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Papers, please
Sunday, March 07, 2004
By Dennis Roddy
Elusive to the last minute, Dudley Hiibel was hunted down on horseback and brought from the high plains of Nevada and into cell phone range to explain why a cowboy is going to the Supreme Court this month.
"It's to protect our rights under the Bill of Rights," he said. "How I got there is real weird, but that's the reason we're going."
Hiibel is a 59-year-old rancher from Grass Valley, Nev., population him. Like many cowboys, he is testimony that America was founded on distrust of authority. He does not like being told what to do. He does not like answering questions. He mostly prefers to be left alone with such friends as will have him and such cattle as he can drive from the plateaus to his ranch and back again until it is time to sell them.
He is precisely the sort of contrarian that gave us the Constitution and exactly the type that needs it most.
On May 21, 2000, Hiibel and his daughter Mimi were riding in his pickup truck when they got into an argument over Mimi's boyfriend. A passing motorist thought he saw someone belting someone -- in fact, 17-year-old Mimi punched her dad in his arm.
When Humboldt County Deputy Lee Dove found Hiibel, he was standing beside the pickup truck, smoking a cigarette.
A transcript of the meeting, captured by the video camera on Dove's cruiser, has Dove telling Hiibel to produce some identification and Hiibel refusing.
"I merely asked him also what the problem was. I was doing nothing," Hiibel said. Hiibel's quick take on the situation was that Dove was perfectly entitled to ask for ID and that he was equally entitled to say no.
Eleven times Dove demanded Hiibel's ID. Eleven times Hiibel refused, occasionally daring the officer to arrest him for the "crime" of not identifying himself. Dove took the dare, cuffed Hiibel, and charged him with domestic battery -- a charge quickly dropped for lack of evidence -- and delaying an officer.
Hiibel was convicted on the "delaying charge" -- meaning he was convicted of hindering Dove from investigating a crime that didn't happen. The reason Hiibel was convicted is a Nevada statute that says when police have a reasonable suspicion to think someone has committed a crime or is about to commit one, police may detain that person "to ascertain his identity and the suspicious circumstances surrounding his presence abroad."
The kicker is the following line: "Any person so detained shall identify himself, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry of any peace officer." By "shall" the law means the detainee has no choice in the matter.
The law, Nevada statute 171.123, was written to conform with a 1968 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows police to stop people on the basis of "reasonable suspicion," a murky, idiosyncratic standard.
But that ruling, called the Terry decision, was a carefully limited exception to the Fourth Amendment, not a repeal. It certainly did not address the Fifth Amendment, the one against self-incrimination. The court simply said a person could be detained briefly and patted down for weapons. Without reason to arrest, he had to be sent on his way.
It remained for Nevada and a few other states to invent the requirement that the person stopped had to, on penalty of conviction, identify himself.
Every once and again, a law enforcement officer tests the proposition that the state can demand our papers after the fashion of the Albanian border patrol. Three years ago an Allegheny County deputy sheriff decided he didn't like the looks of someone searching for a clerk's office at the courthouse during business hours. When the man declined to show his ID, the deputy arrested him for disorderly conduct. The state Superior Court threw that one out.
"Silence is the crime. You have a right to remain silent, but if you do you've committed a crime. Pretty scary, huh?" said Lawrence Lustberg, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a friend of the court brief on Hiibel's behalf.
Yes, pretty scary. What is especially scary is that the Nevada Supreme Court upheld Hiibel's conviction by invoking the war on terror. Their citation was a Fox News interview with Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle who says the war on terror is "changing the way we live and the way we act and the way we think."
I thought the war on terror was supposed to preserve all of those things. Instead, it has sufficiently altered our nation to the point where state Supreme Court justices rule invasive laws constitutional and cite Tony Snow's broadcast as corroboration.
The state's case will be argued by the same prosecutor who won Hiibel's conviction. Conrad Hafen, the former deputy prosecutor in Humboldt County, worries that the loss of Nevada's stop-and-identify statute will make everyday law enforcement burdensome.
"If we take that away, how are we going to be able to arrest people who have a warrant pending?" Hafen said. "Simply stating your name to an officer does not amount to admitting a crime."
That doesn't much persuade a man like Dudley Hiibel, who views authority as something that should let him alone.
Hiibel was on the furthermost fringes of the cellular tower's reach, along a grassland plane bordered by the Sonoma Mountains as he explained himself half a continent away. His public profile took on special velocity earlier this year when John Gilmore, a founder of Sun Miscrosystems, a man now rich as God and determined to outspend Him, read of Hiibel's case. Gilmore, a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, put up the money for two legal researchers to help Dudley's public defender prepare the Supreme Court appeal. Gilmore then sent a publicist to the Nevada plains to field press inquiries on behalf of a man with no telephone and whose only big-city visit was to San Francisco 40 years ago, when he was inducted into the Army.
The Supreme Court hearing will be Hiibel's first visit east. He comes down from the mountains and his cattle to attend church, visit nearby Winnemucca, and vote. He's a Republican and likes George W. Bush and wants to imagine his president is rooting for him in this one.
"This thing -- it's kinda bipartisan, isn't it?" he said. "I mean, everybody who believes in liberal or conservative believes in upholding the Bill of Rights."
Possibly he'll get an answer to that question when he sits in the Supreme Court on March 22 and listens to how Justices Rehnquist, Thomas and Scalia frame their questions.
The most Hiibel can try to do is look presentable.
"I'll polish my boots," he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Dennis Roddy can be reached at [email protected] or 412-263-1965.)
Posters comments:
Mr. Hiibel offered the following:
The Supreme Court hearing will be Hiibel's first visit east. He comes down from the mountains and his cattle to attend church, visit nearby Winnemucca, and vote. He's a Republican and likes George W. Bush and wants to imagine his president is rooting for him in this one.
"This thing -- it's kinda bipartisan, isn't it?" he said. "I mean, everybody who believes in liberal or conservative believes in upholding the Bill of Rights."
Re his "imagination" concerning where President Bush might stand on this issue, speaking personally, I would not bet a great deal in support of Mr. Hiibel's hopes or what he imagines, for I suspect that he will turn out to be badly disappointed.
Additionally, re his comment on those who "believe in upholding the Bill of Rights", and whom he would expect to find in that number, sad to note. I think that Mr. Hiibel has spent to much time left to his own devices, and as a result of same, has fallen badly "out of it", respecting some important and unhappy aspects of this entire business, and the way things are in the country today, at least respecting elected things, at so many levels.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
By Dennis Roddy
Elusive to the last minute, Dudley Hiibel was hunted down on horseback and brought from the high plains of Nevada and into cell phone range to explain why a cowboy is going to the Supreme Court this month.
"It's to protect our rights under the Bill of Rights," he said. "How I got there is real weird, but that's the reason we're going."
Hiibel is a 59-year-old rancher from Grass Valley, Nev., population him. Like many cowboys, he is testimony that America was founded on distrust of authority. He does not like being told what to do. He does not like answering questions. He mostly prefers to be left alone with such friends as will have him and such cattle as he can drive from the plateaus to his ranch and back again until it is time to sell them.
He is precisely the sort of contrarian that gave us the Constitution and exactly the type that needs it most.
On May 21, 2000, Hiibel and his daughter Mimi were riding in his pickup truck when they got into an argument over Mimi's boyfriend. A passing motorist thought he saw someone belting someone -- in fact, 17-year-old Mimi punched her dad in his arm.
When Humboldt County Deputy Lee Dove found Hiibel, he was standing beside the pickup truck, smoking a cigarette.
A transcript of the meeting, captured by the video camera on Dove's cruiser, has Dove telling Hiibel to produce some identification and Hiibel refusing.
"I merely asked him also what the problem was. I was doing nothing," Hiibel said. Hiibel's quick take on the situation was that Dove was perfectly entitled to ask for ID and that he was equally entitled to say no.
Eleven times Dove demanded Hiibel's ID. Eleven times Hiibel refused, occasionally daring the officer to arrest him for the "crime" of not identifying himself. Dove took the dare, cuffed Hiibel, and charged him with domestic battery -- a charge quickly dropped for lack of evidence -- and delaying an officer.
Hiibel was convicted on the "delaying charge" -- meaning he was convicted of hindering Dove from investigating a crime that didn't happen. The reason Hiibel was convicted is a Nevada statute that says when police have a reasonable suspicion to think someone has committed a crime or is about to commit one, police may detain that person "to ascertain his identity and the suspicious circumstances surrounding his presence abroad."
The kicker is the following line: "Any person so detained shall identify himself, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry of any peace officer." By "shall" the law means the detainee has no choice in the matter.
The law, Nevada statute 171.123, was written to conform with a 1968 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows police to stop people on the basis of "reasonable suspicion," a murky, idiosyncratic standard.
But that ruling, called the Terry decision, was a carefully limited exception to the Fourth Amendment, not a repeal. It certainly did not address the Fifth Amendment, the one against self-incrimination. The court simply said a person could be detained briefly and patted down for weapons. Without reason to arrest, he had to be sent on his way.
It remained for Nevada and a few other states to invent the requirement that the person stopped had to, on penalty of conviction, identify himself.
Every once and again, a law enforcement officer tests the proposition that the state can demand our papers after the fashion of the Albanian border patrol. Three years ago an Allegheny County deputy sheriff decided he didn't like the looks of someone searching for a clerk's office at the courthouse during business hours. When the man declined to show his ID, the deputy arrested him for disorderly conduct. The state Superior Court threw that one out.
"Silence is the crime. You have a right to remain silent, but if you do you've committed a crime. Pretty scary, huh?" said Lawrence Lustberg, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a friend of the court brief on Hiibel's behalf.
Yes, pretty scary. What is especially scary is that the Nevada Supreme Court upheld Hiibel's conviction by invoking the war on terror. Their citation was a Fox News interview with Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle who says the war on terror is "changing the way we live and the way we act and the way we think."
I thought the war on terror was supposed to preserve all of those things. Instead, it has sufficiently altered our nation to the point where state Supreme Court justices rule invasive laws constitutional and cite Tony Snow's broadcast as corroboration.
The state's case will be argued by the same prosecutor who won Hiibel's conviction. Conrad Hafen, the former deputy prosecutor in Humboldt County, worries that the loss of Nevada's stop-and-identify statute will make everyday law enforcement burdensome.
"If we take that away, how are we going to be able to arrest people who have a warrant pending?" Hafen said. "Simply stating your name to an officer does not amount to admitting a crime."
That doesn't much persuade a man like Dudley Hiibel, who views authority as something that should let him alone.
Hiibel was on the furthermost fringes of the cellular tower's reach, along a grassland plane bordered by the Sonoma Mountains as he explained himself half a continent away. His public profile took on special velocity earlier this year when John Gilmore, a founder of Sun Miscrosystems, a man now rich as God and determined to outspend Him, read of Hiibel's case. Gilmore, a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, put up the money for two legal researchers to help Dudley's public defender prepare the Supreme Court appeal. Gilmore then sent a publicist to the Nevada plains to field press inquiries on behalf of a man with no telephone and whose only big-city visit was to San Francisco 40 years ago, when he was inducted into the Army.
The Supreme Court hearing will be Hiibel's first visit east. He comes down from the mountains and his cattle to attend church, visit nearby Winnemucca, and vote. He's a Republican and likes George W. Bush and wants to imagine his president is rooting for him in this one.
"This thing -- it's kinda bipartisan, isn't it?" he said. "I mean, everybody who believes in liberal or conservative believes in upholding the Bill of Rights."
Possibly he'll get an answer to that question when he sits in the Supreme Court on March 22 and listens to how Justices Rehnquist, Thomas and Scalia frame their questions.
The most Hiibel can try to do is look presentable.
"I'll polish my boots," he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Dennis Roddy can be reached at [email protected] or 412-263-1965.)
Posters comments:
Mr. Hiibel offered the following:
The Supreme Court hearing will be Hiibel's first visit east. He comes down from the mountains and his cattle to attend church, visit nearby Winnemucca, and vote. He's a Republican and likes George W. Bush and wants to imagine his president is rooting for him in this one.
"This thing -- it's kinda bipartisan, isn't it?" he said. "I mean, everybody who believes in liberal or conservative believes in upholding the Bill of Rights."
Re his "imagination" concerning where President Bush might stand on this issue, speaking personally, I would not bet a great deal in support of Mr. Hiibel's hopes or what he imagines, for I suspect that he will turn out to be badly disappointed.
Additionally, re his comment on those who "believe in upholding the Bill of Rights", and whom he would expect to find in that number, sad to note. I think that Mr. Hiibel has spent to much time left to his own devices, and as a result of same, has fallen badly "out of it", respecting some important and unhappy aspects of this entire business, and the way things are in the country today, at least respecting elected things, at so many levels.
