Res Ipsa Loquitur

First of all, the rancher wasn't just some randomly stopped individual. Here's what really happened.

The sheriff’s department in Humboldt County, Nevada, received an afternoon telephone call reporting an assault. The caller reported seeing a man assault a woman in a red and silver GMC truck on Grass Valley Road. Deputy Sheriff Lee Dove was dispatched to investigate. When the officer arrived at the scene, he found the truck parked on the side of the road. A man was standing by the truck, and a young woman was sitting inside it. The officer observed skid marks in the gravel behind the vehicle, leading him to believe it had come to a sudden stop.

The officer approached the man and explained that he was investigating a report of a fight. The man appeared to be intoxicated. The officer asked him if he had “any identification on [him],” which we understand as a request to produce a driver’s license or some other form of written identification. The man refused and asked why the officer wanted to see identification. The officer responded that he was conducting an investigation and needed to see some identification. The unidentified man became agitated and insisted he had done nothing wrong. The officer explained that he wanted to find out who the man was and what he was doing there. After continued refusals to comply with the officer’s request for identification, the man began to taunt the officer by placing his hands behind his back and telling the officer to arrest him and take him to jail. This routine kept up for several minutes: the officer asked for identification 11 times and was refused each time. After warning the man that he would be arrested if he continued to refuse to comply, the officer placed him under arrest.

Puts the entire 'refusal to tell name' situation in a different light, doesn't it?

Next, he was charged with“willfully resist[ing], delay[ing], or obstruct[ing] a public officer in discharging or attempting to discharge any legal duty of his office” in violation of Nev. Rev. Stat. (NRS) §199.280....said legal duty of the police office is found in Nevada statute Section 171.123, which states:

“1. Any peace officer may detain any person whom the officer encounters under circumstances which reasonably indicate that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime. .....

“3. The officer may detain the person pursuant to this section only to ascertain his identity and the suspicious circumstances surrounding his presence abroad. Any person so detained shall identify himself, but may not be compelled to answer any other inquiry of any peace officer.”

In other words, a Nevada cop can ask for your name and what you're doing and you have to tell him your name. They can't stop you randomly, but only if there's suspicious circumstances.

The Nevada courts (traffic, district & appellate) all agreed that this requirement didn't violate the rancher's 4th or 5th Amendment rights. (This guy spent a helluva lot of money appealing a $250 misdemeanor didn't he?) The US Supremes, after a long and rambling exposition of the history of the 4th Amendment right of protection against unreasonable search & seizure, agrees, saying:

It is clear in this case that the request for identification was “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified” the stop. Terry, supra, at 20. The officer’s request was a common-sense inquiry, not an effort to obtain an arrest for failure to identify after a Terry stop yielded insufficient evidence. The stop, the request, and the State’s requirement of a response did not contravene the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment.

May I just say "Well, Duh". This case wouldn't even make a good Constitutional Law 4th Amendment exam question. It's hard to imagine how this guy could've been any more suspicious.

Next, the rancher argues that requiring him to give his name violates his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. Justice Stevens tries to argue in his dissenting opinion that it is, because you can find out all kinds of information about someone if you have their name. A name can lead to all kinds of incriminating evidence, he says, and so falls under the protection of the 5th Amendment. Interesting reasoning, but he lost. (Thank goodness. That particular little 'penumbra' could be extended to cover just about everything.)

Answering a request to disclose a name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances.....Even witnesses who plan to invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege answer when their names are called to take the stand.

I would also have pointed out that the policeman could've also legally ran the truck tags and found out even more information than just the guy's name. But then I'm not on the Supreme Court.

So far.

In summary, if the nice policeman asks you, tell him your name. And don't believe everything you read in media reports.