Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., Humboldt City (full text)
U.S. Supreme Court
Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., Humboldt Cty, 542 U.S. 177 (2004)
Date: 06/21/04
Case No: 03-5554
Issue: Identification of Suspect, Terry Stop
Holding:
The principles of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889,
88 S. Ct. 1868, allow a state to require a suspect to disclose his or
her name during a Terry stop. The stop must be reasonable in inception
and scope; an officer may not arrest a person merely for failing to
identify himself or herself if the officer's request for identification
is not reasonably related to the reason for the stop.
Summary:
An officer responded to a report of an assault. At the scene, he found
D and a woman. D was outside a truck, and the woman was inside the
truck. He asked D eleven times to identify himself, and each time D
refused. The officer arrested D and D was subsequently convicted of
obstructing an officer in carrying out his duties, under Nevada's "stop
and identify" statute, which permits an officer to require a suspect to
disclose his or her identity. The statute does not provide for an
officer to require that a suspect produce a driver's license or other
document. The Court held that D's Fourth Amendment rights were not
violated because the officer's request that D identify himself had an
immediate relation to the purpose of the stop, and because the Nevada
statute balances the intrusion on individual interests against the
interests of the government. The Court found no violation of D's Fifth
Amendment right not to incriminate himself, because disclosure of his
name did not present a reasonable risk of incrimination; the Fifth
Amendment prohibits only compelled testimony that is incriminating.
The Court left open the possibility that in unusual circumstances a
person's disclosure of his or her name could give police a link in the
chain of evidence needed to convict the person of a separate offense.
If that situation arises in the future, the Court will then address the
potential Fifth Amendment implications based on the facts of that
case, but the Court finds that it need not be addressed here because
D's failure to provide his name was based on his belief that his name
was none of the officer's business, not on a desire to avoid
self-incrimination.