My apologies to one of my classes for not being able to directly answer this question yesterday, but the Supreme Court has made some peculiar decisions on this point and I didn't want to get it wrong. The case I was thinking of was Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, which: held that statutes requiring suspects to identify themselves during police investigations did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Under the rubric of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), the minimal intrusion on a suspect's privacy, and the legitimate need of law enforcement officers to quickly dispel suspicion that an individual is engaged in criminal activity, justified requiring a suspect to identify himself.
The Court also held that the identification requirement did not violate Hiibel's Fifth Amendment rights because he had no reasonable belief that his name would be used to incriminate him; however, the Court left open the possibility that Fifth Amendment privilege might apply in a situation where there was a reasonable belief that giving a name could be incriminating.
So it seems that yes police can, at least in Nevada and the U.S. Supreme Court said they can. But part of the answer is: It depends on what state you are in since you are more likely to be pulled over and searched by a state official than a federal official. In Texas, Grits for Breakfast has this to say: "Currently, Texans don't have to identify themselves unless they're actually arrested, and it's not a crime if you don't do so. In practice, of course, police can't write a ticket without the identifying information, so this would give them cause to arrest you and cart you off to jail (under authority affirmed by the US Supreme Court in Atwater v. Lago Vista, a Texas case)."
So the answer seems to be, in Texas you don't have to identify yourself unless you are being arrested, but the Supreme Court is willing to allow the state to mandate identification if it deems it necessary to conduct an investigation. Such changes might be underway. In the last legislative session a bill passed a Senate Committee that would have made failure to identify a crime. Shoudl we expect it to be reintroduced in January?
Some additional reading:
- When You Must Identify Yourself to the Police.
- ACLU: What to do if you are stopped by the police.
- Identify Yourself or Go to Jail. (scroll down)
- SB 1175: Relating to the prosecution of the offense of failure to identify.
