Desecration of flags — penalty
Known as the Missouri Criminal Street Gangs Prevention Act
The act spans §§ 578–578 (68 sections).
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Texas v. Johnson (1989)
Most recently applied in Frank Snider, III v. Matthew Peters (May 2014)
Effective: 01 Jan 2017, 2 histories, see footnote; (L. 1980 H.B. 965 § 1, A.L. 2014 S.B. 491)
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
1. A person commits the offense of desecrating a flag if he or she purposefully and publicly mutilates, defaces, defiles, tramples upon or otherwise desecrates the national flag of the United States or the state flag of the state of Missouri.
2. The offense of desecrating a flag is a class A misdemeanor.
Official source: Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Reproduced from public-domain Missouri statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.