I do not begrudge the fan his $10,001 recovery or his attorneys at the NY Civil Liberties Union the $12,000 they will receive in legal fees (based on the 9 years I spent as a litigator, I’m pretty confident that fee is not excessive based on the time the attorneys must have spent on the case).  However, it might have been nice to see an eloquent court opinion in this case, quoting the Barnette decision.

  Donnie James White, 45, of Tampa, was arrested and charged with one count of public mutilation of the flag, a misdemeanor on July 9, 2007
    Newspapers reported the following: When White, 45, appeared in court Tuesday after a night in jail, an Assistant State Attorney made a case for the charge to stick.
    "He rubbed a flag across his body," that ASA said. "He stomped on it. He dragged it down the street."
    "Sounds like probable cause to me," said a Circuit Judge, usually a family law judge, who was filling in on the criminal side.
    The judge set bail at $500. White allegedly had previous arrests include criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.
   
Is there civil liability?

    White didn't post bail before prosecutors got him released at 11:25 a.m. Thursday.
    "The United States Supreme Court has made it clear that this type of statute is unconstitutional," spokeswoman Pam Bondi said. "The defendant's conduct is protected under the First Amendment."
    Criminal penalties for desecration of the flag were contained in Title 18 of the United States Code prior to 1989. The Supreme Court decision in Texas v. Johnson (June 21, 1989), held the statute unconstitutional. This statute was
amended when the Flag Protection Act of 1989 (Oct. 28, 1989) imposed a fine and/or up to I year in prison for knowingly mutilating, defacing, physically defiling, maintaining on the floor or trampling upon any flag of the United States. The Flag Protection Act of 1989 was struck down by the Supreme Court decision, United States vs. Eichman (June 11, 1990).
    Thinking the "public mutilation of a flag" statute remained viable, Tampa police officers in the past year accused two men in three separate instances of the first-degree misdemeanor.
    The charge carried a punishment of up to one year in jail and a maximum $1,000 fine. But the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office dropped all three cases, including that of Donnie White's on Thursday.
    Yet, according to the St. Petersburg Times: There was a flag mutilation case in Pinellas County in 2002. The defendant pleaded guilty to that charge and others and was put on probation.
    Arguably, the police, the judge and at least one prosecutor were ignorant of the law. There is an old saying that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." Is that true for police, judges and prosecutors?

Things have changed a lot regarding flag law. On November 9, 1918, the Kansas Supreme Court heard the appeal of Frederick Shumaker, Jr. for his conviction for having made to someone a "vulgar and indecent" comment about flags.  The justices voted unanimously to uphold Shumaker's conviction.

It is interesting to note at that time an early salute to the U.S. flag was the stiff-arm salute. It was not the modern hand-over-the-heart. Here is a photograph http://members.ij.net/rex/z1c.jpg

It was used in the USA for three decades before it was adopted by the National Socialist German Workers Party. Many people in the U.S. were persecuted for refusing to perform the stiff-arm salute. Children were expelled from government schools. People were even arrested and beaten.

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Here is a report from another site -

Tampa man is in jail for violating Florida's flag-desecration law.

Police say 45-year-old Donnie White stomped on the flag, sat on it, and "rubbed it on himself." He's charged under Florida statute 876.52, under the category "Criminal Anarchy, Treason, and Other Crimes Against Public Order" (check it out, it's almost entirely made up of laws aimed at the KKK):

Public mutilation of flag.--Whoever publicly mutilates, defaces, or tramples upon or burns with intent to insult any flag, standard, colors, or ensign of the United States or of Florida shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree.

First degree misdemeanors are punishable by a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. It isn't White's first clash with the cops; Hillsborough County records show several open container and disorderly conduct violations. Yet Donnie may have more than a public defender on his side this time around; flag desecration laws were struck down by the 1989 Texas v. Johnson Supreme Court case (one my Public Speaking students know very well).

I love America. I cheer for us in the Olympics and World Cup. I vote. I blow sh*t up on Independence Day. I have a flag I fly from time to time. Yet I recognize the semiotic difference between signifier and signified. Donnie White wasn't stomping on America; he was stomping on the symbol of an idea -- an idea that, by way of the First Amendment, protects his right to stomp on it (though I doubt Donnie had any particular political expression in mind).