My wife gets arrested for failing to appear at court date for which she received no notice, on assault charge involving Missouri deputy who broke HER arm

Carol Tovich Shuler: The face
of a "cop assaulter"

My wife, Carol, was arrested yesterday in Greene County, Missouri, for "failure to appear," even though the public record shows she never was notified that she had a court date.

We found out last Friday that Carol had been charged with "assaulting a law enforcement officer" and trespass, based on an incident where she was surrounded by three deputies, and one of them grabbed her, slammed her to the ground, and viciously yanked on her arms -- breaking her left arm so severely that it required trauma surgery. What are the take-home lessons from our experiences of yesterday?

(1) You can be arrested for failure to appear, even though the court admits it never notified you.

(2) The victim of an assault can be charged with assault, as long as the actual perpetrator is a "law-enforcement professional."

(3) Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott, who saw his deputies brutalize Carol from five feet away and then declared, "She assaulted a police officer," is a lying, cheating, crooked criminal son of a bitch, and we intend to prove it. (Oh, did we forget to mention that he's a bastard, too?)

(4) Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson, who filed charges against Carol on the last possible day to do so, is just as bad as Arnott.

This is the state of America's "justice system" and a classic example of so-called fiscal conservatives (Arnott and Patterson both are Republicans) who waste taxpayer money on outrageous scams like this.

Carol spent about six hours in custody, but she never was actually incarcerated, and never changed into jail clothes etc. The fine folks at Hilton Bail Bonding arranged for her release, the cost was $100, and Carol received a court date -- yes, she actually was notified this time.

We soon will go into more details about the facts, law, and curious timing of this whole charade. But for now, let's focus on the official record at case.net. If you go to case number 1631-CR07731, you will find this notation on 9/21/2016:

09/21/2016 -- Returned Mail--Undeliverable

Document ID - 16-CRSU-6650; Served To - SHULER, CAROL T; Server - ; Served Date - 19-SEP-16; Served Time - 00:00:00; Service Type - First Class Mail; Reason Description - Other; Service Text - Attempted - not known; unable to forward./jar

Once you wade through the administrative gibberish, it's pretty clear what this says: The court -- apparently unable to afford a process server -- sent notice of the court date via first-class mail, and it came back as "undeliverable" and "unable to forward."

If you click on "Parties and Attorneys," it becomes clear why the notice was undeliverable. Her address is listed as:

SHULER , CAROL T , Defendant
4070 S FORT AVE
SPRINGFIELD, MO 65802

That was our address when we were unlawfully evicted on September 9, 2015, by . . . the Greene County Sheriff, with Jim Arnott (his own bastard self) on the scene. It's the place where one of Arnott's deputies broke Carol's arm. And yet, "justice officials" could not figure out that we likely did not live at a place where we, and our belongings, were thrown on the street -- and Carol was beaten up. We haven't lived at that address for roughly 16 months.

An X-ray of Carol Shuler's arm after
trauma surgery, showing multiple
fracture lines and hardware she will
live with for the rest of her life.
(X-ray from Cox South Medical Center, Springfield, MO,
from the staff of trauma surgeon Dr. Brian Buck.)

We are talking here about incompetence (and corruption) that is so gross it's almost comical. But let's drive home this serious point; Carol Tovich Shuler -- who does not even have a traffic ticket on her record, who has been about as close to a model citizen as you can be -- spent six hours yesterday being treated like a criminal. She was finger printed, had her mugshot taken, even had her eyes scanned.

This all was ordered, best we can tell, by white conservative Christians, mostly men. And yet, many Americans are concerned about the possibility of Syrian refugees coming  to our shores? Heck, refugees from anywhere could only help this cesspool of a country that no longer even merits being called a "democracy," where our supposedly cherished constitution means absolutely nothing in court rooms, law firms, and police/sheriff departments, from sea to shining sea.

By the way, the judge who actually issued the warrant is a woman, Margaret Holden-Palmietto, who apparently needs to be checked for any signs of brain-wave activity. Holden-Palmietto was appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon, which means she probably is a Democrat. That means she will get her butt kicked when she runs for election someday against a Republican who presumably will have a pulse -- although a pulse is optional for a Republican candidate in southwest Missouri.

But this should be scary for anyone who cares about justice. As an avowed liberal, I tend to hold female Democrats in high regard. Heck, I married one. And you would think that Margaret Holden-Palmietto, who probably is no dummy, would be strong enough to stand up to the entrenched corruption in Missouri's third largest metro area. But she clearly is too weak, too timid, or too distracted to actually stand firm against the rot that is going on all around her.

Her job, I guess, is to protect the citizenry from the Carol Tovich Shulers of the world.


(To be continued)