Jessica Medeiros Garrison displays limited legal knowledge and zero respect for the rule of law

Luther Strange and Jessica Medeiros Garrison

You might expect a lawyer to display a reasonable command of fundamental legal concepts--and maybe an appreciation for the rule of law. But you aren't likely, it appears, to get either from Jessica Medeiros Garrison, who holds the title "of counsel" at the Birmingham law firm Balch and Bingham.

The "of counsel" designation, by the way, usually is reserved for senior attorneys, those who have enjoyed distinguished careers and shown high-level knowledge in certain areas of the law. How did Garrison, with her thin legal resume, manage to obtain such a title at Balch and Bingham? I've asked that question of several lawyers, and they tend to shake their heads or shrug their shoulders as if to say, "Beats me."

In launching a public-relations attack on our reporting about her extramarital affair with Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, Garrison reveals that her legal bona fides are shaky, at best.

In her as-told-to rant at marieclaire.com, for example, Garrison says there was a trial in her defamation case against me. Anyone with a computer and willingness to pay a small fee can check alacourt.gov and see there was no trial in the case--no jury, no discovery, no adversarial proceeding of any kind. There was a default-judgment hearing, for which the record shows I was not sent notification, but there was never anything remotely close to a trial. Jessica Garrison, with a law degree and a license to practice, doesn't know the difference between a trial and a hearing? Hmmm.

Then, we have these words from Garrison:

When Shuler was served with the papers from my attorney, he was already in jail for another defamation case. (Robert Riley, a lobbyist, sued Shuler for alleging he'd had an affair with lobbyist Liberty Duke.) When we met in court for a preliminary hearing, Shuler came in wearing an orange jumpsuit.

Garrison makes it sound like it's routine for a journalist--or a blogger or anyone--to be jailed in a defamation case. In fact, my incarceration--based on alleged contempt of court regarding an unlawful temporary restraining order/preliminary injunction--violated more than 200 years of First Amendment law.  Specifically, it violated Near v. Minnesota, a 1931 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that is widely considered the "foundational" case for 20th-century defamation law in the United States.

Judge Claud Neilson's ruling in the Rob Riley/Liberty Duke case was so off-the-charts illegal that I can find no other case in American history where a journalist has been imprisoned under such circumstances. Even conservative/libertarian legal analysts, such as Ken White at Popehat blog, proclaimed that Neilson was acting way outside the law. In fact, White said that Riley lawyer Jay Murrill was "blindingly ignorant" or "cynically dishonest."

Does Jessica Garrison seem to know the first thing about First Amendment law and related constitutional issues? Nope. Does she seem to care that Alabama courts routinely are the place where the rule of law goes to die? Nope.

But she doesn't stop with just one ignorant statement. There's more, from marieclaire.com:

When the trial came, Shuler didn't show up. (After five months, he'd gotten out of jail—his wife unpublished the posts about Riley.) Both Luther and I were called to the stand. Seeing Luther responding to questions about the rumors was mortifying. My job had been to help him present a strong front—the exact ​opposite​ of making him vulnerable to such scandalous lies. I knew it wasn't my fault, but I couldn't help feeling like I failed him somehow.

Yes, I didn't show up for the hearing (there was no trial) because notice was neither sent nor received. All of that was complicated by the fact that my wife, Carol, and I had been forced to exit our home of 25 years because of a foreclosure that almost certainly was unlawful. But aside from that, consider the stunning material that is highlighted above.

Google headquarters

Garrison almost casually mentions that I had been in jail for five months, as if that happens all the time in defamation cases. But our research indicates it's never happened like this in American history. Then, Garrison gives the impression that it's routine for a journalist's spouse to be force to "unpublished" blog posts as a sort of ransom for her husband's freedom. Has this ever happened in U.S. history, especially regarding articles that have never been determined at trial to be false or defamatory? My research indicates it's an absolute first--that Claud Neilson, Rob Riley, Liberty Duke and associated lawyers acted in a corrupt fashion that never before has been pondered in the U.S. court system.

Finally, we have this from an article by Rob Holbert, of Lagniappe Mobile, about Garrison's Marie Claire piece:

Garrison said she is fighting to have Google remove searches that would take people to Shuler’s stories about her. With the defamation judgment against him, she hopes that will soon happen.

Garrison is too dishonest to say it, and Holbert apparently is too lazy or ignorant to ask, but here is what Garrison is trying to do: She's trying to get Google to hide articles that never have been found to be false or defamatory at trial, by a jury, as required under First Amendment law.

In other words, Garrison is pushing for censorship, and she's trying to get Google to go along with her little con game.

If Garrison is successful in this gambit, she and Google might find themselves the target of a First Amendment and civil-rights lawsuit.

We've presented substantial evidence that suggests Jessica Garrison is dishonest, shallow, poorly informed, and not terribly bright. On top of that, we see evidence that she is one crappy lawyer.

Is Google going to jump in bed with her? The company would be wise not to make that mistake.

Jessica Garrison wants to remove articles from the Web that never have been found at trial (or in any adversarial proceeding) to be false and defamatory? Again, that is censorship, and Garrison is trying to enlist one of America's most powerful companies to help in her effort to trample the U.S. Constitution.

In terms of First Amendment law, it doesn't get much more outrageous than that.

Original X-rays of my wife's broken arm illustrate the viciousness with which a Missouri deputy attacked her

X-ray of Carol Shuler's shattered arm, broken by a Missouri deputy. This image, taken before any repair efforts, shows that the force was so violent that the humerus (the large bone in the upper arm) almost was forced through the skin. 

(X-ray from Cox North Medical Center, Springfield, MO,)

How violent was a Missouri deputy's assault on my wife that left her with a shattered left arm during an unlawful eviction on September 9? The image above provides the best answer we have so far to that question.

How corrupt and dishonest was Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott, who oversaw the eviction and was standing about five feet away when one of his deputies slammed Carol to the ground and violently yanked her arms in a backward and upper motion? The circumstances surrounding the origins of the above image provide a solid answer to that question.

We've presented several X-rays of Carol's broken arm after it was repaired by Dr. Brian Buck, a trauma surgeon at Cox South Medical Center in Springfield, Missouri, and at the University of Missouri Health System in Columbia. (See here and here.) Those images are hard to look at--at least for me--with nine screws that we can count and multiple titanium plates holding Carol's arm in place.

But the above image is the first one we've shown of the original damage--showing the jagged edges of her humerus (the large bone in the upper arm), with what appears to be a piece of the bone left hanging just above the elbow joint. You also can see that the force almost drove the bone through the skin, and caregivers said parts of the bone were essentially pulverized and could not be salvaged. Our understanding is that the plates and screws were implanted, in part, so that the remaining pieces of bone can grow together, filling in where parts of bone no longer exist.

I have a hard time looking at this image without throwing up--and I don't think it's entirely because that arm happens to be attached to my wife. It makes me sick that one human--a so-called "officer of the law"--could do this to another. And what are the repercussions for Carol? She's going to need at least eight weeks of physical therapy, and we don't know how we are going to pay for it. On top of that, therapists say a good result for such a severe injury might be 75 percent usage of her arm--that is significantly down from the 95 percent figure we originally were hoping for.

Why are we just now presenting these images of the original damage? That brings us back to Sheriff Jim Arnott, and we will examine that question further in an upcoming post.

Jessica Medeiros Garrison takes her hypocrisy and anti-gay RAGA roots to do "business" with Apple Inc., which is led by pioneering gay CEO Tim Cook

Jessica Garrison and Luther Strange
(from Facebook)

Conservatives have a special knack for hypocrisy, and it's possible that no one does it better than Alabama GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison.

Garrison put herself in the headlines recently by attacking our reporting on her extramarital affair with Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange--and its proximity to her divorce from Tuscaloosa businessman and school-board member Lee Garrison. (Does any of that keep Jessica from touting her "family values"? Probably not.)

We've already shown that Garrison can take hypocrisy to extraordinary heights on the subject of Big Tobacco. After all, she griped in divorce papers that Lee Garrison and his new wife smoked around the Garrison's son--never mind that Jessica has proclaimed U.S. Judge and noted tobacco whore Bill Pryor as her professional mentor.

But Garrison takes hypocrisy to new levels in her PR-attack piece against Legal Schnauzer at the women's fashion site marieclaire.com. In this instance, Garrison proves to be mind-bogglingly two-faced on another hot-button political issue--gay rights.

Consider this from Garrison's marieclaire.com article:

By then, I was a Executive Director at RAGA, the Republican Attorney General's Association, in Washington, D.C. My job was to meet with corporations to promote working with Attorney Generals. One day, I went to a meeting with the Government Affairs director at Apple at a restaurant in Cupertino, California. When I arrived, he said, "I looked you up online so I could recognize you." My heart stopped beating. All I could think throughout the meeting was, 'This man thinks I slept with the Attorney General of Alabama.'

Garrison tells us--some might call it bragging--that she has the clout to get an audience with a top executive at Apple Inc., long considered one of the most innovative and progressive companies on the planet.

It's probably safe to say that Garrison did not inform her lunch companion that her mentor, Bill Pryor, founded RAGA, the outfit for which she now serves as executive director. Why might Garrison have kept that news under wraps? Well, Pryor is considered one of the most anti-gay political figures in modern American history--to the point that Pryor revealed during his confirmation hearings that he and his wife, Kristan W. Pryor, rescheduled a family vacation to Disney World when they discovered the Orlando, Florida, theme park had scheduled "Gay Days" festivities at the same time as their planned visit.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc.

Speaking of hypocrisy, Bill Pryor is a noted homophobe, even though nude photographs taken during his college days showed up in the 1990s at the gay-porn Web site badpuppy.com.

Why would Jessica Garrison likely not tell an Apple executive about her ties--and RAGA's ties--to Bill Pryor? Well, Apple CEO Tim Cook is openly gay. In fact, Cook is the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to publicly identify as gay.

Ironically, Tim Cook has powerful ties to Alabama. He was born in Mobile (Bill Pryor's hometown) and grew up in Robertsdale, going on to earn a bachelor of science degree in industrial engineering from Auburn University.

Jessica Garrison has built her career on a foundation of homophobia, but she seeks support from a company led by the nation's most famous gay corporate leader.

It takes some "brass ones" to attempt that. It also takes a heavy dose of hypocrisy--and Jessica Garrison, like many conservatives, has a major supply of that.

Corporate ass-kisser Jessica Medeiros Garrison as a champion for women? Please, don't make us laugh

Jessica Garrison, with U.S. Judge
Bill Pryor and U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions,
two of her right-wing mentors.

Republican political operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison tries to portray herself as a champion of women in a recent online rant against Legal Schnauzer. That notion is laughable to anyone who knows the first thing about Garrison's background. And in the course of her rant, as told to Liz Welch of marieclaire.com, Garrison winds up affirming some of the worst stereotypes women have had to fight for years.

Garrison claims that my reporting about her extramarital affair with Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange is a form of bullying--and the point of her Marie Claire piece is to stand up for other helpless women who might become the subjects of evil journalists. This is how Garrison so nobly puts it:

This is about more than just me. It's about the women who are bullied, trolled, and victimized online because someone has an agenda, or a chip on their shoulder, or a self-righteous feeling that they simply ​can​.

Wow, that Jessica is quite a gal, standing up for imperiled women everywhere. But is her concern real? Not even close.

The first clue comes when Garrison tells us about her professional life:

By then, I was a Executive Director at RAGA, the Republican Attorney General's Association, in Washington, D.C. My job was to meet with corporations to promote working with Attorney Generals. One day, I went to a meeting with the Government Affairs director at Apple at a restaurant in Cupertino, California. When I arrived, he said, "I looked you up online so I could recognize you." My heart stopped beating. All I could think throughout the meeting was, 'This man thinks I slept with the Attorney General of Alabama.'

Let's examine that first highlighted sentence for a moment. Garrison says her role is to encourage corporations to work with attorneys general. (Jessica has a little problem with grammar here; the plural is attorneys general, not attorney generals. You'd think a woman with a law degree, who had been appointed to a job in the Alabama AG's office and as executive director of an association of AGs, would know that.) But Jessica says she represents only Republican AGs, so her line about promoting work with all AGs? Well, that's a lie.

Even more troubling is this: The attorney general, in most jurisdictions, is defined as the chief law-enforcement officer and chief legal adviser to the state government. In other words, a big part of the job is to prosecute individuals, including corporate titans, who violate state laws. A state attorney general should be one of the last people corporate heads would want to work with.

Apple Inc. headquarters in
Cupertino, California

Unless, of course, Jessica's real job is to more or less conduct a "shakedown cruise" of corporate executives, assuring them that a contribution to RAGA will make it more likely that Republican AGs look the other way when said executives step in legal doo-doo. Was that the whole point of Garrison's visit to Apple in Cupertino, California?

Now, Jessica wouldn't do that would she? A 2014 New York Times article suggests that's exactly what someone at RAGA does:

The Republican Attorneys General Association, created nearly 15 years ago, has grown in prominence as the number of Republicans holding the job has surged, reaching 25 as of this year. RAGA takes in millions of dollars a year from major corporations — companies that are seeking help to move their agendas or have been targets of investigations.

Why would major corporations need help from attorneys general to "move their agendas"? I can see how they might need experts in advertising or public relations or lobbying. But an attorney general? I can't fathom a legitimate reason for a corporation to want the help of AGs to "move its agenda"--unless, of course, the corporation is up to no good and needs AGs to look the other way. Is Jessica Garrison a glorified "bag man" (or "bag gal") for conservative law-enforcement types?

Here's a better question: Does anyone seriously think Jessica Garrison is a champion, of any sort, for women? She has publicly stated that her professional mentor is U.S. Circuit Judge Bill Pryor, a former Alabama Attorney General. Pryor might be one of the most virulent anti-woman political figures in modern American history. When President George W. Bush nominated Pryor to the federal bench in 2003, civil-rights and women's groups were so outraged that Bush was forced to make a recess appointment.

(By the way, who started RAGA, the outfit that now employs Jessica Garrison? It was Bill Pryor. Does Jessica Garrison pretty much owe her career to the anti-woman Bill Pryor? A strong argument could be made that the answer is yes.)

Did Garrison help the cause of women with the shrill, high-anxiety tone of her Marie Claire piece? Given that women have had to fight the stereotype that they are prone to be nervous, hysterical, overwrought, and high strung . . . well, I would submit that the answer is no, she did not help the cause of women. In fact, she probably caused them to take several small steps backward.

Garrison's piece is filled with so much overtly emotional language that it can set one's nerves on edge just to read it. As a public service, I counted the number of times Garrison used certain emotionally charged terms. Here is my count:


* Shocked -- 1

* Tears or "in tears" -- 2

* Heart stopped beating -- 1

* Paranoid -- 1

* Mortifying or mortified -- 2

* Shouting or elated -- 2

* Anxiety, stress, or sadness-- 1 each


That's 12 high-intensity words or phrases in a relatively brief, 18-paragraph story. I think I need to take a Xanax after finishing it.

Consider Garrison's tone, compared to the calm, professional demeanor of Hillary Rodham Clinton when she recently faced intense grilling about Benghazi before a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Who is the better role model for women?

Heck, consider Garrison's self-centered tripe to the reporting I've done on real women--Sherry Carroll Rollins, Linda Upton, Angela Drees, Bonnie Cahalane--who have been abused by the Alabama justice system, Has Jessica Garrison ever taken a stand for such women? Has she ever taken a stand for any woman, other than herself--or maybe a sorority sister who is as self-absorbed as she is?

In short, who is more the champion for women--Jessica Garrison or Legal Schnauzer? Under any reasonably objective examination, my record would trump hers eight days a week.

Oh, and we mustn't forget this: Garrison's marieclaire.com article reveals her to be a hypocrite of Bunyanesque proportions. We've already noted this quality in Garrison on the subject of Big Tobacco. But now, her gross hypocrisy is on display regarding another major issue of the day.

More on that coming soon.

Rogue cop gets fired in South Carolina for assault on student, but Missouri cop remains free of scrutiny after breaking my wife's arm during unlawful eviction

Video that went viral yesterday of a South Carolina sheriff's deputy body slamming and dragging a 16-year-old high school girl across a classroom floor probably was shocking to many Americans. But it was not shocking to my wife, Carol, and me.

For us, it was like living September 9, 2015, again.

That's the date a Greene County, Missouri, deputy shattered Carol's left arm during an unlawful eviction, one where officers had no lawful grounds to even be on our rented property. I saw everything the deputy did to Carol, from about 15 feet away, and it looked a lot like what you see on the video above from Spring Valley High School, near Columbia in Richland County, South Carolina.

The good news is that Ben Fields, the South Carolina officer, was fired this morning, and he remains under federal investigation because Sheriff Leon Lott quickly sought assistance from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). MoveOn.org has launched a petition, seeking to have Fields charged with assault--and we strongly support such action.

The bad news is that we see no sign that anything has happened to the Missouri officer who brutalized Carol; we do not even know his name. We doubt that the DOJ or MoveOn.org even know about Carol's case.

Our understanding is that Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott is aware Carol's arm was broken, but no one from his department has contacted us or given any sign that the incident is being investigated. A Legal Schnauzer reader contacted Arnott and reported to me that the sheriff pretty much played dumb, acting like he knew nothing about the incident--even though he was standing about five feet away when Carol was assaulted.

What was Arnott's immediate response to the assault? He lied, immediately proclaiming that Carol has assaulted the officer. A deputy drove Carol, in handcuffs, to the Greene County jail and told her she was facing a felony charge and a $100,000 bond. That only changed when Carol finally got someone to pay attention to her cries of severe pain in her arm--and X-rays immediately showed the break.

The press in Springfield, Missouri, has shown no interest in covering the story--even though police brutality has been a national issue for more than a year. We've contacted several southwest Missouri law firms that supposedly specialize in police-misconduct cases, and they have either not responded or took our basic information and then quit responding.

X-ray of Carol Shuler's arm, showing
multiple fracture lines after trauma
surgery that required at least nine screws
and multiple titanium plates for repair. We
will be fortunate if she regains 75 percent use
 of  her arm.

Translation: A cover-up seems to be under way in the Missouri Ozarks--of a police brutality case that might be about as bad any we've seen in the United States over the past 15 months or so, at least among those that did not involve a victim death.

In cases where victims were injured, I'm not aware of many injuries that could be classified as more severe than Carol's. Ironically, the one exception that quickly comes to mind happened in Alabama--where a cop flipped a grandfather from India on his head, causing a spinal injury that might keep the victim from ever walking normally again.

As for Carol's injury, we had a follow-up visit yesterday with her surgeon, and we received X-rays of her original injury, before she had received any treatment. The images almost make me vomit, and we will be sharing them here at Legal Schnauzer soon. Carol is going to need at least eight weeks of physical therapy (three times a week, probably), and one caregiver today said the best outcome might be a return to 75-percent usage of her arm. An earlier estimate had been 95 percent, but the latest word is that we are highly unlikely to achieve that.

How do the South Carolina and Missouri cases compare? The Missouri deputy did not throw Carol backward on her head, as happened to the victim in the South Carolina case. But Carol was slammed to the ground, landing on her rear end hard enough that I still think she sustained a concussion. To my knowledge, she has not been examined for head trauma. Carol was not dragged across the ground, as happened to the South Carolina victim, but the cop jerked both of her arms in a backward and upward motion that was so severe one of her broken bones almost came through the skin.

Our understanding is that the South Carolina victim managed to escape injury, and we are grateful for that. We also are pleased that the victim is seeing some measure of justice already--and we hope more is headed her way.

For that, we suspect she can thank the classmates who used their cell phones to capture video of the assault and cause it to come to quick public attention. Without it, the South Carolina sheriff and his acolytes probably would be lying and covering up, just as we are seeing in Springfield.

It's possible video exists in Carol's case; we aren't sure if any of the half dozen or so officers was wearing a body cam. If such video is out there, it's under control of Sheriff Jim Arnott--and his department in Greene County, Missouri, seems to be doing its best to cover up the brutality inflicted on Carol.

How brutal was the cop attack that left my wife with a shattered arm in Missouri? These images, from a trauma surgeon's team, help provide the answer

X-rays of Carol Shuler's shattered arm, broken by a

Missouri deputy. This image shows that titanium plates were required for a major portion of her upper arm, and more hardware was required for support below the elbow. 

(X-ray from Cox South Medical Center, Springfield, MO,

from the staff of trauma surgeon Dr. Brian Buck.)

Police brutality continues to be in the news, and one of the most disturbing recent cases comes from Virginia. That's where University of Virginia honors student Martese Johnson was savagely beaten by agents from the state Alcohol Beverage and Control Department. Johnson has filed a $3-million lawsuit against agents who left him bloodied, with a gash in his head that required 10 stitches.

It's hard to compare cases of police brutality for the horror they inflict on their victims. But a Missouri deputy left my wife, Carol Shuler, with a shattered left arm after an unlawful eviction at our apartment on September 9. Carol's arm was so badly broken that it required repair from Dr. Brian Buck, a trauma surgeon at Cox South Medical Center in Springfield, Missouri, and the University of Missouri.

The beating of Martese Johnson

Caregivers have told Carol that a good result from such an extreme injury would be 95-percent use of her arm. In other words, it's unlikely that her left arm ever will be the same. X-rays we've posted tell you why.

In one image, at least nine screws are visible, holding titanium plates that are allowing Carol's arm to heal. In another image, four to five lines that represent fractures clearly can be seen.

The images in today's post show the kind of support Carol's arm needed, both well above the elbow and below it. Based on our conversations with caregivers, our guess is that indicates Carol's arm was not just broken--it also was dislocated, likely due to severe and brutal twisting.

We intend to follow the Martese Johnson case and hope he and his family get justice. We intend to fight, with all of our might, so that Carol might achieve justice, also.

X-rays of Carol Shuler's shattered arm, broken by a

Missouri deputy. This image shows another view of the support Carol's arm needed from screws and plates below the elbow.

(X-ray from Cox South Medical Center, Springfield, MO,

from the staff of trauma surgeon Dr. Brian Buck.)

Honesty and accuracy remain foreign concepts for Alabama right-wingers reporting on Jessica Medeiros Garrison's wacky, error-filled rant at marieclaire.com

Rob Holbert

Alabama's right-wing media types never fail to astound with their dishonesty and incompetence. Take, for example, our "old pal" Rob Holbert, publisher of the Mobile-area weekly Lagniappe.

When we last addressed the subject of Holbert, he was criticizing my reports about Governor Robert Bentley's affair with aide Rebekah Caldwell Mason, plus my outing of al.com journalist Charles J. Dean as a customer of the Ashley Madison extramarital-affair Web site. We showed that Holbert's commentary included so many errors that we didn't have enough fingers to count them all.

Part of me wanted to write off the Holbert piece as the case of a publisher/writer having a bad day. But given Holbert's right-wing bona fides--he once served as deputy press secretary for former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS)--I thought it possible that Holbert was afflicted with the sort of deep-seated dishonesty that seems to have gripped so many postmodern Republicans. (See last Thursday's U.S. House of Representatives grilling of Hillary Clinton on the issue of Benghazi for a classic example.)

In an October 21 piece titled "Schnauzer target tells magazine his posts changed her life," Holbert takes on the Jessica Medeiros Garrison story, which grew from her as-told-to article at marieclaire.com, attacking my reporting on her extramarital affair with Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.

The headline of Holbert's piece has all sorts of grammatical problems, and the story itself reveals that the writer still struggles with accuracy and a tendency to make bizarre statements that seem to come from . . . well, right field, I guess. But for now, we will focus on his dishonesty.

Let's start by examining the third and fourth paragraphs from Holbert's article, where he addresses (sort of) my response to Garrison's piece:

Garrison’s article appeared on marieclaire.com last week. At first, she writes, she just tried to laugh off Shuler’s accusations that she had been involved in a lengthy affair with Strange. Shuler also wrote numerous unflattering stories about Garrison’s ex-husband, Lee Garrison, as he ran for the Tuscaloosa City Board of Education. Shuler also published stories on his blog alleging Jessica Garrison received a sweetheart deal on the purchase of her home and questioning the sources of her pay. Garrison said Shuler even questioned the paternity of her son in print, an allegation he denies, although he has written about discussing the matter with Lee Garrison

“Never have I reported that Luther Strange is the father of her child. In fact, I contacted Lee Garrison and interviewed him on the subject. He said he was convinced the child was his, and I never reported otherwise,” Shuler wrote last Friday in a scathing rebuke of the Marie Claire article. He didn’t explain why he would call the child’s father to discuss paternity if it wasn’t something he questioned.

So, we can give Holbert a gold star for finding my blog and the response I had written to Garrison's PR-attack piece. (Why do we call the marieclaire.com article a "PR-attack piece?" Given the glaring number of errors in the article--and the fact writer Liz Welch never contacted me for comment and clearly never checked the public court record--I don't know what else to call it. The piece certainly cannot rest on its "journalistic merit" because it doesn't have any. Marie Claire is, after all, a women's fashion magazine.)

How did Holbert know I had addressed the Garrison article on Legal Schnauzer? I told him I had when he contacted me via e-mail and asked if I had any comment about the Garrison story. (Please keep those two highlighted sections above in mind; we will return to them in a moment.)

Then, we have this in the fifth and sixth paragraphs of Holbert's story:

Shuler claimed Garrison’s article is full of inaccuracies and falsehoods, and reiterated claims her legal win against him came only “because I was not able to defend myself against her lawsuit, or bring a valid counterclaim” due to having been thrown in jail for five months for contempt in another defamation case, then finding his house in foreclosure due to other legal problems.

When I emailed Shuler asking for comments on Garrison’s article, he referred me back to his website.

Again, we see that Holbert actually has checked my blog post regarding Garrison, although he fails to mention specifics that I had laid out about the inaccuracies in the Garrison story. Still, we will give Holbert credit for doing at least a little homework. But then, note the highlighted section; he hints that I was dodging him, refusing to take questions, that I would let my blog post speak for itself and say nothing more.

Is that true? Well, let's take a look at the full e-mail communication Rob Holbert and I had on the subject:

Rob Holbert
Oct 16 (7 days ago)

to me

Roger,

Jessica Garrison published this piece yesterday in Marie Claire. http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a16418/jessica-garrison-blogger/

I was curious if you have any comments about the story? 

------------------------------ 

Roger Shuler
Oct 17 (6 days ago)

to Rob

I've written one response to it and probably will have more:

http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2015/10/jessica-medeiros-garrison-launches-pr.html

If you have specific questions, I would be glad to answer them. Probably would need to do that via phone.

---------------------------- 

Rob Holbert
Oct 17 (6 days ago)

to me

OK. I read your response. It answers any questions I currently have, but if I have more I'll let you know.

Thanks,

Rob

As you can see, I did not simply refer Holbert to my blog. I specifically offered to answer any questions that he had and suggested we do that via phone. He told me my blog post answered all of his questions at the moment, and I never heard back from him.

So why did he suggest that I was dodging him, that I was reluctant to talk about Garrison? I have no idea, but it suggests Holbert started his article with an agenda in mind--and the fact I was willing to take on questions about the Jessica Garrison case apparently did not fit that agenda.

As for the first two highlighted sections near the beginning of this post, they are two of the strangest sentences I've ever seen a purported journalist write. As a reminder, here they are again:

Garrison said Shuler even questioned the paternity of her son in print, an allegation he denies, although he has written about discussing the matter with Lee Garrison.

and

He didn’t explain why he would call the child’s father to discuss paternity if it wasn’t something he questioned.

A few points:

* I didn't just deny questioning the paternity of her son in print; I invited anyone to conduct a search on my blog, and it will show that I've never reported that Attorney General Luther Strange is the father of Garrison's son. That is a verifiable fact, but Holbert apparently can't be bothered to verify it.

* Holbert seems surprised that I would write about discussing the matter with Lee Garrison. That's what journalists do, they ask questions. Jessica Garrison told marieclaire.com that, at the time of my reporting, rumors were flying about her relationship with Luther Strange, and its possible fallout. To my knowledge, I'm the only journalist to have contacted Lee Garrison--a key source on the subject--and asked him about it directly. Why Holbert seems to find that odd is beyond me.

Jessica Medeiros Garrison
(from al.com)

* Finally, Holbert seems perplexed that I would question the parentage of Garrison's child, as if there is something improper about that. Never mind that Garrison acknowledges rumors were flying around the state about her relationship with Strange--they started long before I wrote about the subject, and they involved persistent questions about the father of her child, considering the timing of her divorce from Lee Garrison. As a journalist with a degree in the field and more than 30 years of professional experience--a fact Garrison and Holbert conveniently ignore--I don't just run with rumors. But when they seem serious enough, I do check them out--and that's what informed my reports about the Garrison/Strange affair--and I stand by those reports. That's also what drove me to contact Lee Garrison, and his answers to my questions convinced me that he is the child's biological father, and I never reported otherwise. Also, I should note that Lee Garrison, unlike his former wife, took questions on a sensitive subject and handled himself with considerable grace.

As for accuracy, Holbert continues to struggle with it. For example, he writes, "[Shuler] claimed he was never legally served notice of the trial." Let me make this as clear as I can make it: There was no trial in the Garrison case, there was no pre-trial discovery, and there was no finding in an adversarial proceeding that my reporting was false or defamatory. In other words, neither Garrison nor Strange faced cross-examination about anything, they never sat for depositions, they never answered written interrogatories, they never turned over any pertinent documents (e-mails, texts, etc.). Jessica Garrison has proclaimed that she "won" her lawsuit, but that contention is based on . . . well, absolutely nothing, no contested record of any kind.

Holbert doesn't even try to hide his bias on the matter. A reasonably objective journalist might refer to Garrison as the "subject" of my "reporting." Holbert and his Lagniappe crew refer to Garrison as a "target" of "online attacks." Garrison could not hire a PR firm--and she seems to have quite a nice expense account--to take a more one-sided approach than that.

Our guy Holbert seems to have almost zero understanding of journalism, even though he holds the title of publisher at a weekly newspaper. He can't seem to grasp that my work never has been found false or defamatory in any trial or adversarial proceeding--and the public record at alacourt.com makes that clear. And yet, he portrays my posts as "online attacks."

Here's one thing interesting about Holbert's piece: He manages to interview Garrison and lobs a few questions at her that would have to improve to reach the level of "softball." Meanwhile, I made it clear that I was happy to be interviewed, but he didn't bother with that.

Holbert did manage to elicit a response or two from Garrison that contain a few kernels of truth, and we will address those in an upcoming post.

Some folks probably think Lagniappe Mobile turns out journalism--and perhaps there are times when the weekly actually does that. But it's hard to expect much from an outfit led by a publisher who reveals himself as a partisan hack, one who is too lazy or incompetent to check the public record or interview a party who might actually bring Jessica Garrison's credibility into question.

Jessica M. Garrison admits that her lawsuit against Legal Schnauzer is based on fraud, raising the specter of possible perjury from her and AG Luther Strange

Jessica Medeiros Garrison

Alabama GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison, in her recent public-relations assault against Legal Schnauzer, unwittingly admitted that her defamation lawsuit against this blog and me is based on a fraud. That raises the possibility that Garrison, and perhaps Attorney General Luther Strange, committed perjury in obtaining a $3.5-million default judgment against me.

Perjury. the offense of willfully telling an untruth in a court proceeding after having taken an oath or affirmation, is a crime. In fact, the kind of perjury that appears to be present with Garrison (and possibly Strange) is a Class C felony in Alabama. Here's how it's described in the Code of Alabama:

A person commits the crime of perjury in the first degree when in any official proceeding he swears falsely and his false statement is material to the proceeding in which it is made.

Should Garrison, and maybe Strange, be referred to Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls for a perjury investigation? Court documents in Jeffco Circuit Court show that Garrison clearly committed perjury. It's less clear exactly what Strange stated under oath, but given his status as our state's chief law-enforcement officer, the matter merits serious investigation.

For now, let's follow the evidence trail, as we know it.

In her article at marieclaire.com, as told to writer Liz Welch, Garrison says she was able to handle my reports here about her affair with Strange, in part because she has a "pretty thick skin." (Never mind that the article reveals her to have an extremely thin skin.) Garrison then lays this on her readers:

The final straw was when Shuler wrote a follow-up post claiming my then five-year-old son was actually Luther's illegitimate child. I could handle the professional stuff—I have pretty thick skin—but this crossed a line. . . .

I decided I had nothing more to lose—so I rolled up my sleeves and fought back.

In other words, Garrison didn't decide to sue me until I wrote a follow-up post about the parentage of her son. One could reasonably conclude that her lawsuit was based almost entirely on that follow-up post about Luther Strange being the father of her child.

For Garrison, there is a slight problem with all of that--I never wrote such a follow-up post. In fact, I never reported--at any time or any place--that Luther Strange was the father of her child. I invite readers who are interested to go to the search box at the top of this blog, key in "Jessica Medeiros Garrison and Luther Strange" (which should call up everything I've written about them), and see if there is any reporting about the parentage of Garrison's son. I can tell you the answer in advance: It's no.

In his order awarding Garrison a $3.5-million default judgment, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Don Blankenship indicates Garrison testified falsely on this issue. Were her statements "material," as required by Alabama law? Well she has admitted they were the basis of her lawsuit, and Blankenship's order suggests they were the determining factor in the $3.5-million award. It's hard to get more "material" than that.

Here is a key section from Blankenship's order, which was issued on April 13, 2015, even though the court record shows I never was served with notice of an earlier default-judgment hearing: (Failure to notify the opposing party of a default-judgment hearing, under Alabama law, makes any judgment void.)

The Court first heard testimony from the Plaintiff. She testified that the Defendant [me] had written, in a blog dubbed Legal Schnauzer, several misleading and inappropriate comments concerning her and Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange. The comments suggested that the Plaintiff received preferential treatment from the Attorney General because the two were engaged in an ongoing extramarital affair; and that the Attorney General was the father of the Plaintiff's minor son.

Garrison's claim that I had reported that Strange was the father of her son was made in court, presumably under oath--and it is glaringly and indisputably material and false. That probably equals perjury. It certainly merits a criminal investigation.

Blankenship's order is less clear about Strange's testimony. But transcripts should be available that would shine more light on the AG's statements under oath. (A copy of the full Blankenship order is embedded at the end of this post.)

Do the people of Alabama have an interest in whether Jessica Garrison and Luther Strange committed perjury? Well, Strange's office is leading a long-running investigation of House Speaker Mike Hubbard, and its dubious raids have led to the closure of the VictoryLand casinio in Macon County. Strange's office has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on these investigations--and others; his honesty, or lack thereof, matters.

Garrison served as Strange's campaign manager in 2010, and according to some reports, also helped in his 2014 re-election. She helped get him elected, so her honesty matters, too.

The evidence is clear that Jessica Garrison lied under oath. We would say the odds are better than 50-50 that Luther Strange did the same thing. The public should demand a formal and objective inquiry.

For now, let's consider Garrison's reaction when she learned that she had "won" her lawsuit, where the opposing party was kept almost totally in the dark, not even notified of key hearings. This is from her account to marieclaire.com, which apparently the fashion magazine accepted without asking a single question of Garrison:

One day a month later, I was running late for a meeting with a close colleague when my lawyer called with the news: Not only had I won my case, but the judge had awarded me $3.5 million in damages. I ran into my meeting literally shouting, "I won! I won!" I was elated—not about the money, but about the fact that I'd seen justice done.

Here's what she should have said in her meeting: "I won because I lied! I won because I lied! I lied under oath and got away with it! Isn't it great to be a Republican and an insider and a member of the elite? We can lie under oath and Win! Yeeeeeee . . . .!

I suppose that might have reduced some of the elation in her meeting and raised questions about whether justice really was done--and we certainly would not have wanted that.

Davy Hay--Default Judgment Order by Roger Shuler

We celebrate our 26th wedding anniversary as my wife recovers from the police brutality that can be inflicted on those who stand up to a broken justice system

X-rays of Carol Shuler's broken arm, courtesy of a
Missouri deputy. The area within the five-sided geometric shape formed by plates and screws
 reveals multiplefractures, probably four or five.
(X-ray from Cox South Medical Center, Springfield, MO,
from the staff of trauma surgeon Dr. Brian Buck.)

Today marks the 26th wedding anniversary for Mrs. Schnauzer and me. As we prepare to "celebrate," Carol is recovering from a badly broken arm, courtesy of a Missouri deputy who, with a half dozen or so cohorts, was executing an unlawful eviction on September 9. (See X-ray No. 2 above.) Any "celebration" will come in or near a flea-bag motel in Springfield, Missouri, where we live on a week-to-week basis, now that lawyers and judges in two states (Alabama and Missouri) have helped steal just about everything we've ever worked for--including our home of 25 years in Birmingham. For good measure, my two brothers (Paul and David Shuler) have instigated a petition, which has zero basis in fact or law, that seeks to have Carol and me declared incompetent.

Got to love that family support!

As for the X-ray above, we showed you No. 1 yesterday, and this one is a slightly different view of the area that includes multiple fractures. Just above Carol's elbow, you will notice that screws and titanium plates form a five-sided geometric figure. Inside that figure, you can see lines that represent fractures. The damage is so severe that Carol's caregivers have said a 95-percent recovery might be the best we can hope for.

Again, happy anniversary!

Do we actually have anything to celebrate today. I think we do; for one, we're still together--in mind, body, and spirit--so, in an age of starter marriages and rampant dysfunction in many homes, I consider that an accomplishment. If I'm going to have to experience a bunch of crap in life, I would rather experience it with Carol than anyone else. And when things are going well--although we might never get to such a state again--Carol is a fine companion then, too.

I thought about staying away from the blogging gig on our anniversary, but the 26 years Carol and I have spent together inspired me to share a few thoughts on various marriage- and justice-related subjects. I hope you will find them worthwhile, so here it goes . . .

* Take those marriage vows seriously; they can be a bee-atch--If you are married in a traditional Christian ceremony, you likely will say vows that go something like this: "I, (Roger), take thee, (Carol), to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health," When the vows raise the specter of bad things that can happen in a marriage--"for worse," "for poorer," "in sickness"--they aren't joking. Carol and I have had a lot of good things--even wonderful things--happen during our 26 years of marital bliss. But we've had up-close-and-personal experiences with that "for worse" and "for poorer" stuff. In terms of sickness, we both have been diagnosed with PTSD, and that has very real repercussions. Otherwise, our general  health seems remarkably good for all we've been through. When most of us think about those scary parts of the wedding vows--if we think of them at all--we tend to consider things like accidents, unavoidable health woes, mistakes, job loss for legitimate reasons, etc. In other words, it all comes under the heading of "s--t happens." But that's not necessarily the way it works in real life. Almost all of our negative experiences have intentionally been heaped upon us by bad people. We didn't lose our jobs (at UAB and Infinity Insurance) for legit reasons--political forces stole them from us. A word to the wise: If you are married, you likely will have a few things that you value, that generally are seen to have worth. If you have any such items, whether they be living beings or inanimate objects, there is always someone out there who would not mind stealing them. All of our legal problems started from a neighbor, with a significant criminal record and signs in his past that he has sociopathic tendencies, who wanted to (in essence) steal our yard. He wanted to use it without permission, and without paying for it and helping to care for it, and that's what I call stealing. Even if we are talking about real property, which can't be moved, bad people still can try to steal it from you--as this guy did, in part, by fencing in about 400 square feet that clearly belonged to us.

* Stand for something, especially something that causes you to step outside your comfort zone--A friend of long standing recently scoffed at the notion that Carol and I should seek to be restored for all of the civil (and criminal) wrongs that have been committed against us. This fellow doesn't deny that we've been cheated in horrific ways, but his counsel is to just accept it and more or less "push the reset button." As for seeking restoration and justice via the court system, this fellow opines, "The system doesn't work that way."

(Never mind that this guy and his wife have both, when they saw signs of being victimized, sought the counsel of attorneys. It seems the system is designed to restore them; it's just not designed to restore us.)

Some of you might be thinking, "I would tell that 'friend' to hit the highway and never come back." I'm starting to think along the same lines, but he did cause me to be extra grateful for the kind of woman I married.

Critics are free to aim their arrows at Legal Schnauzer, and quite a few of them do, but no one can dispute that Carol and I have stood for something. I'm the author of the blog--and except for the five months when I was in jail, and Carol kept it alive--I am solely responsible for its content. But Carol signed off on this effort to expose corruption, when many spouses would have shied away. We've paid a heavy price for the journalism here, and we've attracted quite a few enemies.

But have we made a difference? Ask some of the victims of injustice we've reported on--Don Siegelman, Sherry Carroll Rollins, Linda Upton, Richard Scrushy, Paul Minor, Bonnie Cahalane, Wes Teel, Dr. Mark Hayden, and many more. Their answers, I feel certain, would be yes.

* Try to stand with someone who represents the goodness in mankind--Carol and I have our cynical moments, and there is no doubt that we now are very slow to trust anyone. And we certainly can get on each other's nerves from time to time. But I don't think we've allowed our unpleasant experiences to turn us into cynics. We still believe goodness exists out there.

I've seen goodness in my wife for 26 years (28, if you count two years of dating). Consider our recent "eviction," the one that led to Carol's broken arm: When deputies allowed her into our apartment to retrieve some of our belongings, the first thing she made sure to get were the wooden urns that contain the ashes of our two late, beloved pets--Murphy, the miniature schnauzer for whom this blog is named, and Chloe, the beautiful Tonkinese kitty kat who died of cancer in July of this year.

Carol has a number of inanimate objects that she values--her furniture, her jewelry, her clothes. But the first things on her mind, in a moment of crisis and terror, were Murphy and Chloe. In fact, Carol's arm was shattered because she was trying to return to the apartment to retrieve the litter box for our one surviving pet--Chloe's brother, Baxter.

At a moment of extraordinary stress, when she had just been handcuffed and had multiple weapons pointed at her, Carol thought outside herself. Murphy, Chloe, and Baxter, technically, are not "of" Carol--they are not the "fruit of her loins." But she loved Murphy and Chloe dearly (and she loves Baxter dearly now), and they were the first beings who popped into her mind as she and I were facing homelessness--and, given all the weaponry, on the premises, possible execution.

I had always hoped to marry a good-hearted person. And that's just the most recent proof that I did marry a good-hearted person. Even though we now live on the brink of ruin, I will always be grateful that I've been able to share the good and the bad with Carol.

I might have a few more profound thoughts to share, but that's it for now.

Back on the subject of X-rays, here is No. 3 below, which shows that Carol's arm needed support well above the elbow. We are guessing this is because her arm was dislocated, in addition to being broken.

X-rays of my wife's shattered arm provide dramatic evidence of the trauma rogue cops can leave behind

X-rays of Carol Shuler's broken arm, courtesy of a
Missouri deputy. The area to the left of the screw
that is pointing up at an angle reveals multiple
fractures, probably four or five.
(X-ray from Cox South Medical Center, Springfield, MO,
from the staff of trauma surgeon Dr. Brian Buck.)

Since a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer fatally shot Michael Brown in August 2014, Americans have been inundated with stories about the victims of excessive force, police brutality, and other forms of law-enforcement misconduct. We are about to show you images of the physical wreckage thug cops can leave behind--and we will do it in a dramatic form that I do not believe has been used at any other news site.

Ironically, this also involves a Missouri style of police brutality, in Springfield (Greene County), in the southwest corner of the state. That's where some half dozen deputies from the Greene County Sheriff's Department, including Sheriff Jim Arnott himself, conducted an unlawful eviction on September 9 that played out like an orchestrated terror attack.

My wife, Carol, and I had at least one assault rifle aimed at us, along with five or six handguns. We both were handcuffed, even though we were not alleged to have committed any crime, and the eviction itself was unlawfully scheduled during the 10-day post-judgment window when no such action can take place under Missouri law. On top of that, we had filed a Notice of Appeal and timely served attorneys for all parties, putting an automatic stay on the eviction. In other words, deputies had no lawful grounds to be on our rented property on September 9.

But a veritable SWAT team invaded our residence anyway, and in the ensuing chaos, Carol's left arm was so badly broken that it required the expertise of Dr. Brian Buck, a trauma surgeon from Cox South Hospital in Springfield (and the University of Missouri) to piece it back together. Carol's caregivers have told her that the goal with such a serious break is to restore her arm to 95 percent use--and that would be a best-case scenario. The chances that her arm will return to normal appear slim.

What did Carol's arm look like immediately after a Greene County deputy had slammed her to the ground and twisted both of her arms behind her--all because she was trying to retrieve our cat's litter box? I can't provide an exact answer to that question because I have not seen those X-rays. I have seen that her right arm (the one not broken) was purple over more than half its surface from bruising. And Carol has told me that, in the hours immediately after the assault by cops, her left arm was almost black from the elbow up, with a large bump where at least one bone apparently was close to breaking through the skin.

We can, however, show you exactly what her arm looks like now--on the inside--with all of the hardware required to repair the damage. During a followup visit on October 8, Dr. Buck's staff took several X-rays and gave us copies. Carol's recovery seems to be going about as well as we could hope. But the X-rays--even after surgery--give an idea of the kind of damage with which Dr. Buck and his team were faced. And they reflect the brutality with which an officer, who has the duty to "protect and serve," treated a 55-year-old woman who simply was trying to make sure our cat had a place to use the bathroom as the three of us stared homelessness in the face.

I don't have the medical expertise to provide a detailed commentary on the image above--and on the images that will be featured in upcoming posts.. But I don't think it will be hard for you to see the damage for yourself. When Carol asked Dr. Buck exactly how many places her arm had been broken, his answer was "enough." One of his assistants looked at one of the X-rays and pointed to four or five lines that represented fractures.

In the image at the beginning of this post, most of the fractures are to the left of what appears to be a loose screw, with its point heading upward at a slight right-to-left angle. The screw, of course, is not loose; it's one of at least nine screws you can see on this image to hold Carol's shattered bone in place. But the "loose screw" is a good reference point because much of the damages--apparently four or five fractures--are just to its left.

You can see the damage even more clearly on an image for an upcoming post.


(To be continued)