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 (2025) (discussed here), teed up the appellate courts’ reconsideration of the good faith exception. The North Carolina Supreme Court in Rogers held that, assuming there is an exclusionary rule arising from the North Carolina Constitution, that rule contains a good faith exception equivalent to the federal good faith exception. And in round two of State v. Julius, No. COA25-277, ___ N.C. App. ___ (2026) (Julius II), the court of appeals affirmed the trial court’s ruling that the good faith exception applied, though the two judges who agreed about the result disagreed about the reasoning and a third judge dissented. This post will examine the fractured opinion in Julius II.
First, the facts. Joanna Julius was riding as a passenger in her parents’ car in McDowell County when the person driving the car crashed it into a ditch filled with water. The driver fled the scene. Law enforcement officers responded and searched the car for evidence of the driver’s identity. When they found drugs inside the vehicle, they arrested Julius and searched her backpack. There, they found more drugs, a pistol, and cash.
Julius was indicted for drug trafficking and related offenses. She moved to suppress the evidence gathered at the scene on the basis that the car was unlawfully searched. The trial court disagreed, and Julius was convicted. As previously noted, Julius appealed. On remand, the trial court determined that the search of the vehicle was supported by probable cause and the good faith exception to the warrant requirement applied such that the evidence discovered during the search was not subject to the exclusionary rule. Julius appealed from that ruling.
Chief Judge Dillon wrote the lead opinion. Chief Judge Dillon agreed with the trial court that the vehicle search was supported by probable cause. He further reasoned that the good faith exception recognized in Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229 (2011) (discussed here), for an officer’s objectively reasonable reliance on binding precedent applied to the case at hand. Chief Judge Dillon opined that the officer who carried out the search “objectively acted in good faith” given prior opinions from the state supreme court, the Supreme Court of the United States, and federal courts of appeal holding that a vehicle’s temporary immobility is not fatal to the application of the automobile exception. Slip op. at 10.
Judge Stroud concurred in the result only. Judge Stroud agreed that the trial court rightly denied the...
