Thursday, October 23, 2014

One year ago today, Alabama's Riley Machine caused me to be unlawfully beaten and arrested in my home


Rob Riley
Today marks one year since I was beaten inside my own home, Maced in the face, dragged out of my home, dumped in the backseat of a squad car, and incarcerated in an Alabama jail for five months--all because I write this blog about judicial and political wrongdoing, in a state that ranks No. 6 for corruption, according to a recent survey.

Ironically, the first anniversary of my arrest comes during the same week that House Speaker Mike Hubbard (R-Auburn), a prominent member of the Riley Political Machine, was arrested on corruption charges. According to published reports, the Riley Machine could be dismantled when the Lee County criminal probe and its aftermath are completed.

According to the indictment against Hubbard, former Governor Bob Riley and his daughter, Minda Riley Campbell, are among a number of prominent political and business figures to cut apparently corrupt deals that allowed Hubbard to use his public office for personal gain. Published reports have shown that Rob Riley, the former governor's son, was involved with Hubbard in funneling $100,000 in Poarch Creek Indian gaming money to Citizens for a Better Alabama, a group supposedly opposed to gaming.

Where's the irony? Rob Riley clearly orchestrated my arrest, and now we know that one of his closest allies, Mike Hubbard, faces 23 counts of criminally abusing the public trust.

My arrest and incarceration, which analysts from both the left and right have said runs contrary to more than 200 years of First Amendment law, grew from a defamation lawsuit that Rob Riley filed against me. It caused me to be the only journalist in the western hemisphere to be incarcerated in 2013. God only knows how many years it's been since a journalist has been arrested under similar circumstances in the United States. I'm doubtful that it ever has happened before.

As we showed in a recent post, Riley's lawsuit bore no resemblance to a standard defamation lawsuit, for at least three major reasons:

Mike Hubbard's mugshot
* Riley sought both a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction, but a foundational U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1931 says both represent unlawful prior restraints under the First Amendment. A 2012 case from Virginia drives home the same point.

* Riley did not seek a trial, but U.S. Supreme Court precedent holds defamation only can be found after a full adjudication on the merits. A 2007 California case spells out that principle in considerable detail.

* Riley did not seek a jury to hear his case, but longstanding law holds that defamation and other First Amendment matters must be heard by a jury. Otherwise, a single judge could impose censorship without a full hearing on the matter.

If Rob Riley's lawsuit was not about defamation, what was it about? I would suggest it was about intimidation of an online journalist the Riley Machine could not control. In the process, Team Riley engaged in gross civil wrongs and might well have stepped into criminal territory.

What specifically drove Rob Riley to file his lawsuit, and what was the real motivation behind it?

We will be addressing those questions, and more, in upcoming posts.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't believe it's been a year. Blessings to you and Carol.

Anonymous said...

Hope you will create a list of "mainstream" media sources who were brave, honest and objective enough to publish your arrest story - or of those who chose to ignore it. The list will show the world that without bloggers and alternative news sources, Americans are living totally beneath a blanket of corporate control and coverup.

Anonymous said...

For---10/22/2014 @ 7:20 PM
Before Sessions qualified to be elevated to sit in next chair to President Obama during [?] National Day of Prayer Breakfast where Doctor Ben Carson was featured speaker validates old adage, " a picture speaks a 1000 words".
During Sessions time as Alabama's Attorney General with his soon to be replacement were involved in going after Democrat Jim Folsom, records reveal Sessions did use resources out of Mobile, Baldwin County to pursue these ends; but what happened?
Records revealed that after exhausting Alabama treasures under the public guises of investigating Folsom the case very quietly disappeared; until Sessions elected U.S. Senator, upon arriving in Washington when asked about case by press refused to comment on; furthermore by then Bill Pryor had been appointed by Governor Fob James as Attorney General to succeed Sessions; when approached by press, Pryor stated that he never had any knowledge of there being a Folsom's case.
If this is not the case you seek, just add it to start-up list....

e.a.f. said...

it does seem much shorter of a time period, although for you and Mrs Schnauzer this mess must appear to have turned into an eternity.

What is amazing is you have continued to write. For all the pain this has caused you and your wife, you have persevered. It is truly amazing.

In the end, it is the greed of those like the Riley's and their "associates" who will not prevail.

When greed knows no bounds, eventually it will be stopped. People such as the Rileys and Hubbard eventually are their own worst enemies. Like Mother used to say, the chickens have come home to roost.

I look forward to the day you will report the corrupt of Alabama have gone to jail. You are truly an inspiration to others.

Anonymous said...

Once the brain chemistry has been altered, as was yours' by the experience you experienced, the chemistry doesn't get unaltered in the 'mind'. The mind the ancient practices and teachings, say, is in every cell of our physical body.

How, then, to balance the imbalance in your brain-mind chemistry?

That takes about 120 days and no less -- plus every day the rest of your life.

You have to learn how to take the 'energy' which all is energy, and make that 'chemistry' (i.e., "frequencies"), into balance.

Sounds quite easy, when indeed those that suffered far worse from the worst of evil tyrants in the past. Example, the Bush family connects back to the Vladimir Vampire impaler and torturer of the most vile, how shocking!

And, thus, consciousness mastery ("Sun Tsu" Art of War), is an art form which Americans haven't begun to understand, sadly.

Take your mind and imagine the finest instrument ever co-created via an energy source that can't be put into words.

Take your mind and imagine a spiral movement in every cell of your BODIES: feelings from the brain-mind and thinking from the heart-emotions, spiritual, material, and allow whatever the power of the unseen force communicates as a frequency of higher understanding.

According to the great General of China, who passed because he was so old, the Chinese were coming to America to at long last free the "Native Americans" who were the first to actually inhabit the "North American Continent".

Lots of real truth that has been kept from the USA, to keep the USA as a "colony-vassal" of the antiquities of Rome and of course the Vatican is the ruling class called "Jurisprudence".

Record your own voice, Roger, talking the power of what you have now that you understand ("with all thy getting, get understanding"), what the majority of humans suffer in a journey that should be heaven in earth. You understand.

legalschnauzer said...

Anon @ 10:25

Send an e-mail with your real name to rshuler3156@gmail.com, and I would be happy to discuss the applicable law with you. You apparently are the only analyst I'm aware of who thinks the judge's actions in the case were lawful. Look forward to finding out what you know that other analysts don't know.

Robby Scott Hill said...

Through seeking the old ways of the Cherokee, I have achieved the ability to astral travel outside my physical body in what most White Men term the nightly "sleep" of their natural lives. I have been to the eternal Cherokee Homeland. There is truth to what Anon 8:32 is saying. The Confederacy will never rise again, but the First Nations will with help from Red China. I witnessed a glimpse of that when a Shaman took me to a place where time does not exist for them and they can view all that has happened and all that will happen. My ancestors are there and I will be welcome there when my mixed race body is worn out if I so choose. As the White Man's Jesus told His Disciples, "I am going where you cannot go." I have a personal relationship with the Great Spirit.

Robby Scott Hill said...

Not only must a defamation claim be heard by a jury in Alabama, the jury is expressly empowered by the Constitution of 1901 to act as both the judge of the facts and the law. That means a defamation jury has the power to stop a witch hunt and give the circuit judge a big FUCK YOU by rendering a verdict inconsistent with published statues and case law aka jury nullification. Put me on your jury and you walk and there would be absolutely nothing Judges Claude Neilsen & Roy Moore or General Strange or Governor Bentley could do except kiss my fat ass. That's why no lawyer or judge in Marshall County will let me on their jury. They know I let folks go unless they are caught red handed AND all the elements in the code were proven beyond reasonable doubt.