[IP] When police ask your name, you must give it, Supreme Court says

___ Dave Farber +1 412 726 9889 ...... Forwarded Message ....... From: Kurt Albershardt To: dave@farber.net Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 16:44:00 -0700 Subj: When police ask your name, you must give it, Supreme Court says By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that people who refuse to give their names to police can be arrested, even if they've done nothing wrong. The court previously had said police may briefly detain people they suspect of wrongdoing, without any proof. But until now, the justices had never held that during those encounters a person must reveal their identity. The court's 5-4 decision upholds laws in at least 21 states giving police the right to ask people their name and jail those who don't cooperate. Law enforcement officials say identification requests are a routine part of detective work. Privacy advocates say the decision gives police too much power. Once officers have a name, they can use computer databases to learn all kinds of personal information about the person. The loser in Monday's decision was Nevada cattle rancher Larry "Dudley" Hiibel, who was arrested and convicted of a misdemeanor after he told a deputy that he didn't have to give out his name or show an ID. The encounter happened after someone called police to report arguing between Hiibel and his daughter in a truck parked along a road. An officer asked him 11 times for his identification or his name. Hiibel repeatedly refused, at one point saying, "If you've got something, take me to jail" and "I don't want to talk. I've done nothing. I've broken no laws." In fighting the arrest, Hiibel became an unlikely constitutional privacy rights crusader. He wore a cowboy hat, boots and a bolo tie to the court this year when justices heard arguments in his appeal. "A Nevada cowboy courageously fought for his right to be left alone, but lost," said his attorney, Harriet Cummings. The court ruled that forcing someone to give police their name does not violate their Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches. The court also said name requests do not violate the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, except in rare cases. "One's identity is, by definition, unique; yet it is, in another sense, a universal characteristic. Answering a request to disclose a name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. "A name can provide the key to a broad array of information about the person, particularly in the hands of a police officer with access to a range of law enforcement databases," he wrote in a dissent. Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (news - web sites) and Stephen Breyer (news - web sites) also disagreed with the ruling. Crime-fighting and justice groups had argued that a ruling the other way would have protected terrorists and encouraged people to refuse to cooperate with police. "The constant danger of renewed terrorist activity places enormous pressure on law enforcement to identify suspected terrorists before they strike," said Charles Hobson, an attorney with the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. But Tim Lynch, an attorney with the libertarian-oriented think tank Cato Institute, said the court "ruled that the government can turn a person's silence into a criminal offense." "Ordinary Americans will be hopelessly confused about when they can assert their right to remain silent without being jailed like Mr. Hiibel," said Lynch, who expects the ruling will lead more cities and states, and possibly Congress, to consider laws like the one in Nevada. Justices had been told that at least 20 states have similar laws to the Nevada statute: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin. The ruling was a follow up to a 1968 decision that said police may briefly detain someone on reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, without the stronger standard of probable cause, to get more information. Justices said that during such brief detentions, known as Terry stops after the 1968 ruling, people must answer questions about their identities. Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said America is different 36 years after the Terry decision. "In a modern era, when the police get your identification, they are getting an extraordinary look at your private life." The case is Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the state of Nevada, 03-5554. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]