The Court also held that the identification requirement did not violate Hiibel's Fifth Amendment rights since he did not articulate a 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 an articulated reasonable belief that giving a name could be incriminating.

On the evening of May 21, 2000, the sheriff's department in Humboldt County, Nevada received a report that a man had assaulted a woman in a red and silver GMC truck on Grass Valley Road.

Stop-and-identify laws have their roots in early English vagrancy laws under which suspected vagrants were subject to arrest unless they gave a "good account" of themselves; this practice, in turn, derived from the common-law power of any person to arrest suspicious persons and detain them until they gave "a good account" of themselves.

In Papachristou v. Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972), the Court held that a traditional vagrancy law was void for vagueness because its "broad scope and imprecise terms denied proper notice to potential offenders and permitted police officers to exercise unfettered discretion in the enforcement of the law."

[5] And in Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352 (1983), the Court struck down a California stop-and-identify law that required a suspect to provide "credible and reliable identification" upon request.

[6] The words "credible and reliable" were vague because they "provided no standard for determining what a suspect must do to comply with [the law], resulting in virtually unrestrained power to arrest and charge persons with a violation."

Here there is no question that the initial stop was based on reasonable suspicion, satisfying the Fourth Amendment requirements noted in Brown.

On the other hand, knowing the suspect's name may just as quickly confirm to the officer that the person is wanted for another, unrelated crime.

In cases such as this, where the police are investigating a domestic dispute, officers "need to know whom they are dealing with in order to assess the situation, the threat to their own safety, and possible danger to the potential victim."

Balancing the intrusion into the individual's privacy against the extent to which the stop-and-identify law promotes legitimate government interests, the Court concluded that the Fourth Amendment did not prohibit Nevada from making it a crime for a person detained under conditions of Terry to refuse to disclose his name to a police officer upon request.

There was no "articulated real and appreciable fear that [Hiibel's] name would be used to incriminate him, or that it 'would furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute' him."

Because Hiibel did not articulate reasonable belief that his name could be used as an incriminating piece of evidence, he could not invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege in refusing to disclose it.

Justice Breyer noted that the Court wrote that an 'officer may ask the [Terry] detainee a moderate number of questions to determine his identity and to try to obtain information confirming or dispelling the officer's suspicions.