New Hampshire v. Carter
Annotate this CaseDefendant Shawn Carter filed an interlocutory appeal to the Supreme Court because the Superior Court denied his motion for pre-indictment discovery on the ground that the statutory authority (RSA 604:1-a (2001)), violated the separation of powers provision of Part I, Article 37 of the New Hampshire Constitution because it conflicted with Superior Court Rule 98. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded. Because RSA 604:1-a granted an accused only such rights to pre-indictment discovery as exist post-indictment, the statute preserved the court’s power to regulate pre-indictment discovery, tailoring it to the facts and circumstances of the particular case, in the same manner as it regulated post-indictment discovery. To the extent that there was any residual tension between the statute and the rule (insofar as Rule 98 can be viewed as implicitly establishing a default position that generally disallows discovery to a felony defendant until after indictment, whereas RSA 604:1-a establishes the default position of allowance of pre-indictment discovery), the Supreme Court concluded that the statute trumped the rule: "[J]ust as the legislature possesses the power to enact laws that override this court’s common law and statutory construction precedents, . . .so also do its statutory enactments prevail over conflicting court rules, unless those enactments compromise the core adjudicatory functions of the judiciary."
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