Carolina Criminal Defense & DUI Lawyer UpdatesTL;DR Quick Take: North Carolina v. Rogers could prove to be one of the most consequential constitutional rulings in North Carolina criminal 
law in decades. The opinion not only interprets N.C.G.S. § 15A-974 but also redefines how North Carolina courts understand the relationship between the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 20 of the North Carolina State Constitution.
As applied, the Good Faith Exception articulated in State v. Rogers reverses longstanding precedent set forth in North Carolina v. Carter.
The burden quietly shifts to the accused to demonstrate unreasonableness, reversing long-standing Due Process protections and draining both the fruit and the fiber from the “poisonous tree.”
The following analysis examines how Rogers reached this point, why it matters for every criminal defense lawyer who litigates criminal charges in North Carolina, and how the opinion alters the long-standing balance between liberty and efficiency in our courts.
If you are confronting a Fourth Amendment or Article I, Section 20 issue in North Carolina, the Powers Law Firm provides informed, experienced advocacy. Bill Powers, a recognized trial lawyer and past president of the North Carolina Advocates for Justice, has spent more than thirty years teaching, writing, and litigating constitutional questions in North Carolina. His team serves clients in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Union County, Statesville, Mooresville, and the greater Charlotte region with precision and professionalism.
I. The Tension Between Practical Justice and Constitutional Discipline
No one disputes that exclusion can sometimes feel out of proportion to the error that caused it.
Entire prosecutions have failed because of procedural flaws that seem detached from guilt or innocence.
That tension has always existed between the demands of justice and the discipline of constitutional process.
North Carolina v. Rogers reflects that struggle and the discomfort with seeing reliable evidence lost to what some view as technical missteps.
History teaches that such inconvenience is deliberate.
North Carolina’s own constitutional tradition sits at the heart of that design.
When delegates met in 1788 to consider the new federal Constitution, North Carolina refused to ratify it without a declaration of rights.
That refusal, made formal at the Hillsborough Convention, rested on the conviction that no government should operate without explicit restraints on its power.
Only after Congress proposed the Bill of Rights did North Carolina finally ratify the Constitution at the Fayetteville Convention the following year.
It is historically fair to say that the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments might not exist in their present form but for North Carolina’s dogged insistence explicit limits on governmental discretion – Bill Powers, Attorney at Law
That resistance had roots in lived experience.
The state’s framers remembered the British general warrants and writs of assistance that permitted officers to search “suspected places” without particular cause.
North Carolina’s 1776 Declaration of Rights prohibited such practices outright, long before the federal Fourth Amendment adopted the same principle.
That history explains why North Carolina distrusted “good faith” authority and insisted on procedural limits that bind even well-intentioned officials.
The framers of both the United States and North Carolina Constitutions understood that liberty rarely disappears all at once.
What does the Rule of Law mean?
It weakens when power expands by habit or convenience, when constitutional safeguards give way to practical shortcuts.
They designed boundaries not because they distrusted every official, but because they knew that even honest intentions cannot be relied upon to protect freedom indefinitely.
Good faith, sincerity, and institutional confidence are never substitutes for constitutional boundaries.
The founders wrote those boundaries precisely because they knew good intentions are subject to the frailties of the human heart.
The exclusionary rule is the modern expression of that distrust.
It originated in Weeks v. United States (1914) and became binding on the states through Mapp v. Ohio (1961).
The rule was never designed to punish law enforcement officers.
It was meant to teach government that reasonableness requires restraint.
Later cases such as United States v. Leon (1984) and Herring v. United States (2009) acknowledged that exclusion can carry real costs but affirmed that constitutional discipline is the condition of lawful power.
The price of liberty has always been inconvenience, and history suggests North Carolina once understood that better than anyone – Bill Powers, NC Lawyer
II. The Good Faith Exception to the Exclusionary Rule in North Carolina
The United States Supreme Court has long treated the exclusionary rule as a judicially created remedy rather than a constitutional command.
Beginning with Weeks v. United States (1914) and Mapp v. Ohio (1961), suppression served as the vehicle for enforcing Fourth Amendment rights.
In United States v. Leon (1984), the Court reframed that remedy as discretionary, holding that exclusion should apply only where it would meaningfully deter police misconduct. Leon created the modern good-faith exception.
When Good Faith Isn’t Enough: Understanding Leon’s Boundaries
The landmark decision in United States v. Leon (1984) carved out a significant exception to the exclusionary rule, permitting courts to admit evidence obtained through flawed warrants when officers reasonably believed they were acting lawfully. Yet the Supreme Court recognized that blind faith in judicial authorization has limits.
The Court drew four bright lines where officers’ reliance on a warrant becomes objectively unreasonable:
First, officers cannot hide behind a warrant obtained through deception. Following the principles established in Franks v. Delaware, evidence must be suppressed when investigators deliberately mislead the magistrate or show reckless indifference to the truth in their affidavit. Good faith requires clean hands and a pure heart.
Second, a warrant issued by a magistrate who acts as a mere “rubber stamp” provides no shield. When judges abandon their constitutional duty to serve as neutral arbiters and simply defer to law enforcement, the resulting warrant cannot support a claim of reasonable reliance.
Third, probable cause must exist in more than name only. An affidavit so bereft of facts that no reasonable officer would believe it establishes probable cause cannot justify a search, regardless of a magistrate’s signature. The good faith exception protects reasonable mistakes, not willful blindness.
Fourth, constitutional requirements demand specificity. A warrant that fails to identify with particularity what is to be searched and seized, leaving officers to fill in the blanks, cannot reasonably be relied upon. Vague warrants invite the general searches the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent.
These exceptions ensure that while Leon forgives honest errors in judgment, it does not reward systemic failures or deliberate circumvention of constitutional safeguards. The exclusionary rule retains its bite when law enforcement or the judiciary fail in their fundamental duties.
North Carolina historically diverged from that approach.
The state’s constitutional tradition, grounded in Article I, Section 20 (“General warrants, whereby any officer may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of the act committed, are dangerous to liberty”), treated exclusion as inherent in the guarantee.
State v. Carter (1988) reaffirmed that suppression is the natural and necessary consequence of an unconstitutional search, not a matter of judicial grace.
Rogers departs from that lineage.
By incorporating Leon’s deterrence calculus into the state analysis, the NC Supreme Court re-casts the exclusionary rule as a policy choice rather than a constitutional imperative.
The NC Supreme Court’s language that suppression should not be applied where it would serve no meaningful deterrent purpose marks a subtle but decisive shift. The right survives largely in word only, as the remedy becomes functionally impossible to apply.
III. The Fourth Amendment: Fruits of the Poisonous Tree
At the federal level, Leon was followed by decisions such as Illinois v. Krull (1987) and Herring v. United States (2009), which expanded good-faith protection to reliance on statutes later found unconstitutional and to negligent recordkeeping errors.
Each step reduced the reach of exclusion.
Judicial Independence in North Carolina
Rogers situates North Carolina within that trajectory by declaring that officers who obtain judicial authorization for digital data act within an “objectively reasonable belief” of legality.
The Court’s reliance on Carpenter v. United States (2018) is telling. Carpenter held that cell-site location data implicates the Fourth Amendment and generally requires a warrant supported by probable cause.
Rogers accepts Carpenter’s substantive rule but denies its remedial consequence.
Because the officers sought a court order before Carpenter was decided, the Court held that suppression would not deter future misconduct.
That logic transforms temporal happenstance into constitutional insulation.
The question once asked, “Was the search supported by probable cause?” is replaced by, “Would exclusion deter future misconduct?”
That rephrasing shifts the constitutional inquiry from legality to policy, aligning State of North Carolina practice with the most forgiving federal precedents.
IV. Article I, Section 20: Independence Abandoned
North Carolina’s Constitution has never been a mere echo of the federal charter.
The Supreme Court of North Carolina has repeatedly recognized that state guarantees may exceed federal minimal standards and/or protections.
North Carolina v. Arrington (1978) and North Carolina v. Carter (1988) are examples. Both acknowledge Article I, Section 20 may demand suppression even when the United States Fourth Amendment, as applied to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, does not.
Rogers breaks from that tradition.
While acknowledging the theoretical independence of Article I, Section 20, the Court finds no reason to interpret it differently from its federal counterpart.
It adopts Leon’s balancing test wholesale, reasoning that the deterrence rationale applies “with equal force” under the state Constitution.
The alignment carries structural consequences.
If Article I, Section 20 adds nothing beyond the Fourth Amendment, state courts relinquish their capacity to develop independent remedies suited to North Carolina’s procedural system – Bill Powers, Criminal Defense Attorney
The result is a form of voluntary incorporation. The North Carolina State Constitution becomes a conduit for federal policy rather than a charter of distinct principles.
Some might say this uniformity promotes predictability.
Others may observe that it diminishes the judiciary’s capacity to function as a local guardian of liberty.
V. Redefining Probable Cause in North Carolina
In Rogers, the Court determined that the order authorizing access to cell-site data was obtained in good faith, even though it lacked a showing of probable cause under Carpenter.
That reasoning re-imagines probable cause as a procedural posture rather than a substantive threshold.
Legal But Unfair: Why some people go to jail and others don’t
Under traditional doctrine, probable cause exists when facts and circumstances within the officer’s knowledge warrant a prudent belief that evidence of a crime will be found.
The standard’s purpose is ex-ante.
It restrains government action before intrusion. Rogers recasts it as ex-post facto justification.
If an officer acts under a judicial order later found deficient, the absence of probable cause becomes irrelevant.
The order’s existence itself proves reasonableness.
This inversion has practical consequences.
Motions to suppress on probable-cause grounds will now require a showing that the officer’s reliance was unreasonable on its face, an extraordinary burden.
Few records, affidavits, or warrants will satisfy that threshold.
The probable-cause requirement, long a substantive brake on state power, becomes a procedural formality – Bill Powers, DUI Defense Lawyer
VI. The Erosion of State Constitutionalism
One of the most enduring features of North Carolina’s constitutional history is its tradition of independent state interpretation.
From Bayard v. Singleton (1787) through North Carolina v. Carter, state courts have insisted that the North Carolina Constitution speaks in its own voice.
Rogers narrows that tradition by fusing federal and state analyses into a single framework of reasonableness.
This convergence may appear benign, but it alters how defense lawyers litigate constitutional claims.
Defendants once invoked Article I, Section 20 as an alternative ground for suppression.
After Rogers, that argument will rarely gain traction because the Court has signaled that state and federal doctrines are coextensive.
The result is a chilling effect on creative constitutional advocacy. The state constitution becomes decorative rather than operative.
VII. A Doctrine of Forgiveness: Killing the Tree that produced the Poisonous Fruit
The exclusionary rule does more than bar illegally obtained evidence.
Under the doctrine known as the fruit of the poisonous tree, it also excludes evidence derived from that illegality.
The logic is straightforward.
When the initial search or seizure violates the Constitution, anything discovered as a direct or indirect result is presumptively tainted.
The rule ensures that the State does not profit, either directly or through derivative discovery, from its own unlawful conduct.
That metaphor, born of Wong Sun v. United States (1963), has shaped criminal procedure for generations.
By elevating the Good Faith Exception into constitutional doctrine, the Court reframes suppression not as a safeguard against tainted evidence but as a policy question about deterrence.
Once reasonableness becomes the controlling inquiry, the causal chain between unlawful conduct and obtained evidence loses force.
The focus turns from whether rights were violated to whether the violation deserves a remedy.
In adopting the Good Faith Exception as a constitutional principle rather than a narrow statutory accommodation, the North Carolina Supreme Court reorients the doctrine away from deterrence and toward forgiveness.
The Court reasons that suppression should not apply where an officer acts with “objectively reasonable reliance” on a judicial order, even if the order itself lacked probable cause.
The inquiry is no longer whether a search was unlawful, but whether the officer’s mistake was understandable.
That shift carries profound constitutional consequences.
The metaphor of the poisonous tree once reflected distrust of unchecked authority.
Its purpose was to remind courts that constitutional protections lose meaning when violations are forgiven in the name of practicality.
The poisonous tree is no longer pruned. It is reclassified as healthy if the gardener meant well.
Some might say this is a natural evolution in a system burdened by volume, technology, and complexity.
Others may see it as the quiet death of deterrence, the moment when faith in government supplanted the discipline of constitutional accountability.
VIII. Consequences to Pretrial Motions to Suppress & Dismiss
For trial judges, Rogers reduces the grounds for suppression and limits appellate vulnerability.
A denial of a suppression motion now rests safely within the umbrella of “objectively reasonable reliance.”
For prosecutors, the decision streamlines litigation and strengthens negotiating leverage.
For DUI defense lawyers and criminal defense counsel, it narrows the scope of pretrial litigation and increases the pressure to resolve cases through plea agreements.
IX. The Unanswered Questions: Exclusionary Rule & Good Faith Exceptions
Rogers leaves several issues unresolved:
- How far does the good-faith protection extend to warrantless searches justified by statutory authorization later found unconstitutional?
- Does Article I, Section 20 permit a distinct remedy if future legislatures attempt to codify broader exceptions?
- Will trial courts treat Rogers as foreclosing all suppression unless misconduct is deliberate or reckless?
These questions are not academic.
They determine whether North Carolina remains a jurisdiction in which constitutional rights can be meaningfully enforced at the trial level.
In North Carolina v. Rogers, the North Carolina Supreme Court applied the good-faith exception to officers who relied on a judicial order that pre-dated Carpenter v. United States (2018).
The officers sought the order under an existing statute authorizing access to cell-site data, and the Court held that their reliance was “objectively reasonable.”
But Rogers did not involve a warrantless search. The officers had judicial authorization, even if it later proved inadequate.
At the federal level, cases such as Illinois v. Krull (1987) and Michigan v. DeFillippo (1979) already extended good-faith protection to officers who acted under statutes later declared unconstitutional.
Those decisions treat legislative authorization much like a warrant. If an officer reasonably relies on a presumptively valid statute, exclusion supposedly serves no deterrent purpose.
By incorporating Leon’s deterrence analysis into Article I, Section 20, Rogers implicitly embraces that reasoning.
Some might say it opens the door for the same protection to apply to warrantless searches conducted in good-faith reliance on a statute or precedent later invalidated.
The opinion’s repeated emphasis on “objective reasonableness” and deterrence makes that extension not only possible but likely.
If North Carolina courts follow that trajectory, the good-faith doctrine could reach warrantless searches, so long as the officer relied on a statute, rule, or appellate decision that had not yet been overturned.
In that event, the remedy for an unconstitutional search would vanish whenever the officer’s reliance appeared understandable.
X. The Fragile Boundary Between Good Faith and Accountability
North Carolina v. Rogers occupies a delicate place in North Carolina constitutional history.
It is neither overtly radical nor carelessly decided.
The opinion’s craftsmanship and tone convey moderation. Yet moderation can mask transformation.
By absorbing Leon’s philosophy into both the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 20, the Court has re-drawn the map of constitutional enforcement.
The right against unreasonable searches remains in the text, but its remedy now depends on judicial belief in the good faith of government actors.
That belief may be warranted most of the time, but constitutional law exists for the exceptions.
The risk is not that officers will act in bad faith, but that courts will cease to notice when they do – Bill Powers, Criminal Defense Lawyer
The next frontier will test whether this new framework is self-correcting or self-confirming.
If the judiciary continues to treat reasonableness as synonymous with legality, suppression will become a relic, and the constitutional guarantee will exist chiefly in ceremony.
The exclusionary rule’s future in North Carolina now turns on whether courts remember that faith in government, however genuine, was never meant to replace the discipline of accountability.