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Page Number: 77.0

6 

CARPENTER v. UNITED STATES 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

inal cases, courts and prosecutors were also using the writ 
to compel the production of necessary documents.  In Rex 
v. Dixon, 3 Burr. 1687, 97 Eng. Rep. 1047 (K. B. 1765), for 
example,  the  King’s  Bench  considered  the  propriety  of  a 
subpoena duces tecum served on an attorney named Sam-
uel Dixon.  Dixon had been called “to give evidence before
the grand jury of the county of Northampton” and specifi-
cally  “to  produce  three  vouchers  . . .  in  order  to  found  a 
prosecution  by  way  of  indictment  against  [his  client] 
Peach . . . for forgery.”  Id., at 1687, 97 Eng. Rep., at 1047– 
1048.  Although the court ultimately held that Dixon had 
not needed to produce the vouchers on account of attorney-
client privilege, none of the justices expressed the slightest 
doubt  about  the  general  propriety  of  subpoenas  duces 
tecum  in  the  criminal  context.    See  id.,  at  1688,  97  Eng.
Rep.,  at  1048.  As  Lord  Chief  Justice  Ellenborough  later 
explained,  “[i]n  that  case  no  objection  was  taken  to  the 
writ,  but  to  the  special  circumstances  under  which  the 
party  possessed  the  papers;  so  that  the  Court  may  be
considered  as  recognizing  the  general  obligation  to  obey 
writs of  that description in other cases.”   Amey, supra, at 
485, 103 Eng. Rep., at 658; see also 4 J. Chitty, Practical 
Treatise  on  the  Criminal  Law  185  (1816)  (template  for 
criminal subpoena duces tecum).

As Dixon shows, subpoenas duces tecum were routine in 
part  because  of  their  close  association  with  grand  juries. 
Early American colonists imported the grand jury, like so
many  other  common-law  traditions,  and  they  quickly
flourished.  See United States v. Calandra, 414 U. S. 338, 
342–343  (1974).    Grand  juries  were  empaneled  by  the
federal  courts  almost  as  soon  as  the  latter  were  estab-
lished, and both they and their state counterparts actively
exercised  their  wide-ranging  common-law  authority.  See 
R. Younger, The People’s Panel 47–55 (1963).  Indeed, “the 
Founders thought the grand jury so essential . . . that they 
provided in the Fifth Amendment that federal prosecution