542 U.S. 177, 124 S.Ct. 2451, 159 L.Ed.2d 292 (2004)
The sheriff's department in Humboldt County, Nevada, received an afternoon telephone call reporting an assault.1 The caller reported seeing a man assault a woman in a red and silver GMC truck on Grass Valley Road.2 Deputy Sheriff Lee Dove was dispatched to investigate.3 When the officer arrived at the scene, he found the truck parked on the side of the road.4 A man was standing by the truck, and a young woman was sitting inside it.5 The officer observed skid marks in the gravel behind the vehicle, leading him to believe it had come to a sudden stop.6
The officer approached the man and explained that he was investigating a report of a fight.7 The man appeared to be intoxicated.8 The officer asked him if he had any identification on him, which the officer understood as a request to produce a driver's license or some other form of written identification.9 The man refused and asked why the officer wanted to see identification.10 The officer responded that he was conducting an investigation and needed to see some identification.11 The man refused the officer's requests for identification eleven times. He began to taunt the officer by placing his hands behind his back and telling the officer to arrest him and take him to jail. After warning the man that he would be arrested if he continued to refuse, the officer placed him under arrest.12
The man arrested on Grass Valley Road is Larry Dudley Hiibel.13 Hiibel was charged with willfully resisting, delaying or obstructing a public officer in discharging or attempting to discharge any legal duty of his office in violation of Nev. Rev. Stat. § 199.280.14 Hiibel was tried in the Justice Court of Union Township.15 The court convicted Hiibel and fined him $250.16 The Sixth Judicial District Court affirmed the conviction.17
On review the Supreme Court of Nevada affirmed the conviction in a divided opinion.18 Hiibel petitioned for rehearing, seeking explicit resolution of his Fifth Amendment challenge.19 The petition was denied without opinion.20 The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.21
Whether Nevada's stop-and-identify statute requiring a person detained on reasonable suspicion to disclose his name violates the Fourth Amendment?22
The reasonableness of a seizure under the Fourth Amendment is determined by balancing its intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate government interests.23 A Terry stop must be justified at its inception and reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.24 A state law requiring a suspect to disclose his name in the course of a valid Terry stop is consistent with Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.25
No. The initial stop of Hiibel was based on reasonable suspicion arising from the telephone call reporting an assault in a red and silver GMC truck on Grass Valley Road.26 The officer's request for identification was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances justifying the stop because the officer was investigating the report of a fight and needed to identify the man standing by the truck.27 The statute does not change the duration or location of the stop and the threat of criminal sanction helps ensure that the request for identity does not become a legal nullity.28
Nevada's stop-and-identify statute does not violate the Fourth Amendment.29
Related opinions on this issue
Joined by Justice Souter And Justice Ginsburg
Justice Breyer dissents, joined by Justices Souter and Ginsburg.30 The Court's Fourth Amendment precedents establish that police may conduct a Terry stop only within circumscribed limits, one of which invalidates laws that compel responses to police questioning.31 In Terry, Justice White's concurrence stated that the person stopped is not obliged to answer and refusal furnishes no basis for an arrest.32
Brown and Berkemer repeated this principle that the detainee is not obliged to respond.33 This strong dicta has remained undisturbed for more than twenty years.34 There is no good reason to reject the generation-old statement of the law.35
Fifth Amendment considerations and administrative difficulties with special exceptions counsel against change.36 The majority presents no evidence that the prior rule has significantly interfered with law enforcement.37
Whether the same statute violates the Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination when applied to a refusal to state one's name?38
To qualify for the Fifth Amendment privilege, a communication must be testimonial, incriminating, and compelled.39 The Fifth Amendment prohibits only compelled testimony that is incriminating, meaning disclosures that the witness reasonably believes could be used in a criminal prosecution or could lead to other evidence that might be so used.40 A claim of Fifth Amendment privilege must establish reasonable ground to apprehend danger to the witness from his being compelled to answer.41
No. Hiibel's refusal to disclose his name was not based on any articulated real and appreciable fear that his name would be used to incriminate him.42 The disclosure of one's name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances.43 The narrow scope of the disclosure requirement means that answering a request to disclose a name is not incriminating in this case.44
The statute does not violate the Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination when applied to a refusal to state one's name.45
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Stevens dissents on the ground that the Nevada law imposes a narrow duty to speak upon a specific class of individuals. The class includes only those persons detained under circumstances which reasonably indicate that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime. These persons are targets of a criminal investigation rather than the public at large.46
The compelled statement at issue is testimonial because it is made in response to police interrogation during a Terry stop.47 The disclosure of identity is incriminating because a name can furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute the claimant for a federal crime.48 The statute therefore violates the Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination.49