Police can require names, Supreme Court rules.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Stephen Henderson

WASHINGTON _ Siding with authorities in an important test of their power, a divided Supreme Court said Monday that citizens can be arrested for refusing to give their names to police.

A name may be unique, but it's also a universal characteristic, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the 5-4 decision. So while the well-known right to remain silent is important with regard to information that could be incriminating, Kennedy said, "answering a request to disclose a name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances."

The decision drew sharp criticism from privacy and civil liberties groups that had rallied to support Larry Hiibel, the Nevada rancher whose challenge to police authority inspired the high court battle. But it drew praise from police advocates, who said the ability to ask routine questions is at the heart of investigative work.

"This was not an unjustified demand of `your papers, please' by an officer of a totalitarian regime," said Charles Hobson, an attorney for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation who offered a brief supporting police in the case. "It was a reasonable request by a sheriff's deputy who had been called to the scene of a suspected crime." The court would have "tied the hands of police" by siding with Hiibel, Hobson said.

Hobson said it's important to note that the court isn't giving police a right to randomly stop people and ask them questions, only the right to ask important questions during a legal stop that results from reasonable suspicions.

"If it's not a reasonable stop, you still don't have to answer," he said.

Tim Lynch, who directs the libertarian Cato Institute's project on criminal justice, said the ruling muddles an issue that was already clear to most Americans.

"With this ruling on the books, ordinary Americans will be hopelessly confused about when they can assert their right to `remain silent' without being jailed like Mr. Hiibel," Lynch said. "Today, the Supreme Court ruled that the government can turn a person's silence into a criminal offense."

The case is a follow-up to a 1968 ruling that permitted police to stop people, on reasonable suspicion, and ask them questions. That ruling brought into question whether laws enabling officers to force citizens to "stop and identify" themselves were constitutional.

Twice before, the court struck down such laws on technical grounds, but it left open the question of whether citizens must give their identities to police when asked during routine stops.

In 2000, sheriff's deputies confronted Hiibel along a rural Nevada road after receiving report of an assault involving a man and a woman in a truck. Hiibel was standing outside a truck matching the description when officers arrived. His adult daughter was inside the truck.

When the officers asked Hiibel who he was, he refused to give his name. After 11 attempts to make him identify himself, he was arrested under a state law that requires citizens to identify themselves to police during investigations.

Hiibel was convicted and fined, but he challenged the result, saying police violated his constitutional rights against unreasonable searches and self-incrimination.

A state appeals court denied his claims, and the Supreme Court agreed Monday.

"Asking questions is an essential part of police investigations," Kennedy wrote. "In the ordinary course, a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating" rights against unreasonable searches.

Hiibel's disclosure of his name "presented no reasonable danger of incrimination," Kennedy wrote. While Hiibel may believe that he doesn't have to disclose his name, Kennedy said, the Constitution's protection against self-incrimination doesn't permit him to refuse it. He noted that Nevada doesn't require citizens to produce identification, such as a driver's license. It just compels them to give their names.

Kennedy was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.

Justices John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.

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Stevens wrote that a person's name can "provide the key to a broad array of information about the person, particularly in the hands of a police officer with access to a range of law enforcement databases." That information could be "tremendously useful" in a criminal prosecution, he said.

Lynch, of the Cato Institute, said the court's ruling could provide an opportunity to further attack people's rights against self-incrimination.

"Right now, people aren't required to take the witness stand during a trial, but I could see a prosecutor challenging that and using this opinion to say `I only want to ask question that aren't incriminating,' " Lynch said. "The court is opening a door on these issues that invites further litigation."

He said the ruling could have the worst impact on people who "stand up for their rights."

"Some people let the police walk all over them," Lynch said. "But some people want to stand up for themselves and assert themselves when they think police are out of line. It's a blow for people who think that way, because now you can get in trouble for it."