The decision, made without comment, lets stand the conviction and 12-year-sentence imposed on Michael Brad Magleby. Lawyers for the 33-year-old man had argued that his actions were constitutionally protected speech involving the symbolic use of fire.

Melodie Rydalch, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Salt Lake City, said the denial is good news.

"That means this case, which is obviously very important to us, has finally come to end," Rydalch said.

The case began the evening of Sept. 6, 1996, when friends gathered at Magleby's house for a barbecue and began discussing how they disliked people of other races, according to court records.

Magleby told the group that some Tongans had moved into the neighborhood.

Magleby and a teenage guest then built a cross, spray-painted it black and doused it with gasoline to burn at the newcomers' home. However, they changed their minds when they spotted several men outside the house and instead took the cross to the home of a black man and his white wife and lighted it there.

His attorneys said Magleby is not a racist and argued that the cross burning was an aberration and just an attempt to impress friends. In addition, they said the defendant didn't even know that one of the home's occupants was black.

However, a jury convicted Magleby of five federal charges connected to the cross burning and U.S. District Judge Dee Benson handed down the 12-year sentence. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver rejected his appeals twice before the case was brought to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Magleby is incarcerated in a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas. He is scheduled to be released in 2010.

pmanson@sltrib.com