Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Thursday, September 18, 2008
Teen cited for flag desecration; case could test free speech issues
WINONA, Minn. — Police issued a ticket Wednesday to a 14-year-old Winona Senior High School student for desecrating a U.S. flag.
The teen, whose name is withheld because he is a juvenile, admitted he planned to desecrate it when he bought it and knew that the act was illegal, police said.
Police say investigators spoke with a WSHS administrator Sept. 5 after the principal found some red tattered cloth in the boys’ bathroom and suspected it was a part of a flag.
Police spoke with a boy who was seen leaving the bathroom about the time the cloth was found. The boy had a similar piece of cloth hanging from his pocket.
The teen told officers a friend had torn up a flag and scattered pieces of it around the school before skipping class to go to the Rage Against the Machine concert Sept. 3 in Minneapolis during the Republican National Convention.
Officers spoke with the suspect, who said he bought the flag, wrote song lyrics on it, tore it to pieces and burned it with cigarettes. He said he knew it was illegal but did it to excite his friends who were unable to attend the concert.
Matt Bosworth, a Winona State University political science professor, said a Minnesota flag-desecration statute appears to go directly against U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have shot down flag desecration laws for infringing on the First Amendment right of free speech, including a 1989 case in which a man burned the flag
in protest outside the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas.
Bosworth said that if the writing on the flag was a death threat or if burning the flag was a public safety issue, someone might be justly prosecuted. But since the WSHS student didn’t appear to do that, Bosworth said, he might have a strong case to challenge the ticket.
Despite the Supreme Court’s rulings, almost every state has some sort of desecration law on the books, according to www. firstamendmentcenter.org, a Web site operated by Vanderbilt University.
According to the Minnesota statute, it is illegal for anyone to intentionally or publicly mutilate, defile or cast contempt on the flag, or to place words, marks or designs on the flag that don’t belong there.
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