(No offense to REAL hillbillies)
Mountain Xpress
Duncan regrets flag-desecration incident, is investigating
by David Forbes on 07/30/2007
Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan told the Xpress this afternoon that he regrets the turn of events surrounding the July 25 arrests of activists Mark and Deborah Kuhn on flag-desecration charges. Meanwhile, Xpress has learned the flag law was declared unconstitutional in a 1971 N.C. district court ruling.
“I regret that it happened this way — we’re not trying to enforce that statute,” Duncan said. “We had internal affairs investigators in the neighborhood today. I’ve met with the Kuhns personally. We’re talking to the District Attorney, we’re talking to their attorney and we’re trying to get this resolved.”
“We would normally not have handled the situation that way,” Duncan said. “We’re looking into it right now and trying to see how we can proceed to make sure an incident like this doesn’t happen again.”
Meanwhile, today Xpress learned that, in addition to U.S. Supreme Court decisions ruling that political uses of the flag are protected speech, North Carolina’s statute was declared unconstitutional in a 1971 ruling by the District Court of Western North Carolina. “Enacted during a period of national chauvinistic fervor, it
is an uncommonly bad statute,” Circuit Judge James Craven Jr. wrote in the ruling. “Despite our respect, and indeed love, for these symbols of state and nation, we are compelled to hold the statute unconstitutional.”
http://www.mountainx.com/news/2007/dunc … estigating
Yet the local “News” rag still advocates people turning in their neighbors to the Sheriffs dept:
Asheville Citizen Times
"The law says
State law on desecration of the U.S. flag
It shall be unlawful for any person willfully and knowingly to cast contempt upon any flag of the United States or upon any flag of North Carolina by public acts of physical contact including, but not limited to, mutilation, defiling, defacing or trampling. Any person violating this section shall be deemed guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor.
• To report flag desecrations, people can call the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office at 255-5000."
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770725118
2/3 down the page, R side.
It is still there nearly 6 hours after I called the editor of the paper who stated he wasn’t aware it was there, and would have it removed at once.