“In an important win for Fourth Amendment advocates, a Virginia man’s arrest for refusing to show identification to the police has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal appellate court.”
…
” “To be sure, officers may always request someone’s identification during a voluntary encounter,” the court said. “But they may not compel it by threat of criminal sanction. Allowing a county to criminalize a person’s silence outside the confines of a valid seizure would press our conception of voluntary encounters beyond its logical limits. We therefore decline to do so here.”
If Wingate had been lawfully detained by the police, the 4th Circuit said, then the officer could require him to show ID. But that was not what happened here.”