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Ian Lake has moved on. State law is another matter.
Five years after Lake was charged with criminal libel for comments he made about his Milford High School principal and classmates on a Web site, he declined to discuss the case he has left behind. His family moved back to California. He has married. He is deployed as a soldier in Iraq.
But the criminal libel statute Lake's lawsuit overturned is still on the books - despite the fact that Utah's Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 2002.
For three years, state legislators just didn't get around to repealing it. Salt Lake City Democratic Sen. Scott McCoy plans to draft a bill to remedy that during the 2006 Legislature.
The libel law isn't the only unconstitutional or unenforceable statute in the state code book. Five laws restricting abortion, the state's sodomy and fornication statutes, a law prohibiting "abuse" of the American flag and a statute declaring Internet religious ordinations invalid also languish untouched. Similar laws in other states, or the Utah statutes themselves, all have been declared unconstitutional by a state or federal court.
Most of the time, it doesn't matter.
County prosecutors usually know better than to file a charge of fornication. But deputy sheriffs and police officers rely on the state code to determine whether to write a ticket. And the code doesn't note which parts are unconstitutional and which aren't. So charges of sodomy and flag desecration and criminal libel periodically re-emerge. Most have to be dropped.
"Every time that happens, it grinds on me," said Salt Lake District Attorney David Yocom, who eventually dropped a flag desecration charge against a Salt Lake County man who burned a smiley face into the Stars and Stripes to protest the judicial system.
"They ought to have a special day at the Legislature where they repeal unconstitutional and unenforced laws. It would be a very busy day," said Yocom.
McCoy is chipping off just one arcane law.
Utah's criminal libel statute dates back to statehood and is based on someone defaming another in writing "maliciously or with ill will or spite." But it lacks the standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964 that require prosecutors to prove "actual malice" and provide that the truth is an "absolute defense." McCoy plans to repeal the libel statute entirely and add the court's defamation standards to Utah's 30-year-old criminal defamation statute.
"I want to take the deadwood out," McCoy said. "And at the least, I want to make sure that our criminal defamation statute has the standard that complies with the U.S. Supreme Court decision."
David Lake, Ian's father, is glad McCoy is cleaning house. But his feelings about his son's landmark case are mixed.
"We spent a lot of money fighting that. I wish we hadn't had to," Lake said. "Ian's case should never have gone to a criminal court."
South Salt Lake Democratic Sen. Gene Davis also has requested a bill to repeal the state's ban on Internet ordinations. Ordinations by fax, telephone or in person are allowed.
Few other lawmakers are rushing to clear out the tangle of meaningless laws. Legislators are well aware of the problem. But many are reluctant to act. Some of the laws, like the libel statute, are not particularly sensitive. Others, like the abortion statutes, sodomy law and ban on fornication are sacrosanct: codified statements of collective morality. They will never be enforced. At the same time, their chances of repeal are virtually non-existent.
In the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff filed a friend of the court brief supporting the Texas sodomy law.
Such laws have "significant pedagogical value," Shurtleff said in the brief. "Laws teach people what they should and should not do, based upon the experience of their elders." Shurtleff acknowledged Utah prosecutors were unlikely to charge anyone with sodomy.
Still, a few errant charges manage to slip through.
Lake was charged with libel in 2000 after calling the school principal the town "drunk" and some female classmates "sluts" on a Web site. His computer was seized and a judge ordered then-16-year-old Lake sent to juvenile detention for a week for his own safety. When he was released, he went to live with his grandparents in California. But Lake prevailed in court two years later when the Utah Supreme Court declared the statute unconstitutional.
"What Ian did was morally wrong. He knows it was wrong. But he did it in a legal manner," said David Lake. "The county taxpayers paid a hefty price for a losing case that the prosecutor never should have pursued."
In April, a sheriff's deputy cited a man in the Salt Lake County case that Yocom abandoned. Two years earlier, Park City resident Beth Fratkin spray-painted a peace sign on a flag to protest the war in Iraq. Police responded to a complaint about the banner. The city attorney ultimately decided not to prosecute.
And last year, an 18-year-old Tooele High School baseball player was charged with sodomy in a sex-abuse case involving girls and five other team members. Washington County prosecutors charged six players with sexual exploitation of a minor.
American Civil Liberties Union of Utah Director Dani Eyer said Utahns - including law enforcement officers - are at a disadvantage with unenforceable statutes still on the books. "It just doesn't give adequate notice to the public," Eyer said.
Utah Senate President John Valentine backs McCoy's effort to streamline the state code. In previous years, Valentine has sponsored "revisors statutes" to clean out technical errors. In some cases, lawmakers want the lawsuits to wind their way to the nation's top court for a "final determination." Some legislators believe Utah's statutes are just different enough to withstand legal challenge. But Valentine acknowledges some of the unenforced laws are simply untouchable. He personally is squeamish about anyone making a political statement using the flag.
"Even if it's allowed under the Constitution, I have a hard time being objective on that one," Valentine said.
Civil rights attorney Brian Barnard, who represents two men charged with flag desecration and another challenging Utah's sodomy statute, believes lawmakers want to keep the unenforceable laws on the books to label and shame those who step out of line.
Prosecutors, police officers and sheriff's deputies are left to distinguish between which parts of Utah's code can be enforced and which are a waste of their time.
"It would be very helpful if they took those that are not being enforced off the books," Yocom said. "But there are some that, obviously, they won't touch with a 20-foot pole."