A crime deserving of a beating

Adam Liptak has an article in The New York Times about lying:

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Congress can make it a crime to lie about having earned a military decoration. The case arose from the prosecution of Xavier Alvarez under a 2005 law, the Stolen Valor Act. Alvarez, an elected member of the board of directors of a water district in Southern California, described his background at a public meeting in 2007. “I’m a retired Marine of 25 years,” he said. “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.”
That was all false, and Alvarez was charged with violating the law, which makes it a crime to falsely say that one has “been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the armed forces of the United States”. Alvarez argued that his remarks were protected by the First Amendment.
The trial judge rejected that defense, saying the First Amendment does not apply to statements the speaker knows to be false. The judge sentenced Alvarez to three years of probation.
A divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, reversed the ruling.
Judge Milan D. Smith Jr., writing for the majority, said that a ruling upholding the law would set a dangerous precedent. “There would be no constitutional bar,” Judge Smith wrote, “to criminalizing lying about one’s height, weight, age, or financial status on Match.com or Facebook, or falsely representing to one’s mother that one does not smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, is a virgin, or has not exceeded the speed limit while driving on the freeway. The sad fact is,” he wrote, “most people lie about some aspects of their lives from time to time.”
The full Ninth Circuit declined to rehear the case. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski concurred, saying that a ruling against Alvarez would be “terrifying,” as it would allow “the truth police” to censor “the white lies, exaggerations, and deceptions that are an integral part of human intercourse.”
In a dissent, Judge Ronald M. Gould said the “lack of any societal utility in tolerating false statements of military valor” justified the law. He rejected the slippery slope argument, saying that “making false statements about receiving military honors is a carefully defined subset of false factual statement not meriting constitutional protection.”
In urging the justices to hear the case, United States v. Alvarez, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. argued that Congress was entitled “to guard against dilution of the reputation and meaning of the medals. The law,” Verrilli continued, “serves a compelling interest in protecting the integrity of the military honors program, thereby preserving the medals’ ability to foster morale and esprit de corps in the military.”
The central question in the case is whether statements known by the speaker to be false are entitled to First Amendment protection. In defamation and fraud cases, Verrilli wrote, the requirement of knowing falsity is sufficient to ensure adequate “breathing space” for statements that should be protected by the First Amendment, notably including criticism of the government. That same analysis should apply to false statements about medals, he said.
The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has generally been sympathetic to free speech claims, ruling in favor of protesters at military funerals, the makers of violent video games, and the distributors of materials showing cruelty to animals. Later this term, the court will consider whether the Federal Communications Commission may regulate cursing and nudity on broadcast television.

Rico says lying about military service is one thing, and the Marines he knows would be happy to take care of that on their own in some dark alley, but lying about winning the Congressional Medal of Honor? A hanging offense...