Written
by Ryan Singel
Dudley
Hiibel, a Nevada rancher who covets his privacy, didn't want to hand over his
identification to a police officer in 2000. His refusal landed him in jail and
his name on the U.S. Supreme Court's docket.
At issue
in the case, which will be heard March 22, is whether individuals stopped during
an investigation of a possible crime must identify themselves to the police.
Nevada state law says that individuals must do so if a police officer has
reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or will be committed.
Hiibel's
attorneys argue that in such situations, known as Terry
stops, individuals already have the right to
not answer questions and that requiring individuals to show identification
violates the Fourth and Fifth Amendments' protections against unreasonable
searches and self-incrimination.
Hiibel,
59, who lives in rural Nevada near the small town of Winnemucca, began his
journey to the Supreme Court after police responded to a report of an
altercation between Hiibel and his daughter in Hiibel's pickup parked on the
side of the road.
Hiibel was
outside the pickup when deputies arrived and asked for his identification before
asking about the alleged fight. A tape
of the incident shows Hiibel refused 11 requests to produce identification,
after which the deputy arrested him for impeding a police officer.
Police
then arrested Hiibel's daughter, Mimi, when she protested the arrest of her
father. Both her charge of resisting arrest and the domestic violence charges
against Hiibel were later dismissed.
He was,
however, found guilty of obstructing a police officer and fined $250, but the
public defenders on the case appealed the conviction to a district court and the
Nevada Supreme Court.
Those
courts upheld the conviction, but the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the
case in October 2003.
In his
first media interview in three years, Hiibel told Wired News he hoped "the
Supreme Court will uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and that all
Americans, not just me, have the right to privacy."
"I
feel quite strongly I have a right to remain silent and I didn't commit a
crime," Hiibel said. "(The deputy) demanded my papers. I exerted my
rights as a free American and I was cuffed and taken to jail."
Harriet
Cummings, one of three Nevada public defenders working on the case, said that
while the case might seem like "no big deal," the legal issues at
stake are huge.
"This
goes to the very nature of what our society is going to be like," Cummings
said. "We believe that exercising your right to remain silent should not be
something that can cause you to be imprisoned."
"If
an officer acting under suspicion that a crime has been committed comes up to a
person, starts asking questions and demands identification, and if the person,
as Mr. Hiibel did, declines that demand, they can be hauled off to jail,"
Cummings said. "And we think that is not something that should happen in a
free society."
Charles
Hobson, an attorney for the Criminal
Justice Legal Foundation, which filed a
friend
of the court brief (PDF) in support of the
Nevada law, dismissed the argument that the police officer's request for
Hiibel's identification constituted an unreasonable search.
"Knowing
someone's identity is a very important part of police investigation,"
Hobson said. "It can allow them to quickly find people who are criminals.
For example, if Hiibel had a warrant out for kidnapping that would have been
very important to this case."
Hobson
also pointed out that even under the Nevada law, a police officer cannot
arbitrarily stop someone on the street and ask for identification.
The
Solicitor General's Office and the National Association of Police Organizations
also filed briefs supporting the identification requirement, arguing that it was
a necessary and not overly intrusive tool in fighting crime and terrorism.
Though the
hearing is still weeks away, the case is already being
widely
debated in the
blogosphere, thanks to the publicity efforts
of privacy advocate Bill Scannell.
A diverse
group of organizations, including the libertarian Cato Institute, the American
Civil Liberties Union, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty and
the Electronic Frontier Foundation also are backing Hiibel's challenge with friend
of the court briefs.
Homeless
advocates say an identification requirement unfairly impacts homeless people,
who are stopped often by police for suspicious behavior, but many times carry no
official identification.
The
Electronic Privacy Information Center's brief ties the identification
requirement to large-scale law enforcement databases, such as the FBI's criminal
database. The problem, according to EPIC staff attorney Marcia Hofmann, is not
just that a police officer can use a driver's license to pull up reams of data
on a person from massive databases. It's also that the encounter itself will be
added to the system, Hofmann said.
"Every
little time something like this happens, the police question you and want to
know who you are, it's an incident that gets put into a database," Hofmann
said. "And there will be a record of it thereafter, regardless of whether
you did anything wrong."
A related
case,
involving privacy advocate John Gilmore's legal challenge to an airline
requirement that forces passengers to show identification before boarding a
plane, is still pending in a federal district court.
The
Supreme Court justices will hear oral arguments on the case March 22, and their
decision likely will follow three or four months after.