary rule is identical under both constitutions, and the good faith exception to that rule also should be applied equally under both constitutions.
*729The Supreme Court of the United States has always restricted application of the exclusionary rule “to those areas where its remedial objectives are thought most efficaciously served.” United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 348, 38 L.Ed. 2d 561, 571 (1974). The Supreme Court also:
has acknowledged that the suppression of probative but tainted evidence exacts a costly toll upon the ability of courts to ascertain the truth in a criminal case. . . . [Supreme Court] cases have consistently recognized that unbending application of the exclusionary sanction to enforce ideals of governmental rectitude would impede unacceptably the truth-finding functions of judge and jury. . . . After all, it is the defendant, and not the constable, who stands trial.
United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 734, 65 L.Ed. 2d 468, 476 (1980) (citations omitted). This Court should adopt the same common sense reasoning expressed in such statements by the Supreme Court of the United States and apply it here. Regrettably, however, the majority chooses to be more dogmatic and doctrinaire than the Supreme Court of the United States in protecting criminal defendants by excluding evidence uncovered through honest mistakes of officers acting in good faith reliance upon court orders. I recognize that it is within the power of the majority to give criminal defendants greater protections under our State Constitution than those given them by the Constitution of the United States or the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States; I simply think the majority is wrong to do so in the context of this case.
In the context of cases such as this, the majority’s doctrinaire application of our exclusionary rule truly becomes a “mere technicality” applied with a vengeance to block enforcement of the criminal laws for no good reason. Application of the exclusionary rule here will not deter any future misconduct by anyone or lessen the likelihood of future infringements upon anyone’s constitutional rights. The only effect of the majority’s rejection of a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule in cases such as this is to punish the public by impeding the truth-finding function of its courts. This drastic choice by the majority does not lead to any corresponding societal or constitutional gain for anyone other than criminal defendants lucky enough to have officers make *730honest errors in their cases. This diminishes the integrity of the judicial branch of government.
As I believe the majority has today dramatically tilted the scales of justice in favor of criminal defendants for no good or beneficial reason whatsoever, I respectfully dissent.
Justices MEYER and Webb join in this dissenting opinion.