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If a police officer approaches you and demands to see "your identification," should you have a legal (or moral) obligation to offer evidence of who you are? Can an agent of the State be justified in giving such an order under any circumstances? If he merely wants to satisfy his curiosity? If he views you as acting "suspiciously"? If he suspects you of having committed (or of being in the process of committing) a criminal act? If he has actually arrested you as a suspect in a crime he is investigating?
The United States Supreme Court will soon be dipping its collective toe into these contentious waters. In the case of Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Circuit of Nevada, the justices will decide whether someone may refuse to provide identification to a police officer prior to an arrest. (For an overview of this case with extensive links, see here.)
In May, 2000, after an argument with his daughter, Mimi, in his truck, Larry Dudley Hiibel asked Mimi (the driver) to pull over to the side of the road. He went outside and stood, smoking and talking with his daughter. A sheriff's deputy arrived after receiving a report that Hiibel had struck his daughter. Suspecting Hiibel of drunk driving, the officer repeatedly asked Hiibel to show identification. Steadfastly refusing to do so, Hiibel was arrested -- not for driving under the influence -- but for domestic battery and failing to obey the deputy's command. He was convicted of the latter charge on the premise that he had no right to anonymity or to remain silent in such circumstances. (Since he had not struck his daughter, the various battery charges were dropped. His daughter was arrested for resisting arrest, but that charge, too, was subsequently dropped.) The Nevada Supreme Court upheld Hiibel's conviction, setting up Hiibel's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The focus of this article, however, is not primarily on Hiibel's situation. Whether he technically violated Nevada state law is not my concern. (The State has so many laws, it can nearly always find someone guilty of something. [For more on this topic, see "You Are a Criminal."]) But his case does raise broader issues regarding our right to privacy and any alleged "right" by the State to violate one's choice to remain anonymous.
Some libertarians have argued that, given that the sheriff's office received a report of a possible assault, Hiibel should have complied with the officer's repeated demands to identify himself. What this attitude mostly shows, unfortunately, is just how saturated our culture has become with subservience to the State. The erroneous notion that we should elevate the status of State agents to that of parent or master rather than servant underlies the passive streak that is seeping poisonously through the once fiercely independent American character.
Another problem with some of the discussion regarding Hiibel's case is its concentration on secondary points. The primary issue is not whether someone should be legally required to produce an identification card to the State. The fundamental question goes deeper: should anyone be required to have an identification card, at all?
What if Hiibel -- rather than merely refusing to provide an ID card -- what if he had simply told the officer that he did not possess or carry any State-sanctioned method of identification? Would he -- should he -- have still been subject to arrest and conviction?
In the case of someone suspected of a specific crime, any State demand for the detainee to establish his identity is irrelevant for deciding whether he should or should not be arrested (or, ultimately, for convicting him of said crime). Yes, a victim might say specifically that "Joe Schmo" committed crime X and give the police Joe's description. If the police see someone matching that description and stop him, they might well ask -- in the interest of expediency -- for identification as a means of ruling out the person in hand. If he refuses to do so, he should not be subject to arrest for that reason alone. If the police have enough evidence to reasonably believe he is guilty of a crime, they can arrest him until further investigation leads them elsewhere. But insufficient evidence that one has committed a real crime should never lead to one's arrest.
A friend of mine experienced something similar to this scenario. One night in Austin, Texas, he was walking home carrying a bag of groceries. Suddenly a number of police cars screeched up. Cops leaped out of their squad cars and pointed their guns at my friend. He matched the general description of someone who had just committed a robbery. He was handcuffed and taken to the scene of the robbery. But once the distraught store owner saw my friend, the victim immediately ruled my friend out. The police apologized for their mistake and immediately released my friend. He accepted the reasonableness of the police's actions in this case, as do I. Yet demanding that my friend have or show an ID would have been pointless in investigating this crime.
(Even beyond this, ID's do not necessarily prove anything. Fake ID's are hardly a rarity.)
While showing an ID might make things easier, more convenient for someone who finds himself involved with the police, citizens have a right to privacy and no obligation to indicate who they are. In and of itself, not having or producing an ID card violates no one's rights. Anyone who believes otherwise must prove how such inaction constitutes a direct or indirect initiation of force and against whom.
In a free society, there can be no valid legal requirement:
If the police have sufficient evidence to suspect X is a criminal, then they might hold him until they can establish that he is or is not, in fact, the person they seek. But one's name, description, address, or anything else that a card might contain should be completely irrelevant as to whether one is arrested for or subsequently convicted of a crime. Either the police have enough facts to detain or arrest a suspect or they do not.
But how does the mere possession (or not) of an ID make any substantive difference regarding the question of one's guilt? It does not.
As the dissenting Nevada Supreme Court justices wrote:
The rest of the court should have listened.
You do not have to prove -- to anyone -- who you are.
