"The overwhelming focus of post-Halter flag desecration enforcement on incidents with political significance is further highlighted by the clustering of cases around the period of World War I and the postwar Red Scare and World War II, which were times of intensified patriotic-nationalistic fervor and decreased tolerance for dissent. ... The most extreme penalty for oral flag desecration was handed down under Montana's draconian 1918 law: E. V. Starr was sentenced during World War I to ten to twenty years at hard labor in the state penitentiary, along with a $500 fine, for refusing a mob's demands that he kiss the flag (a favorite wartime vigilante punishment for the allegedly disloyal) and for terming it "nothing but a piece of cotton" with "a little paint" and "some other marks" on it which "might be covered with microbes."16"
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Earnest V. Starr
Earnest V. Starr (28 May 1870 – unknown) was a farmer and homesteader notable for being tried, convicted, and sentenced to 10–20 years of hard labour in a state penitentiary as well as fined $500 plus court costs for the crime of sedition, because he uttered "contemptuous and slurring language about the flag and language calculated to bring the flag into contempt and disrepute."
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