The Los Angeles Police Protective League (PPL) has, as a "public service," published an announcement concluding "that when you are detained by a police officer, you must provide identification when asked to do so, or face arrest for obstructing or delaying a police officer." This conclusion is incorrect, and we want to set the record straight on this important issue that has recently been at the center of public debate.

The PPL cites Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District of Humboldt County, 542 U.S. 177 (2004) as upholding "the requirement to provide identification to an officer during a detention" and "ruling a police officer has a right to request identification during a valid detention."

In Hiibel, however, the question was whether a state may compel a suspect to disclose his name during a lawful stop. That case arose in Nevada, which had a stop and identify statute that made it illegal for a person detained by the police not to identify him or herself. There, the defendant refused to identify himself and was convicted and fined under the statute. He appealed, arguing, among other things, that the Fourth Amendment established a right to refuse to answer questions during a stop.

In upholding the conviction, the Supreme Court emphasized the Nevada law. According to the Court, "the Fourth Amendment itself cannot require a suspect to answer questions. This case concerns a different issue, however. Here, the source of the legal obligation arises from Nevada state law, not the Fourth Amendment."

Moreover, the Court emphasized that the state law required no more than answering an officer's request to disclose a name. The Court concluded that "[a] state law requiring a suspect to disclose his name in the course of a valid [] stop is consistent with the Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures."

We think it's clear that because California has no stop identify and statute -- and, therefore, in the words of the Supreme Court, has not created a legal obligation requiring a suspect to answer questions -- you cannot be arrested for failing to provide identification when detained by a police officer. (This is not true in the case of a motorist, however, as motorists are required under state law to have a license when driving.)

If you'd like more support for our position, we suggest that you consider what the State of California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General (AG) has concluded. The Office of the AG publishes the California Peace Officers Legal Sourcebook (CPOLS), a "training and resource manual for state and local law enforcement covers state and federal laws and constitutional issues involving the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments." In it, the AG concludes:

The Court [in Hiibel] upheld as constitutional a Nevada "stop and identify" statute and found that a detainee's failure to identify himself could be the basis for a lawful arrest under a companion statute almost identical to Penal Code section 148[, which makes it unlawful to resist, delay, or obstruct an police officer in the discharge of his or her duties].

Unlike Nevada and other states, California does not have a statute mandating that a detainee identify himself, and that obligation cannot be read into Penal Code section 148. Although you may take whatever steps are necessary under the circumstances to ascertain the identity of a person you have lawfully detained, Hiibel does not provide a means of arresting someone for failing or refusing to identify himself. The [United States Court of Appeals for the] Ninth Circuit has ruled that a suspect's failure to identify himself cannot, on its own, justify an arrest: "the use of Section 148 to arrest a person for refusing to identify herself during a lawful [] stop violates the Fourth Amendment's proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures." CPOLS, section 2.14a (citations omitted) (emphasis in original).

We add, moreover, that even if Hiibel’s holding applied in California, and it clearly does not, it provides no support for the PPL's conclusion that when you are detained by a police officer, you must provide identification. Hiibel makes clear that, where there is an obligation to answer questions, it is satisfied by stating your name, rather than providing your identification.
 

Hector Villagra is executive director at the ACLU of Southern California. Follow Hector on Twitter.

By Katherine Williams
Last week, two men who had been sentenced to death 30 years ago were proven innocent by DNA testing. Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown were teenagers when they were wrongly accused of the brutal rape and murder of a child in North Carolina. One of the most shocking parts of the story is that prosecutors hid evidence that linked a convicted rapist to the murder, a man who went on to kill another child while McCollum and Brown were wrongly imprisoned.

The case is a stark reminder of the dual harms of wrongful conviction: when the innocent are imprisoned, the guilty go free.
Take action right now: urge Governor Brown to sign three bills to help the innocent people wrongly imprisoned here in California!
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 22 percent of the 1,427 wrongful convictions that have resulted in exoneration were due to false or misleading forensic evidence and 46 percent were due to official misconduct. Unaccounted for is the stark reality that wrongful convictions rarely result in exonerations.
While no single law can remedy this profound injustice, there are three bills before Gov. Jerry Brown right now that will make significant advances in California towards a system that accounts for mistakes and allows for an evolution: a day where no man or woman suffers from a preventable wrongful conviction.
These bills are:

• SB 980 (Lieu) will make post-conviction DNA testing more efficient, more effective, and more consistently applied across California.

• AB 885 (Ammiano) will permit a court to give a special instruction to the jury in cases where the prosecutor intentionally or knowingly fails to disclose evidence that the defendant may be innocent.

• SB 1058 (Leno) will assure that people who are wrongfully convicted because of expert testimony can have their convictions reversed when that expert later admits he or she was wrong, or is proven wrong by new research.

Supported by the ACLU of California, the two Innocence Projects in California, and California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, all three bills were introduced to respond to the fact that haphazard and dishonest applications of evidence – even intentional withholding of evidence – victimizes the innocent and fails to bring true perpetrators to justice.
Strong bi-partisan leadership sent these bills to the governor. All three bills garnered vocal support from both parties, notably from Republican Senator Joel Anderson (R-Temecula) who, on the floor of the California Senate this August, said about SB 1058 that, “It is egregious to allow a guilty man to walk free, but it is even more egregious to put an innocent man in jail.”
A few days later he added: “Let’s not hide behind laws that incarcerate innocent folks,” as AB 885 came up for a vote.
Anderson spoke right to the fact that absent a change in the law, California could potentially incarcerate more innocent individuals and continue practices that make it practically impossible for those individuals to prove their innocence.
Join us in urging Gov. Brown to sign SB 1058, SB 980 and AB 885, to make wrongful convictions a relic of our criminal justice system!
Katherine Williams is legislative advocate at the ACLU of California's Sacramento Legislative Office.

By Gil Garcetti
Support for the death penalty in California is at the lowest point in half a century. And not only that – a new Field poll shows that this level of support is falling rapidly.

In 2011, support for the death penalty was at 68%. Yet in just 3 years it has tumbled by 13% to a just a small majority. What’s even more striking is that support has fallen as much in the last 3 years as it has in the last 30. And when you consider that people generally favor alternatives to executions—such as life in prison without the possibility of parole, where inmates have to work and pay restitution to victims’ families—even those who might support the death penalty in principle are turning away from it in practice.
The tide is turning and today’s news offers more proof that Californians are quickly moving in the right direction on this issue. In fact, I am one of those very Californians.
As the former district attorney of Los Angeles County, a county that sends more people to death row than the entire state of Texas, I know that the death penalty is deeply emotional, highly divisive, and very political. However, both sides of the death penalty debate can agree on one thing: California’s death penalty system is broken beyond repair.
In my 32 years with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, including eight years as the county’s elected district attorney, I prosecuted the most egregious murder cases to the fullest. I sent many people to death row, believing that I had served the people of Los Angeles—that I had sought justice.
Fast forward to present day—nearly 15 years later—I view the death penalty in a different light. I know that the death penalty is a costly charade that doesn’t make us any safer or deter crime. What’s more, it will always carry with it one fatal risk: executing an innocent person.
The writing is on the wall: the death penalty is quickly losing support among Californians and it is high time we replace it. We can’t go on with a system that is riddled with insurmountable practical and legal problems and fails to deliver on the promise of swift justice.
The only workable solution is to replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. That’s justice that works for everyone.
Gil Garcetti is former district attorney of Los Angeles County.