The U.S. Supreme Court has decided you can be arrested for refusing to give police your name – even if you have done nothing wrong.
The 5-4 ruling upheld the Nevada state supreme court, which had held that cattle rancher Larry Dudley Hiibel violated a state law requiring such cooperation when he refused to give a sheriff’s deputy his name. The deputy wanted to question Hiibel about an assault case involving a man and a woman in a truck similar to the one Hiibel and his daughter were standing by along a road.
Two First Amendment attorneys denounced the ruling when reached for comment by AVNOnline.com. "Today, the court removed one more stone from the once-formidable wall that has protected a free people from a police state and our liberty is consequently diminished," said Chicago-based attorney J.D. Obenberger. "Nevada has made a crime out of silence. The demand of a police officer for identity information now trumps the rights of all Americans to give up no information that can be used to harm them."
"With this decision, we move one step closer to a totalitarian state, where you are forced to show your papers and identify yourself at the command of the government," said Florida-based attorney Lawrence G. Walters. "We are quickly losing our right to any form of anonymous expression in this country.”
Hiibel had challenged his conviction and fine on grounds that his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights were violated. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said being compelled to give police his name did not violate Hiibel’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search or his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Obenberger said the high court majority had taken a narrow, limited view of the kind of communications subject to the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination. "That narrow and limited view is now the law of the land," he said. He added that, while he didn't think the American system would collapse, under such a ruling giving police officers "plenary power" to demand your identity under penalty of criminal punishment, the ruling "is another palpable sign that we are in the dusk of American liberty, and that a dark night seems to be inevitable."
Kennedy's opinion leaned on the so-called Terry Stop rule, named for an Ohio case, Terry v. Ohio, in which the Supreme Court held police could stop a person for a brief period of time and question them based on reasonable suspicion that the person in question "may be involved in criminal activity," or at least have some sort of knowledge of criminal activity in a particular matter. Kennedy also noted that the Terry Stop rule could give police either pertinent information about a crime or even information that would clear someone in a criminal investigation even before any arrest is made.
"Obtaining a suspect's name in the course of a Terry stop serves important government interests," Kennedy wrote. "Knowledge of identity may inform an officer that a suspect is wanted for another offense, or has a record of violence or mental disorder. On the other hand, knowing identity may help clear a suspect and allow the police to concentrate their efforts elsewhere."
The Nevada ordinance under which Hiibel was ultimately convicted and fined says, in part, that a police officer can detain anyone he encounters "under circumstances which reasonably indicate" the person had committed, was committing, or might soon commit a crime; and, that an officer could detain him "only to ascertain his identity and the suspicious circumstances surrounding his presence…Any person so detained shall identify himself, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry of any peace officer."
Hiibel had told a sheriff's deputy he was not obligated to give the deputy his name or his identification, and suggested that if the deputy "had something," he should arrest him; otherwise, Hiibel is said to have told the deputy, "I don't want to talk. I've done nothing. I've broken no laws."
Justice John Paul Stevens, in a dissenting opinion, argued that proper understanding of the Fifth Amendment's incrimination category meant that Hiibel should have been protected from being compelled to give his identity.
"Presumably, the [ordinance] does not require the detainee to answer any other question," wrote Stevens in his dissent, "because the Nevada Legislature realized that the Fifth Amendment prohibits compelling the target of a criminal investigation to make any other statement… the broad constitutional right to remain silent, which derives from the Fifth Amendment…, is not as circumscribed as the [majority] suggests, and does not admit even of the narrow exception defined by the Nevada statute."
