From: Bill Lucy 

In article , "John Beamish"
 says...
> http://www.iht.com/articles/525996.html
> The Supreme Court ruled Monday that people do not have a constitutional
> right to refuse to tell the police their names.
>
> The ruling came in a 5-to-4 decision and frees the government to arrest and
> punish people who will not cooperate by revealing their identity.

I was going to comment on this until I saw your header.

This is one of those decisions that is bound to be overturned by a future
Court. It bears directly on Fourth and Fifth Amendment issues, and I am
surprised that Justice Kennedy deemed it necessary to diminish that.
Indeed, he relied on vagrancy laws as (IMO) an excuse that found asking for
identification is an acceptable act on the part of police officers.

The big problem, which Justice Breyer addresses in his dissent, is that
Hiibel was not a suspect in any crime. Indeed, he told the police that if
they thought he had done something wrong, they were free to arrest him. The
only thing that he did "wrong" was not identify himself of course
(see 03-5554, 1st para). And he was arrested for that.

Justice Breyer makes a good case why Hiibel will not hold. His is an
especially good opinion (IMHO).

Justice Stevens, in the other dissenting opinion, focuses too much on the
Nevada law under which Hiibel was arrested.

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