Remember our March entry about the Nevada Cowboy who was arrested for not showing his ID to the cops? He took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. He lost, in a 5-4 decision.
"Joining Kennedy's opinion were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justices John Paul Stevens, Stephen G. Breyer, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented."
By bizarre coincidence, the same five justices who ruled against our right to privacy are the same five who appointed popular and electoral loser Bush to be president.
Alan sez: "Regarding today's Supreme Court decision–The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer
and the article you linked to did _not_ say that one must produce
identification when ordered to do so, but that one must identify
oneself. The Nevada rancher in question was arrested because he refused
(eleven times, according to the NewsHour report) to give his name when
a cop asked him."
Ryan sez: "Mark, Alan's update to the entry on the Supreme Court decision is not quite
accurate. The Supreme Court said that one must say one's name when asked by
police investigating a crime. Under the ruling, you do not have to provide
an identification card, but it doesn't prevent police from asking for one.
But oddly, the Court came up with this ruling and upheld Hiibel's conviction
even though he was never asked the simple question "What is your name?"
before being cuffed and put in the patrol car (which one assumes is the
moment of arrest).
"If you watch the video, you see the officer never asks Hiibel what his name
is, but instead asks for identification over and over and at one point, even
seems to reach for Hiibel's wallet.
"Under the Supreme Court ruling, Hiibel had and continues to have the right
not to show his identification card or even have identification on his
person. But it seems under the Supreme Court's reading of the case, if
police ask you for your identification card, you have the right to say no,
but you also have to know that you have to state your name instead. The
legal obligation falls on the citizen to volunteer his name, not on the
police to ask the person what his name is.
"My feeling is that at the very least, the justices voting in the majority
never even saw the video, even though it was easily available on the
Internet at http://papersplease.org/hiibel.
"If they had, they could have come to the same conclusion about the necessity
to identify oneself to police, but at the same time, logically, the Court
would have
