Case from ’80s offers clues for voters in NC Supreme Court race

You might not expect a 1988 court case to affect this year’s North Carolina Supreme Court election. Yet one former Republican legislative leader hopes voters will take time to learn about State v. Carter.

Paul “Skip” Stam argues that the case highlights clear differences between incumbent Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat; and Sarah Stevens, her Republican challenger. Stam and Stevens were North Carolina House of Representatives colleagues from 2009 to 2016.

Robert Lee Carter was convicted in 1986 of first-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping, and assault “inflicting serious bodily injury.” He attacked his 78-year-old victim in her home, raped and beat her in a plowed field, and left her unconscious.

Without a warrant, authorities relied on a judge’s “nontestimonial” order to secure a blood sample from Carter. The state Supreme Court split, 4-3, when deciding in 1988 whether that process violated Article I, Section 20 of the state constitution. The majority ordered a new trial.  

In legal jargon, the case established a strict “exclusionary rule” for suppressing evidence in a criminal case. The court’s majority rejected a “good-faith exception” for officers acting reasonably in spite of a flawed process.

Chief Justice Burley Mitchell, a Democrat, wrote the lead dissenting opinion.

“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,” Mitchell explained.

“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 criminal defendant,” Mitchell added. “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.”

Fast-forward 23 years. When Republicans took control of the North Carolina General Assembly in 2011, the state House moved quickly to add a good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.

Stam co-sponsored House Bill 3, including Section 2: “The General Assembly respectfully requests that the North Carolina Supreme Court reconsider, and overrule, its holding in State v. Carter that the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule which exists under federal law does not apply under North Carolina State law.”

Fifteen days after HB 3’s filing, the House approved it with a bipartisan 81-36 vote. The Senate later endorsed it, 48-1. Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue signed it as the sixth session law of 2011.

Stevens supported the request for a good-faith exception.

More than 14 years passed before the high court honored the request. With a 5-2 vote in October 2025, the court decided in State v. Rogers that the Carter precedent was “expressly overruled.”

“[T]here is a good faith exception to any exclusionary rule arising from Article I, Section 20 of our state constitution equivalent to the federal good faith exception to the exclusionary rule arising out of the Fourth Amendment,” Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote.

Earls dissented. “The exclusionary rule embodies ‘a more majestic conception’ of constitutional protections — one that ‘restrains the sovereign itself’ and ensures that constitutional ‘prohibitions are observed in fact,’” she wrote. “The principles State v. Carter embraced — judicial integrity, a constitutional right to a remedy, and a deterrence model focused on shaping institutional behavior — are no less vital now than they were in 1988 and in the decades since. This Court should stand by them.”

For Stam, the Carter case offers valuable information for voters deciding this year’s Supreme Court contest.

“Justice Anita Earls thinks that the correct remedy in State v. Carter would have been to have a new trial so that the police could get a warrant signed by a judge, instead of the non-testimonial order signed by another judge, in order to prove once again the blood type of Carter, the rapist of a 78-year-old woman,” he wrote. “Rational observers realize that Carter’s blood type would remain the same. Even a complete blood transfusion would not change that.”

For the victim, the Carter ruling meant “reliving the crime against her yet again,” Stam argued. “Why would a wise person think this is a good idea? Why would a voter choose such irrational justice?”

Stam hopes he won’t be the only North Carolina voter asking those questions this fall.

Mitch Kokai is senior political analyst for the John Locke Foundation.