criminal-law criminal-record
How does the justice system handle cases against persons who cannot be identified?
<p>In a general sense, in the United States, how would the court system proceed in a criminal case against a person who cannot be and refuses to be identified?</p>

<p>For example: a person is arrested and charged with a fairly significant offense (let's say armed robbery). However, he will not give his name and has no identification on his person, police cannot discover his identity through their systems (fingerprinting, etc), and no one comes forward who knows him.</p>

<p>How would the average court system handle this case?</p>

<p>If it is related, how would the defendants Fifth Amendment rights apply to their decision to refuse to identify themselves? Are they within their rights to do so throughout the entirety of the proceedings, or at some point are they at risk of being in contempt?</p>

<p>Lastly, would this hypothetical unnamed defendant carry a criminal record after they served their sentence if found guilty, and their identity never discovered, and how could that be possible?</p>

<p>There are cases out there like Unnamed Petitioners v. Connors, State v. Unnamed Defendant, Williams v. Unnamed Defendant; there have been indictments of John Doe who was only identified via a DNA profile. Not knowing the actual name of a person wouldn't pose a problem per se, and it seems that when the name is not known, John or Jane Doe is generally filled in. There was in instance a year ago in the UK where rioters who refused to identify themselves, and prosecution decided to drop the case.</p>

<p>In the US, at least, it happens from time to time that a person is tried, convicted, sentenced and served out a prison term without being identified.</p>

<p><a href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/nyregion/unidentified-defendants-have-bedeviled-courts-for-decades.html" rel="nofollow">It's not really handled any differently from cases where the defendant's identity is known, though</a>.</p>
