Alabama commentator Roger Shuler's condition has sharply worsened during his nearly five months of jailing, as I learned by visiting him in Birmingham March 10. The corruption-fighting reporter said he has lost 16 pounds during his jailing without bond since Oct. 23 on two contempt of court charges. The charges stemmed from his investigative reports alleging a sex scandal involving the prominent Alabama lawyer Robert Riley Jr

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(Article changed on March 17, 2014 at 14:52)

Alabama commentator Roger Shuler's condition has sharply worsened during his nearly five months of jailing, as I learned by visiting him in Birmingham March 10.

"It's a horrible trauma to be away from your wife, your home -- and have no idea when you can get out or how," Shuler told me in a rare interview. It was just his second jailhouse interview overall and his only one this year.

Shuler, 57, nearly choked up at the end when he said that he missed his wife -- who is afraid to leave their home (except on secret, emergency food runs) because of the threat she will be arrested for her husband's reporting.

Also, he said that he fears jail violence, and did not want to die from it. He is shown in his mug shot the night of his beating by a Shelby County deputy last October.

The corruption-fighting reporter said he has lost 16 pounds during his jailing without bond since Oct. 23 on two contempt of court charges. The charges stemmed from his investigative reports alleging a sex scandal involving the prominent Alabama lawyer Robert Riley Jr. and lobbyist Liberty Duke.

In the lawsuit filed last summer under seal against the Shulers, Riley and Duke denied Shuler's reports, which were published on the Legal Schnauzer site Shuler founded in 2007 to reveal suppressed and other under-reported stories involving Deep South courts and politics. Riley, Duke and their attorneys have not responded to my requests for further comment.

My visit occurred the day after the 50th anniversary of the nation's most famous free press case in history, New York Times v. Sullivan, which Shuler's judge appears to be violating by holding the reporter indefinitely for failing to spike his stories before trial of the Riley and Duke suits.  

My column today shows how Shuler's treatment violates fundamental press freedom and due process law arising in significant part from the 1960s civil rights struggle in Alabama and across the Deep South.

Yet the nation's journalism leaders -- especially those leading media organizations and teaching at universities -- have done virtually nothing to help Shuler either to win freedom or otherwise to preserve the national civil rights precedents being violated in his case. 

With a few exceptions, most of these leaders and their entities ignore the dark scandals arising across the nation and focus their energies on First Amendment rhetoric, kow-towing to celebrities in government and the media, and promoting scholarships and other efforts to encourage young people to join an oft-glamorized profession.

As a longtime dues-paying member of several of the nation's leading journalism societies and clubs, I have repeatedly written their leaders without success since October to encourage news articles, panel discussions -- or at least letters of protest regarding the Shuler case and those like it.

For the most part, leaders ignore my letters. A few have emailed me back to plead lack of sufficient interest by their membership in such matters, or else too little funding or time to add their name to a letter of protest to an Alabama court.

To break the cycle of indifference, I travelled last week from my office in the nation's capital to visit Shuler March 10 at the Jefferson County jailhouse serving Birmingham.

This column is entitled "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" to recall the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 letter while jailed. King called on everyone to take a responsibility to fight injustice. Denied writing materials in Birmingham's jail, King wrote much of his "letter" on the margins of a newspaper and other paper scraps smuggled out.

In somewhat similar fashion, I am a messenger delivering Shuler's words to you now via rough notes from the jailhouse, where Shuler is being held and silenced.

These notes portray a shocking picture, including a massive failure by the nation's news media.

"I was surprised," as Alabama's ACLU Director Randall Marshall told me two weeks ago, "that there wasn't more of an outcry from the media world when this first happened." The ACLU filed a friend of the court brief, but is not representing Shuler.

What's At Stake

"I see this more as a kidnapping than a defamation case," Shuler told me from a visiting room in the jail. Let's examine why:

The younger Riley, co-plaintiff with Duke against Shuler in the libel suits, is the son of two-time GOP former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (2003-2011). Riley defeated Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (1999-2003), who is scheduled to serve more than four years for corruption charges stemming from 1999 conduct. 

In hundreds of blogs, Shuler -- along with many others, including here at OpEd News -- has repeatedly documented how Siegelman was framed by federal and state authorities, initially by Republicans but now in an ongoing whitewash by national Democrats.

Siegelman's crime? The gist is that the governor in 1999 asked one of the richest men in the state, businessman Richard Scrushy, to donate to the non-profit Alabama Education Foundation. The governor then re-appointed Scrushy to an unpaid state hospital board upon which Scrushy had served under three Republican governors.

The removal of Siegelman from public life enabled the Riley family and their allies such as Karl Rove to operate with a free hand in Alabama, where Siegelman was the leading Democrat.

Regarding Shuler's own case, he cited to me this week major violations of precedent and procedure, such as prior restraint, secret proceedings, jailing without bond, and lack of an arrest warrant.

Shuler has no lawyer or any funds for a lawyer. He says he fears for his life after seeing the mayhem that can occur in jail.

"I've been treated fairly well by fellow prisoners," Shuler told me. "But some of them come in hyped up on drugs, and I've barely escaped some vicious fights, typically over some little thing like who gets to use a phone for a 15-minute call. Anybody can get killed, and I saw it happen."

Media Indifference

I have previously written about Shuler's arrest in a half dozen columns, such as Alabama Court Again Hammers Blogger As NY Times Flubs Libel Story.

Most in the national media have abandoned Shuler and implicitly such First Amendment precedents as Sullivan that should have protected him along with the rest of the public.

From my experience reading Shuler's blogs since 2009, I regard him as a courageous, corruption-fighting writer.

He has gained a national audience with a number of important scoops, albeit with some questionable stories that are impossible for a reader to assess fully.

He writes about specifics in sex scandals, for example, far more than I would. Few of us are in the hotel rooms when politicians travel with their aides, and so we have little means to judge whether his claims are true. 

That said, political insiders in Alabama and nationally find such tales of great interest in their private conversations. Mainstream journalism organizations ignore such matters except when an "accidental" scandal erupts and the safety of pack journalism can justify reporting to the public.

Even then, the public is rarely informed that some such sex scandals arise as deliberate hit jobs by political opposition researchers who store up dossiers for use when helpful in a political blackmail process. That part of the massive dark world of politics exists and tends to remain off limits for the media, especially since at least a few journalists are complicit.

Instead, reporters pursue more routine fare from staged events whereby reporters function more as stenographers than independent, pro-consumer watchdogs. Wall Street Journal editors have said 90 percent of their stories begin from a press release.

Industry events seek to retain some vestige of glamor by self-congratulatory awards ceremonies, participation by government, entertainment and media celebrities (especially in Washington) -- and, of course, high-minded rhetoric about the nation's free press and First Amendment freedoms. 

The National Press Club, for example, has scheduled in cooperation with government officials a number of Sunshine Week and Freedom of Information events over the next month. But the club has not bestirred itself to write even a simple letter protesting Shuler's treatment despite many requests by me.

Similarly, the Society of Professional Journalists has done nothing in its array of venues despite at least ten requests by me to various officials nationally, in Alabama, or in my Washington, DC region. The Online News Association , founded to advance blogging and other online news, pleads poverty and other priorities when I have asked them to do something about Shuler's plight.

Worst of all in my opinion has been Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. I have yet to receive a single response as a member to my emails directed to several IRE executives on behalf of Shuler, an alumnus of the prestigious school.

Recapping Shuler Case Background

Shuler and his wife, Carol, have virtually no funds. Roger Shuler said his wife has lost 30 pounds from stress as she hides in their home in fear of being arrested on a pending contempt order, which Roger Shuler says is unjustified because she had nothing to do with his reporting before his arrest.

Riley is a wealthy wheeler-dealer who recently shared in the legal fees from helping win a $500 million settlement of a fraud case against businessman Richard Scrushy, Siegelman's co-defendant.

Scrushy received a seven-year prison term, which he valiantly served rather than accept a plea deal requiring him to testify -- falsely in his view -- against Siegelman as part of the frame-up. Meanwhile, Riley and Siegelman's former defense counsel Doug Jones helped win the $500 million civil fraud judgment against Scrushy in a separate matter while he was behind bars.  

Last year, the younger Riley was reputed to be a likely candidate for the Birmingham region's congressional seat. Then came Shuler's columns claiming the married Riley had had an affair with Duke resulting in an abortion and dissolution of her marriage.

Further details are available by searches on my website, the Justice Integrity Project, and my recent book, Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters. The gist is available also in OEN archives documenting in many ways by many authors how political prosecutions can be a tool for Republican and Democratic operatives alike in certain circumstances.

The goal? Career opportunities, including riches for insiders involved in government jobs, contracts, court decisions and regulations benefiting cronies.

A Strange Development 

Separately from the Riley-Duke defamation suit against Shuler, the campaign manager for Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange last August filed a libel suit against Shuler because he alleged that she had had an affair with Strange.   

The plaintiff was Jessica Garrison, a Birmingham attorney who directs the Republican State Attorneys General Association. Shuler alleged also that Strange authorized more than six figures in payments from his campaign entities to Garrison, and that an alleged affair with Strange helped prompt her divorce from a Tuscaloosa politician.   

Garrison has denied the allegations. She won a ruling in Jefferson County's Circuit Court March 5 that Shuler had 30 days to answer or face a default judgment.   

Shuler told me he has no way in jail to respond to the decision.   

Illustrating the potential double-standards at work, Strange's office is prosecuting Democratic former state senator Lowell Barron and his former campaign manager on criminal charges of ethics violations regarding nearly $60,000 in campaign funds during their alleged affair. Before the trial scheduled in April, the defendants have demanded documentation from Strange of the kinds of specifics about his own payments to Garrison that Shuler had alleged.   

The Jailed Journalist   

The Committee to Protect Journalists, one of relatively few media organizations to protest Shuler's treatment, listed him in its annual worldwide survey as the only jailed journalist in the Western Hemisphere at the end of 2013. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press   stepped forward with a letter on his behalf to the court.   

These actions prompted several other groups to mention him briefly in their newsletters or other publications. But those scattered and sporadic efforts are no match for those within the court system who seem determined to destroy Shuler and his wife financially and otherwise.   

Broadcaster Peter B. Collins covered the Shuler arrest when it happened and has stayed focused on it as a continuing outrage. He and I discussed it during an hour-long interview broadcast March 12 regarding the overall attacks on civil rights and the revelations in my book Presidential Puppetry. His subscription-only podcasts are available at no-cost after two weeks.

We analyzed the Shuler case as part of the Deep South civil rights struggle.    

In the Birmingham jail, I met Shuler for the first time after reading his blogs almost daily for news of the courts in the Deep South. He stands slightly over 6-foot 4. He wore faded prison garb with horizontal stripes. Prisoners were in bare feet with rubber sandal flip-flops.   

Shuler suffers isolation so complete that he said he was unaware of nearly all of the limited news coverage of his jailing, including my half dozen columns.

Also, he declined my offer to leave him several pieces of paper and pen so that he could try write legal papers seeking his release or appeal major procedural decisions that are clearly in violation of settled law.

"I know the guards would take the paper and pen as soon as you left," he told me. "I would love to have paper and pen, and be able to make filings to get out of here. But it's no use. You have to get materials like that from the jail commissary."

He has several judges arrayed against him.

But his chief tormenter, Claud (sic) Neilson is not even a real judge elected to serve in the jurisdiction by standard procedures.

Neilson is an attorney who, for example, represents plaintiffs against the state's leading civil rights law firm, Sanders and Sanders, in a politically charged multimillion-dollar suit. Details are here: Selma's once thriving Chestnut, Sanders and Sanders law firm much smaller and splintered.  

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who notoriously ignored the U.S. Supreme Court's establishment of religion holdings in the so-called "Ten Commandments Case" a decade ago, brought Neilson out of retirement in mysterious circumstances last summer.

Moore named Neilson to serve as a part-time state judge to handle the Shuler case, whose docket and courtroom were kept secret during its main procedures.

The beating and jailing of Shuler last October under Neilson's contempt order had the effect of silencing a major regional pro-consumer voice in Alabama and the Deep South.

Financially strapped mainstream news organizations in Alabama and elsewhere have cut back on their coverage of such government functions as courts, law and police. Birmingham's daily newspaper (one of whose predecessors employed Shuler as a reporter for nine years) is published in print just three days per week to save money, for example.

Even those who do not like Shuler, his reporting, and the subjects of his commentaries might care about the national civil rights precedents being undermined with scant protest by his treatment. Those Constitutional protections were created by the founders and solidified by the courts to protect the public, not just reporters.

In 1813, for example, the Supreme Court voided by a 5-4 vote in U.S. v. Hudson and Goodwin the criminal convictions for seditious libel against the publishers of the Hartford Courant for their 1806 criticism of then-President Thomas Jefferson. In arguably the first free press case before the high court, the justices ruled that criminal convictions in the new nation must be on the basis of written law, not simply "common law" or other such informal legal tests.

The Courant was my first employer when I began my journalism career in 1970. I worked there as a reporter for 14 years, with an interlude as interim Sunday magazine editor. Later, my study of the Hudson and Goodwin libel prosecution provided a historical backdrop for my first book, Spiked: How Chain Management Corrupted America's Oldest Newspaper, published in 1987.

In 1931, the U.S. Supreme Court took another major step on behalf of vigorous reporting in its  Near v. Minnesota ruling, which forbade courts from ordering "prior restraint" of news articles and speeches of all kinds before a finding of liability even if the publisher and the allegation each might offend local sensibilities.

Perhaps most importantly of all these cases, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964 overturned by a 9-0 vote a $500,000 libel judgment Alabama authorities had won against civil rights leaders and the New York Times.

The Sullivan verdict against Montgomery Public Safety Commissioner L. B. Sullivan also overturned nearly $300 million in similar libel verdicts in the Deep South against the media. The ruling created a special "absolute malice" standard for reporting about obvious public figures such as Sullivan, Robert Riley and Luther Strange (and arguably the female plaintiffs as well).

This safe harbor for reporters -- and indeed all citizens -- to discuss public affairs whether in print or in speech thereby enabled vigorous national news coverage of the civil rights movement and all other public figures and issues since then. As a reminder, defendants in that case were not simply the New York Times, as nearly anyone seriously involved in journalism knows, but also citizens who had used the Times to portray the pro-segregation track record of Sullivan and other local officials.

Theoretically, that Supreme Court holding protects everyone -- except Shuler, apparently.

His judges have never applied the Sullivan standard to my knowledge, although it is impossible for outside observers to tell since the most relevant parts of his ordeal occurred in a sealed courtroom with a sealed docket. Court deputies barred from attending his key November hearing before Neilson any observers, except the judge's brother, who wanted to meet the wealthy wheeler-dealer plaintiff Riley, as I reported previously. 

There are other legal principles besides Sullivan and Near being violated in the Shuler case. Among them is due process, which that includes open dockets and open courtrooms.

At the root is basic fairness: the opportunity to be heard, including the opportunity to have a lawyer, or at least paper and pencil and a way to communicate with the courts while not being held in chains and berated by the judge whose appointment is of mysterious origin. I have reported previously on these irregularities, which are too numerous to summarize here again.

Summing Up

In closing, I return to the Sullivan ruling, whose 50th anniversary is now being widely celebrated in media circles.

The verdict arose from the darkest days of the civil rights struggle in Alabama. The current implications for Shuler are now being ignored by a new generation of law enforcement oppressors in Alabama and also nationwide by relatively comfortable professors and other professionals within the journalistic establishment. They find every excuse, it seems, to avoid to taking a stand.

There is snobbery at work here. Many will rally to the defense of an elite reporter at a major news organization that creates a free press campaign.

Shuler, on the other hand, is one a-person operation. His site was the only one in a ranking of the top 50 legal blogs in the country that was not run with organizational funding. So, he has little if anything to offer his supporters but his writing.

But that is part of a larger tradition. Tom Paine was a mere one-man "blogger" by today's standards, even when his pamphlet Common Sense sold two million copies in the American colonies.

Barzillai Hudson and George Goodwin, publishers of America's largest newspaper during the Revolutionary War, were sentenced to prison for criticizing President Jefferson, justly famous as an advocate of the free press except apparently in such an instance of criticism of his own presidency.

Not everyone can have the eloquence or important issues of Martin Luther King (shown here in a file photo), Tom Paine, or even Hudson and Goodwin. 

Last week, however, I gained a first-hand sense of passion of the ongoing civil rights struggle from the ministers and other civil rights advocates I met during five days in Selma on my Alabama trip commemorating the Bloody Sunday march of 1965.

Much on the minds of protesters was the Supreme Court's 5-4 cutback last June on Deep South voting rights in Shelby County v. U.S. and the continued imprisonment of Siegelman.

Yet every injustice worth fighting does not need to be of historic scale. We can do something about everyday issues within our control.

In that spirit, I am asking every reader who made it this far into this column and who is also a member of journalism organization to ask that organization for its stance on the Shuler case.

This is not to say Shuler is correct in his findings or that he should not be punished if proven wrong. That's in the future after due process.

For now, his rights have been stolen. So have ours. Once upon a time, people fought for those rights. Let's do so again today.

This column is cross-posted with a longer version at the Justice Integrity Project website.

Authors Website: http://www.justice-integrity.org

Authors Bio:

Andrew Kreig is an investigative reporter, attorney, author, business strategist, radio host, and longtime non-profit executive based in Washington, DC.

His most recent book is "Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters," the first book about the Obama administration's second term. The book grew out of his work leading the Justice Integrity Project, a non-partisan legal reform group that investigates official misconduct.

In a diverse career, he has advocated for the powerful, and investigated Mafia chiefs, Karl Rove, and top Obama administration officials. The major "Who's Who" reference books have listed him since the mid-1990s.

He holds law degrees from Yale and the University of Chicago, and a b.a. in history from Cornell. His experience includes work as law clerk to a federal judge, as an attorney at a national law firm, and as president/CEO of a worldwide high-tech trade association.

The contact for interviews, lectures, and review copies is Mary Byers at Eagle View Books. The author has lectured on five continents, held research fellowships at three major universities, and appeared on more than 100 radio, television and cable news shows as an expert commentator.