A military hero impostor who duped Colorado’s veteran community was let off the hook after a federal judge in Denver on Friday ruled the federal law making it illegal to lie about military service violates the First Amendment.

In his written opinion, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Blackburn said that to punish Rick Strandlof, who posed in military circles as a survivor of the Sept. 11 attacks and wounded Iraq war veteran, would be unconstitutional since the federal Stolen Valor Act under which he is charged seeks to restrict speech.

“As written, the Act criminalizes the mere utterance of the false statement, regardless whether anyone is harmed thereby. It is merely fraud in the air, untethered from any underlying crime at all,” Blackburn wrote. “The Act, in other words, is justified by a desire to curb speech about a specific topic. I therefore have little trouble in concluding that the Stolen Valor Act constitutes a content-based restriction on speech.”

His ruling came after Strandlof’s attorney argued the case be dismissed.

“Obviously, we think this is the right decision, or we wouldn’t have been making the objections to the statute to begin with,” Bob Pepin told the Denver Post. Pepin said Strandlof has been living in a halfway house in Denver while his case is in the courts.

But in a similar case in California, a federal judge ruled the law constitutional. The defendant in that case, Xavier Alvarez, is awaiting his appeal in the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals.

The contradictory rulings makes the issue likely to eventually land in front of the Supreme Court, those familiar with the cases said.

Using the alias Rick Duncan, Strandlof had served as a leader of a statewide veterans group until he was exposed by other members of the group as a former psychiatric patient. His often emotional stories about being a wounded Marine captain and 9/11 survivor proved false.

Strandlof was arrested in October in San Diego and was facing up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

The 2006 Stolen Valor Act was written by and lobbied for by Pamla Sterner, a former Colorado State University at Pueblo student who turned a term paper for a policy analysis class into a personal quest to make posing as a military hero illegal.

Sterner said posing as a veteran hurts real veterans’ valor and credibility.

“The real pandora’s box about this whole thing is, people could lie about anything and be protected by the Constitution,” said Sterner, who moved from Pueblo to Alexandria, Va. in January. “I’m not sure why Judge Blackburn didn’t seem to understand that.”

“It took us quite a bit to actually get this passed in the first place. It is just ridiculous that on a technicality, someone is getting away with violating it.”

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Denver told the Denver post a decision on whether to appeal would be made by the U.S. Justice Department in Washington and prosecutors in Denver.

Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., who sponsored the Stolen Valor Act in the House, predicted Friday’s decision will be overturned on appeal, the Denver Post reported.

“This is an issue of fraud plain and simple,” Salazar said in a press release. “The individuals who violate this law are those who knowingly portray themselves as pillars of the community for personal and monetary gain.”

Rick Glen Strandlof, aka Rick Duncan, who claimed he was an ex-Marine wounded in Iraq and received the Purple Heart and Silver Star. He founded an organization in Colorado Springs that advocated for homeless veterans, and members of the group accused him of being an impostor. A federal judge ruled on Friday, July 16, that a law making it illegal to lie about being a war hero is unconstitutional because it violates free speech. Photo by Colorado Springs Police

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