The House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee advanced legislation Wednesday that would criminalize both giving false identifying information to police and refusing to provide it when legally requested.
Representative Ron Bolton, R-Northport, introduced House Bill 34, which expands Alabama’s false-name statute by adding date of birth to the list of details a person must supply truthfully to an officer upon request.
The bill also creates a new Class C misdemeanor for anyone who “knowingly refuses to give the law-enforcement officer his or her name, address, date of birth, and an explanation of his or her actions.”
Bolton told members he had second thoughts about original language in the measure and offered an amendment stripping a requirement that individuals explain their purpose for being in a given place. The committee adopted the amendment without objection.
“The original bill, as it came out, it also had in here that a person had to explain their purpose of what they were doing there. I don’t really feel comfortable with that,” Bolton said.
Officers may stop someone and demand the information only when they have “reasonable suspicion that criminal activity has occurred, is occurring, or is about to occur.” Representative Thomas Jackson, D-Thomasville, asked how an officer decides what behavior justifies such a stop.
Bolton cited long-standing Supreme Court precedent. “In the Supreme Court rulings going back many decades, we have a standard of reasonable suspicion. That is when an officer sees something that he, in his experience and training, suspects that someone is committing a criminal offense,” Bolton said.
He confirmed the bill applies when an officer reasonably suspects either a felony or a misdemeanor; existing law had limited the authority to felony investigations.
Bolton said the measure is designed to standardize charging practices across the state. Rather than booking refusals under the broad offense of obstructing governmental operations, HB34 creates a narrow crime tied specifically to withholding identifying information.
