Legal Schnauzer Roger Shuler Victim of Police Brutality During Unlawful, Warrantless Arrest Oct. 23

This is Carol, Roger's wife. An Alabama deputy arrested Legal Schnauzer publisher Roger Shuler by entering the Shuler home without showing a warrant, documents reveal.

Shuler has been incarcerated in the Shelby County Jail since Oct. 23 on civil contempt charges stemming from a lawsuit filed by Republican political figure Rob Riley. See links to previous LS blog posts on the lawsuit here, here, here, here and here. Shuler also faces the resisting arrest charge that is due to be heard at 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 14 in Courtroom A by District Judge Ron Jackson. Public documents, however, show that Shuler did not resist arrest and, in fact, was a victim of police brutality, being thrown to a concrete floor three times by Deputy Chris Blevins.

The narrative from Blevins incident report on the arrest begins as follows:

"I had two arrest warrants for contempt of court on Roger Shuler in my vehicle. I observed  Mr. Shuler traveling towards his home at 5204 Logan Drive. Mr. Shuler pulled into his driveway and I drove in behind him."

Blevins' narrative never says that the arrest warrants left his vehicle or that he showed them to Roger Shuler. Shuler states that he does not recall Blevins telling him that there was an arrest warrant for him or even saying that Blevins was there to arrest Shuler. But it's undisputed based on Blevins own words in his narrative that he did not show an arrest warrant to Shuler. 

"How can I resist arrest when I was never shown lawful documentation that shows I was under arrest?" Shuler said. "Deputy Blevins is claiming this was a resisting arrest case, but the narrative actually shows it was a police brutality case. In his own words, he knocked me to a concrete floor three times and maced me in the face for no reason and without lawful grounds to even be inside my home. 

Deputy Blevins followed me into our driveway, we were both in vehicles and tried to cut me off from getting in the garage, but couldn't do that so I pulled my car into our garage and got out to find Deputy Blevins walking into our garage without showing a warrant. He asked me to step outside and I told him to get out of my house, that he had no lawful grounds to be there. The next thing I know I was being assaulted. This incident had a regular citizen done it would have been a felony assault, but because a deputy does it, he seems to think he can get away with it and charge me with resisting arrest." Shuler noted that the narrative also shows that he was the victim of an unconstitutional traffic stop. In Blevins' own words, Shuler was traveling in a vehicle and Blevins also was in a vehicle so this was a traffic stop and there were no indication in the narrative that Shuler committed any traffic violation that gave Blevins grounds to stop him.

"This is a classic sign of a police state that we have now here in Alabama and probably in other states too. There were no grounds to even stop me in my vehicle and certainly no grounds to come in my home and beat me up," Shuler said. "The coverage on this case has focused largely on the first amendment issues, but this is a fourth amendment issue, an unlawful seizure in my house that also goes to police brutality and should be deeply alarming to citizens not only in Alabama, but around the country. We'll be reporting more on this issue and particularly as we get up to my court date on Jan. 14."