Exclusive Interview with Legal Schnauzer's Roger Shuler By Joan Brunwasser
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Exclusive-Interview-with-L-by-Joan-Brunwasser-090503-667.html Joining us today is Roger Shuler, citizen journalist and the brains behind the blog, <http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/>Legal Schnauzer , "one couple's encounter with corrupt judges, slimy lawyers, and incompetent prosecutors in Alabama... and how you can avoid being cheated by the vermin who make a mockery of our justice system." Clearly, Shuler doesn't pull his punches. Welcome to OpEdNews, Roger. You suspect that your blog got you fired last year. Let's start there. After graduating from Mizzou (University of Missouri) with a degree in journalism, I joined the Birmingham Post Herald where I worked for 11 years. I left to take a job at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), where I worked in various editorial positions, until I was unlawfully terminated last May. A mountain of evidence--at least I think it's a mountain--indicates I was fired because of the contents of my blog, Legal Schnauzer. Tell us about Legal Schnauzer. My wife and I went through a frightening experiencing in Alabama state courts, and we thought the public should know what actually goes on in some courthouses. It all started when a difficult neighbor moved in next door in late 1998. The neighbor later unwittingly confessed to criminal trespass third degree - but was found not guilty by a judge. (You heard that right; confess to a crime and you can be found not guilty in Alabama.) That allowed the neighbor to sue me for a tort called malicious prosecution. If you are a victim of a crime and the perpetrator is found not guilty, he can turn around and sue you. The neighbor hired a lawyer with strong family ties to Alabama's Republican Party. And the judge in the civil case was a Republican. So the case was not dismissed, and it wound up costing us more than $40,000. I came to see that my experience had connections to a much bigger story. I started the blog in June 2007, just a few months after the U.S. attorney firings became a national story. The [former Democratic Governor] Don Siegelman case in Alabama became the best known example of an apparent political prosecution. And my little experience, believe or not, had connections to the Siegelman case. In what way? My neighbor's lawyer was a man named William E. Swatek. Swatek's son, Dax Swatek, is a GOP "consultant" in Alabama, and one of his primary mentors has been a man named Bill Canary. According to the sworn testimony of Alabama lawyer Jill Simpson, Bill Canary was at the heart of a conspiracy to initiate a bogus prosecution to "take care of" Don Siegelman. And Canary, according to Simpson, worked this out with a longtime associate, Bush White House strategist Karl Rove. In the fall of 2007, Harper's Scott Horton referenced my reporting on the Paul Minor case in Mississippi, which has many similarities to the Siegelman case. Also that fall, my reporting was referenced in documents submitted at the U.S. House Judiciary Committee's hearing on selective prosecution. Apparently, that made me a target at work. Strange events started happening on the job in December 2007 and got so bad that I filed a formal grievance against my supervisor. Roughly three weeks after filing that grievance, I was fired. I have tape recorded evidence that indicates I was targeted because of my blog and its content about the Siegelman case. It has been almost a year since my unlawful termination. I have filed a complaint with the EEOC regarding age discrimination, retaliation and wrongful termination. Did you go into the criminal complaint against the neighbor assuming it would be a piece of cake? No. No one wants to file a criminal complaint, particularly against someone who lives nearby. But we had exhausted all other remedies. We had multiple eye witnesses to his trespassing, so we had not only probable cause but "actual cause," so a malicious prosecution lawsuit should not have been a concern. But that's in theory. The reality is that our justice system is populated with a fair number of corrupt lawyers and judges, and we encountered those. Bill Swatek has a bar card, and he filed a malicious prosecution claim even though he was in court and heard his client confess to the crime. Because of his son's ties to the Alabama Republican Party, Swatek gets all kinds of favorable treatment from GOP judges in Shelby County, where we live. I've always been respectful of authority figures. Like many Americans, I assumed that people who wear robes and are called "your honor" are, in fact, honorable people. It's sobering when you realize that is not the case. Perhaps my biggest surprise was how blatant the corruption was. In my case, neither the corrupt judges nor lawyers did anything to hide what they were doing. Our courts are so packed with cases that the bad guys apparently have little fear of being caught. I strongly encourage anyone involved in a legal case to educate themselves at a nearby law library. Don't rely on what a lawyer (yours or the other person's) says. And certainly don't assume that the judge is ruling correctly. What did you do when you discovered the system was stacked against you? Having been a newspaper reporter for a long time, I was used to the idea that people can act in corrupt ways. I read that one of the most stressful events in life is to be sued. To be sued and be cheated by the very people who are supposed to administer justice makes it far worse. With an honest judge, this lawsuit against me would have been resolved in about eight months time and cost us maybe $2,000. the whole experience dragged on eight or nine years, and cost tens of thousands of dollars. I've never been in a fight, but I'm guessing a lawsuit is a little like being in a long, drawn-out boxing match. You take some punches, some you see coming and some that surprise you. You try to throw some punches, too. But in our case, the referee (judge) has kept our hands tied behind our backs. Maybe that's why I started the blog. That's the one place where I could truly punch back. In the short term, the decision to expose wrongdoing did cost me my job. What about the long term? Maybe it's too early to tell. Being without a job in this economy is rough. But I hope I've done a little something to further the cause of justice and shine light on a problem (judicial corruption) that needs to be addressed. Thank you, Roger. Readers: stay tuned for part two of this interview. More on the Siegelman case and Shuler's take on the Obama administration so far. Author's Bio: Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles. CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Back --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to [email protected] OR go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
