Russia and America:

In State v. Aloi, Connecticut Appellate Court, Dec. 14, 2004,

Officer Jay Salvatore approached and advised the defendant that [a witness] had complained that the defendant was trespassing and possibly had damaged [a] fire truck. Salvatore requested that the defendant produce identification. The defendant did not immediately hand over his identification. The defendant also stated that he did not need to produce identification, that he was on public property and that “this isn’t Russia. I’m not showing you any . . . .”

The defendant was convicted, based on these actions, of interfering with a police officer, but the Appellate Court reversed. Refusing to identify oneself and saying “this isn’t Russia. I’m not showing you any [identification]” was perfectly legal under Connecticut law. Though Connecticut might have enacted laws that require certain people to identify themselves (though not necessarily to show an identification document) when told to do so by the police — see the Supreme Court Hiibel case from several months ago — the court concluded that Connecticut law didn’t require this, and that in any event the “this isn’t Russia” line wasn’t threatening and thus wasn’t criminal obstruction. (The defendant’s convictions for actually damaging the fire truck were upheld — as best I can tell, the defendant was indeed guilty of that.)

Or, in the words of Judge Kozinski, quoting a Russian,

There are places where, until recently, “everything which [was] not permitted [was] forbidden. . . . [W]hatever [was] permitted [was] mandatory. . . . Citizens were shackled in their actions by the universal passion for banning things.” Yeltsin Addresses RSFSR Congress of People’s Deputies, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Apr. 1, 1991, available in LEXIS, Nexis Library, OMNI file. Fortunately, the United States is not such a place, and we plan to keep it that way.