{"id":17176,"date":"2010-02-03T09:21:16","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T14:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=17176"},"modified":"2010-02-03T09:21:16","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T14:21:16","slug":"why-stolen-valor-doesnt-violate-1st-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=17176","title":{"rendered":"Why Stolen Valor doesn’t violate 1st Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month I wrote about the Denver Post going squishy<\/a> on Richard Strandlof’s impending trial for a violation of the Stolen Valor Act. The Post wrote that convicting him would violate his 1st Amendment right to free speech. Well, apparently, there’s some case law that says otherwise.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Xavier Alvarez, while running for office on his local water board made the following statement on the campaign trail;<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a retired Marine of 25 years. I retired in the year 2001. Back in 1987, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. I got wounded many times by the same guy. I\u2019m still around.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aside from the sheer idiocy of the comment, Alvarez, in his motion to dismiss, stated;<\/p>\n

The law is overbroad for other reasons. It applies not only to mistakes but to
\ninnocent bragging as well. It includes satire. It would apply to person to claim they had
\nreceived a military decoration while playing a role in a play or movie. Certainly the
\ngovernment\u2019s interest in banning such speech is outweighed by the First Amendment
\nrights implicated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, when I saw Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge, as Gunny Hiway, state he wearing the Congressional Medal of Honor, I didn’t for a moment think he was trying to imply that he was awarded the CMH. In response, the court wrote;<\/p>\n

Here, this Court is presented with a false statement of fact, made knowingly and intentionally by Defendant at a Municipal Water District Board meeting. The content of the speech itself does not portray a political message, nor does it deal with a matter of public debate. Rather, it appears to be merely a lie intended to impress others present at the meeting. Such lies are not protected by the Constitution.<\/p>\n

As Defendant\u2019s statement does not merit the protection of the First Amendment, the statute under which Defendant is being prosecuted, 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 704, cannot be deemed unconstitutional as applied in this case. Furthermore, a legislative act is facially unconstitutional only when no set of circumstances exist under which the act would be valid. United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987). In finding that the application of 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 704 is not unconstitutional as applied here, this Court therefore concludes that the
\nAct is not unconstitutional on its face.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, nice try, Denver Post\/Strandlof\/Rutherford Institute…try again.<\/p>\n

Thanks to 1stCavRVN11B and POW Net for the .pdfs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month I wrote about the Denver Post going squishy on Richard Strandlof’s impending trial for … Why Stolen Valor doesn’t violate 1st Amendment<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phony-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}