Papersplease Decision

[Bill Stewart]

At 10:45 AM 6/21/2004, Tyler Durden wrote:

>OK...so say an officer is at the beach and spots some hot chick in a 
>bathing suit, with obviously no ID on her person. And let's say this 
>officer "believes" that this chick has a bag of pot at home. Can he just 
>go and arrest her?
>-TD


As the Reuters article says,
         "Kennedy said the Nevada law was narrow and precise,
         requiring only that a suspect disclose his or her name.
         It does not require the suspect to produce a driver's license or 
any other document."

A great source for Supreme Court decisions is 
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/
and this case is at http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-5554.ZS.html
Kennedy does acknowledge, more or less, that their decision is
increasing state powers and decreasing the rights of individuals.
My reading of the opinions is that we probably had a better 4th Amendment 
argument
and that the 5th Amendment one was a bit weaker.

However, this doesn't mean that any cop anywhere can simply stop you and 
demand ID.
Nevada _does_ have a law requiring that you identify yourself.
However, in the Hiibel case, the cop demanded that he produce papers,
which the Nevada law does _not_ require.
In many states, the drivers license laws require you to produce your
license when asked, if you're carrying it, though I'm not sure how many
of them require that you produce it if you weren't driving.

... of course, _next_ month they'll address "Homeland Security vs. 260 
Million John Does",
or whatever other case the Feds decide to trump up proactively.
http://freetotravel.org is Gilmore & Noise's site,
but it hasn't been updated to reflect the verdict.