Lawyers File 1st Challenge of Flag-Burning Law

Attorneys for four people accused of burning a U.S. flag made the first constitutional challenge Wednesday to the Flag Protection Act of 1989.

Mark Haggerty, Carlos Garza, Darius Allen Strong and Jennifer Campbell are charged with burning a U.S. flag outside a Seattle Post Office shortly after midnight last Oct. 28, the day the flag protection law took effect. U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein said she would issue a ruling in several days on the constitutional challenge.

Congress passed the law in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that burning a U.S. flag is protected under First Amendment guarantees of free speech.

New York lawyer William Kunstler argued that Congress singled out all common forms of protest against the flag while allowing it to be disposed of by burning when it becomes old and worn.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Bartlett said the three men and one woman charged in the case were not arrested because of their political beliefs but because of the action they took: burning the flag.

Another defense attorney, David Cole, said if Rothstein denies the motion to dismiss he will appeal directly to the Supreme Court, as provided under the act.

Trial for the four defendants is set for Feb. 26. In addition to the flag-desecration counts, each is charged with one count of depredation of U.S. government property. Conviction on the flag-desecration and destruction-of-property counts each carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

President Bush had sought a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning.