It was in the news that many anarchists arrested here in the Twin Cities recently refused to identify themselves or gave patently false names. I was wondering: doesn’t a writ of habeus corpus have to name the person whose release is being demanded? Wouldn’t a writ naming “prisoner aka John Doe” be invalid on grounds of amounting to a blank warrent? If such a person demanded a lawyer, could the police say “Prisoner? What prisoner?”, either de jure or de facto?
IANACop, but my understanding is that if multiple people offer the same alias they are numbered. So the 15th person to identify himself as “John Doe” would be “John Doe 15.” So a h.c. petition naming “John Doe 15” would be effective, in my non-lawyerly opinion.
Yes, I’ve heard of them being numbered in mass-arrest situations. In some states, they can be charged with obstruction of justice or with providing false information to police officers. If they’ve ever been arrested before (not unlikely, for some “pro” anarchists/activists/protestors), their fingerprints are going to get them ID’d in short order even if they refuse to provide a name to police.
A cop once told me about a defendant who gave the name of a friend when arrested. Turns out the friend had an even longer record than he did, AND was wanted for some serious crimes! The defendant, told this, pretty quickly remembered his own name…