ABSTRACT
A police officer in Humboldt County, Nevada, had questioned Larry "Dudley" Hiibel after the officer received a report that a man in a truck had assaulted a woman passenger. The officer believed the man was intoxicated and made eleven separate requests for him to identify himself. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction against Fourth and Fifth Amendment challenges in a five- four decision authored by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. The majority distinguished the Nevada law from traditional vagrancy laws, which it often had invalidated for vagueness. The majority observed that the Fifth Amendment protected only communications that were "testimonial, incriminating, and compelled." Although the justices accepted the idea that providing one's name could be "testimonial," they did not believe it was either compelled or incriminating.
