Shuler noticed funds missing from his inmate account about 10 days ago and filed a grievance with the Shelby County Jail. Shuler received a copy of his account which showed some $99 in unauthorized charges.
"I had a meeting with a Sargent Thompson," Shuler said, "and he stated that it appeared that an inmate had stolen my PIN number and charged unauthorized phone calls to my account in exchange for food items. I received no further word from Sargent Thompson and I don't know if this case is going to be investigated as as the crime that it is." Shuler has been incarcerated in the Shelby County Jail since Oct. 23 after Riley filed a lawsuit seeking removal of posts about Riley's extramarital affair with lobbyist Liberty Duke. Some 230 years of first amendment law in the United States says that it's unlawful to restrict publication prior to a final judgement that the report is false and defamatory. There has been no such finding in the Riley lawsuit and in fact has not even been any discovery and yet Shuler has been in jail for almost two full months.
"Because of Rob Riley's lawsuit, I've had to encounter all sorts of dangerous events," Shuler said. "Just last week I witnessed an inmate's suicide here in my unit. A man jumped some 27 feet from the top two stories above us and landed on concrete about 10 feet from where I was sitting. The sound of his skull cracking and blood pouring out of his head is something that I'll never forget and other inmates will not soon forget either. And had I been about 10 feet in another direction, he would've landed on me and crushed me to death. On top of that, an inmate in my block was found with a shank just last night which is an item that has been sharpened for the purposes of stabbing someone. And now I've been the victim of a theft. And all of this has been because of Rob Riley's fun and games lawsuit that he's filed that has absolutely no basis in law or fact. My wife has been without a husband now for almost two months. I've been wrongfully incarcerated and we're going to hold Rob Riley, Liberty Duke, their attorneys and Judge Claud Neilson accountable. They all should be held criminally and civilly accountable."
Below is a copy of a brief that the ACLU has filed on Shuler's behalf stating that these injunctions, civil contempt findings, imprisonment and incarceration are all unlawful in his case.
ACLU Memorandum by Roger Shuler
